Author: Sara Eshleman

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Conferences

Bladen Legacy Postdoc Presents at UISPP XXI

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.

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Publications

Lidar method for assessing landscape legacies published in Scientific Reports

Sara Eshleman and Mark Robinson, with their co-authors, published a lidar-based method for quantifying the impact of Maya construction on modern forests. More specifically, they investigated correlations between forest structure and Maya infrastructure. The initial research, published in Scientific Reports, finds significant associations between Maya intensive infrastructure and forest structure for a study area in northwestern Belize. This method will be utilised and adapted for the Bladen landscape.

Check it out here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-66716-6

Press release: https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences/archaeology-and-history/old-growth-tropical-forests-bear-lasting-legacy-of-ancient-maya-civilisation/

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Labwork

Pollen Traps from the Bladen!

In order for us to determine the impact of past human activity on local vegetation communities, we rely on a range of proxy (or substitute) indicators. The most common of these, fossil pollen and phytoliths (silica bodies found within certain plant cells), can be used to identify changes in vegetation composition over time. However, these records are not without their limitations. For example, the size and shape of pollen grains can affect how far they travel, while a plant’s method of pollination (e.g., wind versus animal dispersal) influences the number of grains it produces.

These distorting factors make it necessary to understand the relationship between different vegetation communities and the pollen assemblages they produce. One of our postdocs, Joe Hirst, is currently investigating this in the forest communities of the Bladen reserve. During last year’s fieldwork, pollen traps were set up across several of our botanical plots to measure the associated pollen rain. Those traps have now returned to the University of Exeter, giving us a first glimpse of the pollen grains they collected. You can see some of them on this page.

Pollen trap in the Bladen

A. Cohune

Guarea sp.

Cf. Terminalia sp.

Sapindaceae

Categories
Publications

Isotope Research from Bladen Rock Shelters in Science Advances

Multiple members of the Bladen Legacy team, led by Nadia Neff, published their research on isotopic evidence from burials in the Bladen rock shelters. The authors found that people from 6100 to 1000 BP were obtaining amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, from animals that were eating maize, such as turkeys. This indicates that early humans were managing their food systems in this area prior to the Maya Civilization and the broadscale reliance on maize.

sciadv.aec3522Download
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Labwork

Wetland Agriculture in Northern Belize

In addition to investigating the relationships between humans and the vegetation communities of the Bladen valley, our team members are constantly engaging and collaborating with the wider Mayanist archaeological community. Joe Hirst is currently working with Sam Krause (Texas State University), Tim Beach, and Sheryl Luzadder-Beach (University of Texas at Austin) to reconstruct human-induced changes in vegetation and fire activity at Laguna Verde, a lake within the Blue Creek area of northern Belize. Blue Creek has an extensive history of human habitation and cultivation, with prior pollen work at Laguna Verde indicating that the local area was a site of wetland cultivation during the Archaic and Preclassic periods1,2. Joe is working on a different sediment core collected from the lake to produce a new record of human-induced environmental change in this incredible setting.

  1. Beach et al. 2009 “A review of human and natural changes in Maya Lowland wetlands over the Holocene” Quaternary Science Reviews ↩︎
  2. Morse 2009 “Pollen from Laguna Verde, Blue Creek, Belize: Implications for paleoecology, paleoethnobotany, agriculture, and human settlement” PhD Thesis, Texas A&M ↩︎
Categories
Fieldwork

Bladen Legacy Field Season 2026

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The Bladen Legacy team had a successful 3rd field season in the Bladen Nature Reserve in southern Belize. It included:

  • UAV lidar and hyperspectral data collection of the Ek Xux Valley, led by Leila Character, Michael McDermott, and Rianna Bowen
  • The completion of the lidar-directed survey of Maya structures for the Ek Xux Valley, led by Mark Robinson and Sara Eshleman
  • 7 botanical plots along environmental and anthropogenic gradients, led by Steven Brewer and Louis Peña
  • 6 soil test pits paired to botanical plots for geochemical and palaeobotanical analyses, led by Sara Eshleman and Mark Robinson
  • Terrestrial lidar scanning of 11 botanical plots, Saki Tzul rock shelter, and the large ceiba tree, led by Michael McDermott
  • An excavation adjacent to a topographic depression to assess the presence and persistence of agriculture in these features, led by Sara Eshleman
  • 4 excavations of structures within the Ek Xux site core, led by Amy Thompson and John Walden
  • Support for continued excavations at the Mayahak Cab Pek rock shelter and the exploration of the Ramos Valley rock shelter, led by Keith Prufer and Nadia Neff

Categories
Conferences

Bladen Postdoc Harper Dine Presents at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) 91st Annual Meeting was held in San Francisco, CA from April 29–May 3, 2026. Postdoctoral researcher Harper Dine presented on work conducted with Brown University Professor of Anthropology and expert in Maya art and writing, Stephen Houston. Dine is honoured to have had the opportunity to present as part of a session organised by Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Timothy Beach, and David Lentz in recognition of environmental archaeologist and geographer Nick Dunning’s continuing influential work in the Maya lowlands.

The paper was titled “Seasonality in Ancestral Maya Art and Writing.” The presentation addressed representations of dynamic seasonal change and has implications for understanding agriculture, water management, and other interactions with the natural world in cultural context across the Maya region.

The SAA Meeting also featured presentations by multiple project partners and collaborators, including co-director Keith Prufer. Keith presented a well-received paper titled “The Genetic History of the Maya 3500–500 BP.”

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Outreach

Bladen Postdocs lead Departmental Seminar

Joe Hirst and Harper Dine presented their previous PhD projects as a research seminar for the Centre for the Archaeology of the Americas within the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter.

Joe presented on “Domesticating Amazonian Landscapes: The Maize Agriculture of the pre-Colonial Casarabe Culture” including the palaeoecology and agent-based modelling he completed during his PhD towards understanding the environmental impact of the Casarabe Culture in modern Bolivia. You can read more about his work in his publications.1,2

Harper presented on “A botanical view of food culture in the northern Maya lowlands” including the microbotanical methods she completed during her PhD towards better understanding Maya plant use in a variety of archaeological contexts.

  1. Hirst et al. 2025 “Localised land-use and maize agriculture by the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture in Lowland Bolivia” The Holocene ↩︎
  2. Hirst et al. 2025 “Modelling Maize Agriculture by the Pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture of Amazonian Bolivia: An Agent-Based Approach” JASSS ↩︎

Categories
Outreach

The “Dead Importance” of the Bladen project

Harper Dine, Mark Robinson, and Sara Eshleman had a table presentation at the 2nd Dead Important Festival on 23 March 2026. The Dead Important Festival is an annual event at the University of Exeter that aims to demonstrate ways that the past can inform and inspire approaches to modern pressing issues.

Our group presented on the lasting heritage of the ancient Maya on present environments and food systems. At our table, festival participants could observe a maize phytolith under a microscope, see examples of modern food that comes from the Americas, follow the process of lidar surveys to understand human-environment relationships, and engage with us about the role of humans in the tropics.

We had a lovely time engaging with attendees and our fellow presenters and it is clear that the “Humanities are Dead Important.”

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Announcements

A “stela” gift from fellow local-to-Exeter Mayanists

Louise and Claude Belanger gifted Mark Robinson a plaster cast of Lamanai Stela 9. Sara and Mark visited Louise and Claude in Topsham, just south of Exeter, to obtain the replica stela. The couple worked at Lamanai, in northwestern Belize, through the 1980s and 1990s, and into the 2000s. It was fascinating to connect over our shared histories in Belize.

The stela will be finished by applying a tint in the coming months and will demonstrate an example of a Maya monument to our students and the broader university community.

Thank you Louise for this generous gift!

You can purchase rubbings of this stela (example above) from her website.