Settlement Patterns

The focus of this project is to describe the settlement patterns and land use west of the Maya secondary site center of Ma’ax Na located in the Three Rivers region in Belize, Central America. A secondary site center is defined as containing 10 to 19 courtyard groups and a primary site center containing 20 or more courtyard groups. In the summer of 1999, I participated in a reconnaissance project near the north-western Belize and northeastern Guatemalan border with the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project. Our team identified and recorded vegetation changes, agri-cultural evidence and settlement patterns approximately six km west of Ma’ax Na. We found that the density of the settlement depended on its proximity to Ma’ax Na. This project will also look at past research on the peripheral settlements of the primary site of La Milpa and the secondary site of Dos Hombres during the Late Classic period (A.D. 600-900.