Colleagues and Friends: When Collaboration Becomes a Win, Win, Win—The Botanical Research Institute of Texas and Maya Research Program Work Together to Help an Archaeology Project Better Interpret and Protect a Small Portion of Rain Forest

Maya Research Program (MRP) has conducted archaeological investigations in Northwestern Belize for twenty plus years. We received a grant from the Botanical Research Institute of Texas to make plant collections in a rainforest remnant, home to the archaeological site of Grey Fox. The team at MRP wished to understand the forest to protect it and the site. In collaboration, we rendered samples of most plant species there, documented ethnobotanical information about the specimens, and gave new insights into ways the collections could be queried to potentially shed light on Ancient Maya plant use and adaptations, subsistence pattern evolution, climate change patterns, and more.