Life on the edge: Investigating Maya Hinterland settlements in Northwestern Belize

The Three Rivers Region of Northwestern Belize was an important area for Classic Maya development. Archaeological sites became known to archaeologists in the 1970s and gained much attention in the early 1990s with the creation of the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP). The PfBAP operates on a 250,000-acre nature preserve, known as the Programme for Belize (PfB). Most of this acreage is covered in semi-deciduous, rugged forest, resulting in unexplored terrain. This precludes exploration of the PfBAP and hinders the understanding of ancient Maya settlement. Thus, settlement studies are particularly difficult to conduct and the relationships between settlements and their environment are not well understood. Though, the Dos Hombres to Gran Cacao Archaeological Project (DH2GC), created by Dr. Marisol Cortes-Rincon of Humboldt State University, is creating a detailed picture of a portion of the PfBAP area by way of interdisciplinary inquiry including archaeology, ecology, and geoarchaeology. The DH2GC is conducting a settlement study along a 12-km transect to map settlement and ecological features between the cities of Dos Hombres and Gran Cacao. This thesis is a complementary project along side the DH2GC. The ultimate goal of the thesis project is to understand the nature of settlement patterning between large site centers. The main focus is on small courtyard groups that appear within the Dos Hombres suburban area. Analysis of these courtyard groups will be through settlement patterning that concerns environmental context, and site-planning planning principles.