“The School of No Whining”: How the Pedagogy of Fred Valdez informs multidisciplinary research in Northwestern Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 2" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Northwestern Belize and the greater Maya Lowlands is a complex landscape with a unique environmental and cultural heritage. Multidisciplinary and collaborative studies are necessary to better understand and reconstruct the history of humans on the landscape. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Fred Valdez Jr’s research and pedagogy informs and supports dozens of students and trainees, providing the support necessary to conduct such multidisciplinary studies. This paper brings together multiple aspects of Fred’s pedagogy through three distinct case studies, each of which demonstrates his ongoing contributions to the field. Here we explore and review three distinct but interrelated research projects in northwestern Belize, all of which have been informed by Fred’s knowledge and guidance. These three projects focus on three different subdisciplines of research conducted in the region: landscape studies focused on geomorphology/geoarchaeology, paleoecology and paleobotany, as well as Maya urbanism and monumental spaces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 2

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51642