2019/06/14 by W. James Stemp, Eleanor Harrison‐Buck · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Archaeological and Geological Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/01977261.2019.1629173
openalex publication_date 2019/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
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.