Complex Fluted Bifaces from Central America: Recent Findings from August Pine Ridge, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent and ongoing research at August Pine Ridge, Belize is documenting an astonishing assemblage of complex bifaces representing human occupation and social interactions that took place in Central America from approximately 13,000 to 12,000 years ago. We see technological behaviors that reflect influences from Clovis practices that are well documented in North America, as well as stemmed, fluted biface production associated with Fell, or Fishtail specimens from South America. These two continental-scale complexes overlapped in what we call a Fluted Biface Horizon that represents in situ population growth in the Belize region of Central America and that is defined by complex social interactions far earlier than previously imagined. Our research has implications for how the Central American land bridge was populated during the Terminal Pleistocene as part of the complex Peopling of the Americas process.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52109