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In the early years of Maya archaeology, Belize was considered a “periphery” and the wetlands were at the far edge of this pseudo-backwater. It was not until the 1970s with Turner and Harrison’s seminal study of Pulltrouser Swamp that Belize and its wetlands moved from the periphery to center stage in Maya archaeology. Northern Belize contains some of the largest tracts of wetlands throughout 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. And in more recent years, LiDAR and other geospatial technologies used as mapping tools have shown that wetland modifications in Belize were much more expansive than previously thought. Our own work in Belize’s Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary reveals wetland enhancements were vast but also more varied, with some being used primarily as large-scale fish-trapping facilities, rather than as agricultural fields. In tracing the last fifty years of archaeological investigations, we show how Belize has moved the field forward and remains at the cutting edge of wetland research across the Maya Lowlands.