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Before 1968, Blue Creek Village was comprised of Mayan Indians living their traditional way of life, growing corn, beans, and rice, caring for their homes and family. The years following 1968, Blue Creek Village began to see development and change. Between the years of 1968-1971, a road, Catholic Church and an ecotourism site were built, the International Zoological Expedition (IZE). Three years later a primary school was built (1974-75) and finally in 1978 an agriculture building was built. Only 9% of the people living in Blue Creek Village had no formal schooling. Two generations of the Blue Creek Village people experienced and were affected by developmental changes occurring in their community.During the summer of 1999 (May 13 - August 8), I studied the Mayan Indians to determine how ecotourism, education, and gender influence the cash income earned by the Mayan people and how education is influenced by ecotourism, gender, age, individual, family/generational or community decisions. Blue Creek Village, Belize, was chosen as the site of study because Mayan Indians lived a traditional lifestyle and it was adjacent to an ecotourism location, the IZE Blue Creek Rainforest Preserve in the Maya Mountains. Ethnographic interviews and participant observations were used to obtain responses and demographic data of the local Mayan people. From these responses the statistical analysis revealed that education does influence the cash income of the local Mayan people in Blue Creek Village. Prior to the IZE Rainforest Preserve, the Mayan men's only source of cash income was through rice production, and women were unable to earn cash. The cash earned from the visiting tourists assisted families by providing cash income to pay for an education for their children. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

Thesis (Ph. D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: L. Finsten. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-163). Also available via World Wide Web.

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The Maya sites of Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro are located on the southern end of Ambergris Caye, a limestone-based coral island off the coast of modern-day Belize. When combined, the archaeological settlements at these sites represent some of the longest occupations in coastal Belize. Evidence suggests the earliest occupation occurred at Marco Gonzalez in the Late Preclassic and extended into the Late Postclassic, while San Pedro's population thrived well into the Historic period. An analysis of the stone tools recovered from excavations at Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro and a study of the use-wear patterns on these artifacts has revealed that the Maya from both sites were primarily engaged in subsistence-based activities with a limited amount of small-scale craft production. Use-wear evidence suggests that the majority of these activities focused on the exploitation of local resources necessary in everyday Maya life. The activities included the acquisition of seafoods such as fish and molluscs, and the preservation and/or processing of fish and other marine by-products, such as shell, coral, and stingray spines for both local use and trade. As consumer sites, the Caye inhabitants offered many of these products in exchange for stone tools produced in mainland workshops, such as Colha, in the 'chert-bearing zone' of Northern Belize. In addition to the local and regional trade of marine resources and salt, the sites of Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro served as transshipment points for the long-distance exchange of valuable wealth or prestige goods along the coast. The large inland site of Lamanai likely served as ally and trade partner with these sites based on archaeological evidence for socioeconomic and sociopolitical ties between this mainland centre and the smaller Caye settlements. This relationship assisted the Maya from southern Ambergris Caye in surviving the breakdown in trade relations and depopulation that plagued other Maya centres in the Late to Terminal

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-235). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

The ancient Maya had strong ties to the sea. The trade, transportation and use of marine resources were important not only to coastal Maya communities, but also to the heavily populated cities that lay many miles inland. A review of zooarchaeological evidence recovered from excavations at the inland site of Caracol, Belize suggests that the inhabitants imported marine fish for food, marine shell for working into trade items, and sharks teeth and stingray spines for ritual use. This thesis examines the manner in which fish and other marine resources were used, procured and transported from the coast to the site of Caracol. The possibility that certain marine fish might have been transported alive to the site is explored. An examination of present day fishing and animal husbandry practices suggests that many species could have survived an inland trip in ancient times if transported under conditions that allowed for water exchanges and minimized stress. Marine resources had important economic and ritual significance to the people of Caracol. Understanding the methods by which these valuable items were transported and traded ultimately facilitates a greater understanding of the economic and socio-political relationships among these ancient polities.

The manos and metates of Santa Rita Corozal, Belize are analyzed to compare traditional maize-grinding types to the overall assemblage. A reciprocal, back-and-forth grinding motion is the most efficient way to process large amounts of maize. However, rotary movements are also associated with some ground stone implements. The number of flat and trough metates and two handed manos are compared to the rotary-motion basin and concave type metates and one-handed manos to determine predominance and distribution. Flat is the predominant type and, together with the trough type, these grinding stones make up the majority of metates at the site. Manos are highly fragmented, but the two-handed variety is more common among those fragments able to be identified. While this would at first glance support a fully maize dependent subsistence, the presence of two additional non-reciprocal motion metate types and the fact that the trough metates are clustered in one sector of the site suggest that, in addition to maize, significant processing of other foods also occurred in association with these grinding stones.

The focus of this thesis is an analysis of a sample of dentition collected from the Postclassic Maya site of Santa Rita Corozal in Northern Belize. The goal of this study is to determine what the presence (or absence) of Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH) can demonstrate about the general health (i.e. stress, disease, nutrition, and weaning age) and social status of a single subset of the Late Postclassic (900-1500 CE) Maya living at Santa Rita Corozal. Specifically, this thesis focuses on dentition of thirteen individuals from a large Postclassic platform group. The sample consists of sub-adult and adult female dentition from individuals that are associated with the same relative time period (Late Postclassic). The question being addressed in this thesis is: why has LEH presented in these individuals? These samples will also be compared to other studies involving LEH throughout the Maya area, in both similar and dissimilar environments. The preponderance of female and sub-adult remains also makes this platform group a very interesting topic of study for LEH in the Maya area, as it is unusual to find a concentrated area of individuals such as these. iv Importantly, the results of this study show that there is no significant relationship between general levels of stress and the overall status of an individual. Measurements collected from the LEH affected teeth demonstrate that all of the LEH episodes occurred before the age of 6. The mean age for the teeth sampled that show signs of LEH is 3.5 years, which is consistent with theories pertaining to the weaning age of the Maya during concomitant time periods. However, the size of this sample precludes any concrete conclusions about weaning ages and stress in general among the Maya at Santa Rita Corozal. It is also possible that these events are related to larger issues such as regional droughts or water-born disease.