Large-Scale Fish-Trapping Facilities in Northern Belize: Localized Wetland Adaptations to Climate Change in the Late Archaic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Multiproxy data collected from the largest inland wetland in northern Belize demonstrates the presence of large-scale fish-trapping facilities built by Late Archaic hunter-gatherer-fishers, which continued to be used by their Maya descendants during Formative times (cal. 2000 BCE-200 CE). This is the first large-scale Archaic fish-trapping facility recorded in ancient Mesoamerica. We suggest that such landscape-scale intensification may have been a response to long-term climate disturbance recorded between 2200-1900 BCE. Rosenswig (2015) argues that this three-century long drying event encouraged a macroscale shift in food production with “a mosaic of adaptation.” While some Archaic forager-horticultural groups became increasingly reliant on domesticated plants like maize, our wetland data do not indicate maize cultivation in this location. Instead, the data suggest that Archaic groups responded by intensifying their fish-trapping as a primary food source, perhaps supplemented by Mollusca and other aquatic foods and drought-resistant plants like amaranth that grow well in clay-rich, sandy soils characteristic of Belize’s wetland-lagoon environments. The results of this study add to a growing body of archaeological evidence reported from across Mesoamerica, including its “cradle” of early civilization in the isthmian lowlands, where findings also suggest aquatic resources were instrumental in supporting the initial development of Formative society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Northern Belize Archaic Period and Sahara Dust

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52178