Social Sciences

Residues from nine ancient Maya dedicatory vessels were analyzed for biosilicates. In all cases, the analysis was successful in identifying plant and sponge remains that had been placed in the vessels. This analysis sheds light on ancient Maya plant use as well as ritual and religious practices.

In the Maya Lowlands of Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala two main types of wetlands have played important roles in human history: bajos or intermittently wet environments of the upland, interior Yucatá n and perennial wetlands of the coastal plains. Many of the most important Maya sites encircle the bajos, though our growing evidence for human-wetland interactions is still sparse. The deposits of these wetlands record two main eras of slope instability and wetland aggradation: the Pleistocene-Holocene transition as rainfall increased and forests eclipsed savannas and the Maya Preclassic to Classic as deforestation, land-use intensity, and drying increased. The ancient Maya adapted with terraces around these bajo margins but retracted in the Late Preclassic in some areas. The perennial wetlands of the coastal plains have different histories, and the first conceptual model of human-wetland interaction described intensive wetland agriculture in the Preclassic through Classic based on raised fields and canals. But a second model arose that interpreted the wetland stratigraphy and canals as more indicative of natural aggradation by accelerated erosion and gypsum precipitation that buried Archaic and Preclassic fields and there was little Classic era use. We present new data on a third and fourth model in this study. The third is a hybrid of the models one and two, including the Archaic to Preclassic aggradation of the second model, and the first model's Classic period fields and canals as piecemeal attempts by the Maya to adapt to these and other environmental changes. The fourth conceptual model describes a very Late/Terminal Classic, preplanned project on a floodplain. These wetland fields were short-lived, aggraded rapidly but with some reoccupation in the Postclassic. All of these new models display the burgeoning evidence for intricate Maya interactions with wetlands, and the diversity of evidence from the relatively few studies underscores the infancy of our understanding of Maya interaction with tropical wetlands.

In the Maya Lowlands of Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala two main types of wetlands have played important roles in human history: bajos or intermittently wet environments of the upland, interior Yucatá n and perennial wetlands of the coastal plains. Many of the most important Maya sites encircle the bajos, though our growing evidence for human-wetland interactions is still sparse. The deposits of these wetlands record two main eras of slope instability and wetland aggradation: the Pleistocene-Holocene transition as rainfall increased and forests eclipsed savannas and the Maya Preclassic to Classic as deforestation, land-use intensity, and drying increased. The ancient Maya adapted with terraces around these bajo margins but retracted in the Late Preclassic in some areas. The perennial wetlands of the coastal plains have different histories, and the first conceptual model of human-wetland interaction described intensive wetland agriculture in the Preclassic through Classic based on raised fields and canals. But a second model arose that interpreted the wetland stratigraphy and canals as more indicative of natural aggradation by accelerated erosion and gypsum precipitation that buried Archaic and Preclassic fields and there was little Classic era use. We present new data on a third and fourth model in this study. The third is a hybrid of the models one and two, including the Archaic to Preclassic aggradation of the second model, and the first model's Classic period fields and canals as piecemeal attempts by the Maya to adapt to these and other environmental changes. The fourth conceptual model describes a very Late/Terminal Classic, preplanned project on a floodplain. These wetland fields were short-lived, aggraded rapidly but with some reoccupation in the Postclassic. All of these new models display the burgeoning evidence for intricate Maya interactions with wetlands, and the diversity of evidence from the relatively few studies underscores the infancy of our understanding of Maya interaction with tropical wetlands.

This volume summarizes many aspects of more than twenty years of fi eld research at the ancient Maya city of Blue Creek in northwestern Belize. Blue Creek was a medium-sized Maya kingdom whose wealth was built upon access to large-scale and high-quality agricultural lands and its location at the headwaters of the Rio Hondo. The Rio Hondo is the northern-most river draining the Maya lowlands into the Caribbean Sea and provided access to markets and polities of northern Yucatan. The studies in the volume provide an overview of Blue Creek combined with detailed studies of aspects of production, trade, distribution, and the organization and functional interactions within the community.

This chapter used remote sensing as a proxy for ancient Maya agricultural production and contextualizes the data via comparison with ethnographic data to argue that large scale, intensive agricultural systems were present in the Rio Hondo floodplain during the classic Maya period.

We report on a large area of ancient Maya wetland field systems
in Belize, Central America, based on airborne lidar survey coupled
with multiple proxies and radiocarbon dates that reveal ancient
field uses and chronology. The lidar survey indicated four main areas
of wetland complexes, including the Birds of Paradise wetland field
complex that is five times larger than earlier remote and ground
survey had indicated, and revealed a previously unknown wetland
field complex that is even larger. The field systems date mainly to
the Maya Late and Terminal Classic (∼1,400–1,000 y ago), but with
evidence from as early as the Late Preclassic (∼1,800 y ago) and as
late as the Early Postclassic (∼900 y ago). Previous study showed
that these were polycultural systems that grew typical ancient
Maya crops including maize, arrowroot, squash, avocado, and other
fruits and harvested fauna. The wetland fields were active at a time
of population expansion, landscape alteration, and droughts and
could have been adaptations to all of these major shifts in Maya
civilization. These wetland-farming systems add to the evidence for
early and extensive human impacts on the global tropics. Broader
evidence suggests a wide distribution of wetland agroecosystems
across the Maya Lowlands and Americas, and we hypothesize the
increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane from burning,
preparing, and maintaining these field systems contributed to the
Early Anthropocene.