Categories
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.”

Categories
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.”

Categories
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.

Categories
Announcements

Oscar graduates with an MSc

Oscar Wilkinson graduated with an MSc Bioarchaeology: Zooarchaeology from the University of Exeter Department of Archaeology and History. His dissertation, titled “The Road to Belize: an Analysis of a Faunal Assemblage,” assessed the faunal material from a unit within the Mayahak Cab Pek rock shelter in the Bladen project area.

Mark, Sara, Harper, and Joe attended graduation to cheer for him and the other graduates. Congratulations Oscar!

Categories
Fieldwork

Mark engages with Paraguayan archaeology

Mark Robinson and project collaborator José Iriate, presented research at the Andrés Barbero Ethnographic Museum and Museo ITAIPU Tierra Guaraní in Paraguay. The Exeter based researchers, along with Yoshi Maezumi and Mike Ordemann (Max Planck), then joined Paraguayan archaeologist, Mirtha Alfonso, to assist with a new international fieldwork program that explores the cultural and environmental history of the country, including collecting palaeoenvironmental lake cores in Lago Ypacaraí and assessing stratigraphy at the rock art sites in the Parque Nacional Cerro Corá. A massive thanks is extended to Mirtha, Débora Soto Vera, Guillermo Lamenza, and Migue Torales Peña (and the wider group of Paraguayan researchers), for their warm welcome and for sharing the beautiful and interesting landscapes and history of the region. We hope this is the start of a wonderful long collaboration.

Categories
Announcements

New website for Santa Cruz community organisation

The Uchben’ kaj Kin Ajaw Association (UKAA) of Santa Cruz, southern Belize has a new website (ukaa-santacruz.com)! Daniel Mes, a local associate for the Bladen Legacy project, is the UKAA chairman. He joined the Bladen Legacy team for the 2025 field season and expressed the need for their organisation to have a website that conveys the cultural and environmental heritage of their Maya community. After the field season, Sara Eshleman and Mark Robinson met with the UKAA board and developed the site based on their feedback. Check it out!

Categories
Conferences

Project Update Meeting in Exeter

The Bladen Legacy project directors and partners met last week in Exeter with the Exeter-based postdocs and virtual appearances from other project members. The multi-day meeting overviewed the existing datasets for the Bladen Legacy project and the current project trajectory and methods. As always, it was wonderful to gather as a group and bring our varied expertise together to shape this transformative project.