Life on the Edge: Fifty Years of Belize Wetland Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the early years of Maya archaeology, Belize was considered peripheral, and the wetlands were at the far edge of this pseudo-backwater. It was not until Turner and Harrison’s seminal study of Pulltrouser Swamp in the 1970s that Belizean wetlands moved from the edge to center stage in Maya archaeology. Northern Belize contains some of the largest tracts of wetlands in the Maya Lowlands, providing rich repositories of well-preserved pollen, phytoliths, and macrobotanical remains, which have yielded some of the earliest evidence of Maya cultivation. Geomorphological studies have greatly advanced our understanding of the construction, use, and abandonment of Maya ditched and drained fields in Belize. In recent years, lidar mapping and other geospatial tools have shown that wetland modifications in Belize were much more complex and expansive than previously thought. Our own investigations in Northern Belize’s Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary reveal wetland enhancements were not only vast but varied in use, with some serving primarily as large-scale fish-trapping facilities, rather than as agricultural fields. In tracing the last fifty years of wetland investigations, we show how research in Belize has moved the field forward and continues to be at the forefront of cutting-edge scholarship across the Maya Lowlands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• “The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya, Part II

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39075.0