Category: Conferences

Bladen Legacy team members attended the 8th European Conference of Tropical Ecology from 24 to 28 February 2025 in Amsterdam. Sara Eshleman presented “Sensing Maya legacies in Central American forests” with Mark Robinson as a co-author. Mark presented “Human legacy on a Belizean Forest” with Sara and Keith Prufer as co-authors. Additionally, new postdoc, Joe Hirst, presented “Modelling maize agriculture by the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture of Bolivia using palaeoclimate reanalysis and agent-based modelling” based on his prior research.

All team members engaged with new and existing colleagues around human-environment interactions in the tropics, tropical palaeoecology, and tropical ecosystem dynamics.

Members of the BLADEN Legacy project attended the EIAA (Encuentro Internacional de Arqueología Amazónica) in San José del Guaviare, Colombia from 16 to 22 September, 2024. Dr. Keith Prufer, in collaboration with other project members, presented a paper titled “The search for the earliest ancestors of the Maya: early population structure and the origins of farming reveal links between Central and South America.” All project members exchanged ideas with Amazonian archaeologists, particularly around early peopling of the tropical Americas, long-term human-environment interactions, and archaeological and geospatial methodologies.

Due to his long-term work and collaborations in Amazonian archaeology, Dr. Mark Robinson co-authored five papers with themes around long-term human-environment interaction that span Latin American geographies.

Project members attended the 2024 Belize Archaeology Symposium (BAS) in San Ignacio, Belize from 26 to 28 June. Dr. Mark Robinson presented a paper titled “Early Emergence of Domestic Spaces in the Tropical Forest of Belize”, tied to Bladen Legacy and the ongoing Bladen Paleoindian and Archaic Archaeological Project (BPAAP).

BAS is organized by the Belize Institute of Archaeology to bring together archaeologists, Belize residents, and those interested in archaeology to exchange knowledge and celebrate the cultural history of Belize. Thank you to the Institute of Archaeology (IA) and the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) for organizing another excellent symposium and for their ongoing support of our project and all archaeology projects in Belize.