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Abstract Even though lithics in the Maya region have traditionally been relegated to appendices and tool-type lists, much has been done to move beyond this descriptive approach in the last decade. In this article we highlight general themes of lithic studies in the Maya region since 2011, including economic production and exchange, the role of lithics in ritual practice, and the use of previously understudied raw materials and lithic forms, such as ground stone. Employing a temporal scope that encompasses the Maya and their preceramic predecessors, we explore gendered patterns of research within lithic studies from a feminist perspective and discuss the impacts that gender disparities have on academic thought. 

The Archaic period has not been as widely studied in Mesoamerica as it has been in other parts of the Americas. This problem stems from intractable issues such as low archaeological visibility and high post-depositional disturbance. And, while existing Archaic data from northern Belize indicates that foraging groups practiced diverse adaptations, little theoretical effort has been dedicated toward developing frames of reference for understanding the coupled human-landscape interactions ongoing during this period. Here, we outline a multimethod approach for situating hunter-gatherer-fisher-emergent horticultural land use behaviors, including comparative ethnographic data, extant archaeological information, and geospatial modeling. We set out a series of assumptions and expected material correlates for the archaeological record and develop a site suitability model for heuristically exploring existing data, as well as for predicting areas of high archaeological potential for future work. In this way, we are answering the call for more intensive, regional studies that take a holistic approach to understanding foraging practices at multiple scales. The site suitability model described here can be used as an effective way to conduct research remotely during times of travel restrictions and is widely applicable to a range of study areas both in and outside of Mesoamerica. 

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.