Buried Soils and Human-Environment Interactions within the Three Rivers Region of Northwest Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper reports on recent excavations from the Birds of Paradise wetland field complex where we studied an ancient ancillary structure situated among wetland fields along the lower Rio Bravo of northwest Belize. Here we synthesize previous studies from this broader wetland field complex that includes paleobotanical records of cultivated taxa dated to the late Terminal and early Postclassic periods. We also introduce new soil evidence for ancient Maya activity and paleoenvironmental change within this carbonate and gypsum rich floodplain. To characterize stratigraphy, we analyzed particle size distributions, soil and isotope geochemistry, and chronology through AMS dating. Our results add to the growing body of data from the Birds of Paradise that documents a shift to more C4-dominated vegetation during Maya occupation and to more C3-dominated vegetation afterward. Lastly, we document the effects of paleoenvironmental shifts and land-use change on soil formation around this ancient architecture that contained preserved wood.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37258.0