SOIL AND GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF WETLANDS AND WATERWAYS IN CROOKED TREE, BELIZE

A series of soil excavations and cores from the Crooked Tree wetlands of coastal Belize provide chronological, stratigraphic, and geochemical evidence for long-term human- environmental interactions and wetland formation. Preliminary results from excavations and cores show a dynamically changing environment over late Holocene, as the system transitioned from a perennial wetland to a seasonally wet environment. Currently, Crooked Tree is made up of an extensive network of lagoons, swamps, and savannas, controlled by sea level, surface flow, and groundwater inputs with a wide variation of water chemistry. While some of the system is perennially wet today, such as Spanish and Black Creek, and some portions of the Crooked Tree Lagoon, other parts experience seasonal inundation and a strong wet/dry cycle. The system is underlain by Holocene alluvial sediments, deposited by flood pulses from the Belize River. Most of the area is protected as part of the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a 200 km² UNESCO-designated Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. The entire region has a long history of human occupation and use, from the Archaic period (4000+ years before present) through Maya history, and into the present. In the western lagoon, multiple linear channel features, first reported by Pyburn in 2003, and later expanded on by Harrison-Buck in 2014, extend 600-800 m east-west across the wetland. These are hypothesized to be anthropogenic features associated with nearby Maya urban centers, and may have served to regulate annual floodwaters. Our ongoing geoarchaeological research in the wetlands focuses on these features as we reconstruct Maya landscape modification, hydrological engineering, subsistence strategies, and cultural response to environmental changes. Results from ongoing analyses will drive forward this research and provide a new case study by which we can explore wetland genesis and change over the Holocene, considering natural factors such as sea level rise and anthropogenic factors such as long term agricultural use.