Bladen postdoc Joe Hirst attended the XXI World Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences from 31 August to 4 September in Poznań, Poland. He presented some initial results from the palaeoecology work package of the project in the ‘Prehistory of the Americas’ general session. Entitled ‘Fires and Farming: Tracking anthropogenic fire utilisation at the onset of agriculture in the Bladen Nature Reserve, southern Belize’, the presentation also included Sara Eshleman, Harper Dine, Mark Robinson, and Keith Prufer as co-authors.
The congress was an excellent opportunity to engage with new and existing colleagues in archaeology about past human-environment interactions in the new world.