Pre-Maya Lithic Technology in the Wetlands of Belize: The Chipped Stone from Crawford Bank

ABSTRACT

Excavations at Crawford Bank in Crooked Tree, Belize, exposed a lithic deposit with no associated ceramics. The deposit primarily consists of chipped chert and chalcedony tools and debitage, as well as a small number of worked slate fragments. Most of the chert likely sources to the Northern Belize Chert-bearing Zone (NBCZ). The recovery of two Archaic period formal tools – a Lowe point and a constricted uniface/trimmed macroblade – suggests a pre-Maya occupation. Use-wear analysis of both tools and debitage demonstrates a wide range of uses with a focus on wood and hard contact materials. The use-wear patterns demonstrate a heavy reliance on ad hoc/expedient technology for the completion of different tasks involving wood by preceramic peoples. The Crawford Bank site likely represents one or more short-term, task-orientated preceramic occupation(s) for the extraction and use of the available resources of the local wetland environment, most notably logwood.

KEYWORDS:

• Preceramic/Archaic
• lithics
• chert
• use-wear
• debitage
• ad hoc/expedient
• wetlands
• Mesoamerica

Acknowledgments

The summer 2017 BREA field season was incredibly productive and we thank BREA project members Jessica Craig and Satoru Murata, as well as Ruben Crawford and Cardinal Baptist of Crooked Tree for their valuable assistance in the excavations at Crawford Bank. We also wish to thank Mark Willis who provided his drone expertise and aerial imagery of Crawford Bank. That same summer Astrid Runggaldier, Lori Phillips, Katie Shelhamer, and Alex Gantos provided assistance in the BREA lab and we thank all of them for their hard work in processing the artifacts. We are especially grateful to the Alphawood Foundation for their generous support of the BREA project and also wish to acknowledge the University of New Hampshire for providing additional financial support for the 2017 season. Finally, we would like to thank the Institute of Archaeology, particularly Dr. John Morris, Ms. Melissa Badillo, and Ms. Delsia Marsden for their continued support of our work. The IA granted the second author a permit to conduct the excavations reported herein and also granted permission to export the collection to the first author who performed the lithic analysis at Keene State College.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

W. James Stemp (Ph.D. 2000, McGill University) is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at Keene State College. His main areas of research include stone tool technology, lithic use-wear analysis, experimental archaeology, the socio-economies of complex societies, ritual use of stone tools, the preceramic peoples of Belize, and the ancient Maya.

Eleanor Harrison-Buck (Ph.D. 2007, Boston University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. Since 2011 she has directed the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project in Belize, examining the deep history of the lower Belize River Watershed from preceramic to colonial times.

ORCID

W. James Stemp http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8063-9327

Notes

1 Significant finds in Tzib’te Yux, a southern Belize rockshelter, have introduced the possibility that the current chronology associated with certain diagnostic tool types may need to be revised. Unifacial beveling on stemmed, and barbed bifaces, such as Lowe points, may be much earlier than heretofore acknowledged (Prufer et al., 2017; Stemp, Awe, Prufer, et al., 2016, pp. 286).

2 Constricted unifaces are unifacially flaked tools produced on macroflakes or macroblades using hard-hammer percussion. These tools tend to possess a broad, convex bit end and a constricted, typically steeply flaked, opposite end. Constricted unifaces range in length from 6.9 to 20.2 cm, in width from 2.6 to 9.5 cm, and in thickness from 1.7 to 4.5 cm. The convex bit end has a spine plane angle that ranges from 30° to 79° (Iceland, 1997, p. 300, Appendix B). Some trimmed macroblades from Northern Belize clearly fall within a similar size range (Iceland, 1997, p. 180, Fig. 4.1).

Additional information

Funding

We are especially grateful to the Alphawood Foundation for their generous support of the BREA project and also wish to acknowledge the University of New Hampshire for providing additional financial support for the 2017 season.