Recent lidar-based investigations in the eastern Puuc Region have uncovered a densely settled Classic Period landscape with population centers located an average of less than 4 km apart. Scattered among the larger-scale Classic Period centers are dozens of oft-overlooked small-scale sites, a few of which date almost exclusively to the Preclassic Period. The aptly named Small-Scale Sites in the Eastern Puuc Archaeological Project began investigations at two of these small sites in 2022, both of which date to the Middle Preclassic Period (c. 900-400 BC). Excavations in and around the civic centers of Xanab Chak and Paso del Macho are beginning to help us understand the transition to agricultural settlements in the eastern Puuc. In this talk, I will share some of our project’s surprising finds and discuss how these seemingly isolated early outposts were likely plugged into wider interaction networks that evolved over time.