Incipient Maya Wetland Agriculture PDF Download
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Author: Richard D. Hansen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mayas
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Author: Richard D. Hansen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mayas
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Author: B. L. Turner
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477303286
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Among Mesoamericanists, the agricultural basis of the ancient Maya civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula has been an important topic of research—and controversy. Interest in the agricultural system of the Maya greatly increased as new discoveries showed that the lowland Maya were not limited to slash-and-burn technology, as had been previously believed, but used a variety of more sophisticated agricultural techniques and practices, including terracing, raised fields, and, perhaps, irrigation. Because of the nature of the data and because this form of agricultural technology had been key to explanations of state formation elsewhere in Mesoamerica, raised-field agriculture became a particular focus of investigation. Pulltrouser Swamp conclusively demonstrates the existence of hydraulic, raised-field agriculture in the Maya lowlands between 150 B.C. and A.D. 850. It presents the findings of the University of Oklahoma's Pulltrouser SwampProject, an NSF-supported interdisciplinary study that combined the talents of archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, paleobotanists, biologists, and zoologists to investigate the remains of the Maya agricultural system in the swampy region of northern Belize. By examining soils, fossil pollen and other plant remains, gastropods, relic settlements, ceramics, lithics, and other important evidence, the Pulltrouser Swamp team has clearly demonstrated that the features under investigation are relics of Maya-made raised and channelized fields and associated canals. Other data suggest the nature of the swamps in which the fields were constructed, the tools used for construction and cultivation, the possible crops cultivated, and at least one type of settlement near the fields, with its chronology. This verification of raised fields provides dramatic evidence of a large and probably organized workforce engaged in sophisticated and complex agricultural technology. As record of this evidence, Pulltrouser Swamp is a work of seminal importance for all students and scholars of New World prehistory.
Author: Mary Deland Pohl
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429712146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Changes in the orientation of archaeological research in the post-World War n period affected Maya studies. The cultural ecological perspective, which was rising to prominence, put an old debate in bold relief: How had this prehistoric civilization adapted to the tropical forest environment? How could swidden cultivation have sustained the unexpectedly high population densities that settlement pattern studies appeared to be revealing? Had the ancient Maya practiced some from of intensive agriculture? Archaeologist Dennis E. Puleston went to the Maya Lowlands to investigate geographer Alfred H. Siemens's reports of possible intensive agriculture ("ridged fields") seen from the air and to study prehistoric Maya cultivation and civilization from a cultural ecological perspective. This volume presents the results of the Rio Hondo Project field research on Albion Island in northern Belize from 1973 to 1980 with the addition of selected results from Pohl's continuing work in northern Belize.
Author: Scott L. Fedick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
This collection draws on the most up-to-date investigations of Maya practices to show that the lowland Maya utilized a highly flexible regional and local approach in their management of agricultural, mineral, game, and water resources.
Author: Anabel Ford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315417928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Using studies on contemporary Maya farming techniques and important new archaeological research, the authors show that the ancient Maya were able to support, sustainably, a vast population by farming the forest—thus refuting the common notion that Maya civilization devolved due to overpopulation and famine.
Author: Peter D. Harrison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
Author: Vernon L. Scarborough
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522736
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
"In recent years the Three Rivers region of Belize and Guatemala has been the site of some of the most intensive archaeological research in the Maya Lowlands, providing a wealth of regional data. This volume brings together articles reporting on findings and interpretations of the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project that range over a 10- to 12-year period and that shed new light on how ecology, economy, and political order developed in the ancient past.".
Author: Jennifer Andrea Chmilar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303291524
Category : Leys
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Cultivation has taken many forms throughout the Maya lowlands. In the Yalahau region of the northern Maya lowlands, a series of wetlands produce a dynamic environment of wet, dry, and intermediate areas depending on fluctuations of the annual hydrologic cycle. Within these wetlands, anthropogenic rock alignments suggest human use and manipulation of the environment dating to the late Preclassic period. The dissertation is based on research at a single wetland at El Edén Ecological Reserve, Quintana Roo and concerns the function of the rock alignments as well as their duration of use to the ancient Maya. In terms of function, hypotheses are that they modified soil and water movement within a system of cultivation, and/ or acted as boundary markers, and/ or provided bases for fish weirs. As for when the rock alignments were used, hypotheses follow that they were used for a single hydroperiod, that the same features were built as the hydroperiod changed, or that new functions emerged as the water table shifted. Data was collected through topographic mapping of four areas of the wetland containing a total of twelve rock alignments, high-resolution GPS of these mapped areas, recording of water table fluctuations for a period of two years, and analysis of a sediment core documenting pollen extending back nearly 2500 years. The computer program arcGIS was used to create a series of topographic maps, both with and without the rock alignments, that demonstrate the influence of the rock alignments on the movement of water on the landscape. The rock alignments impacted water movement on a small scale. Within El Edén wetland, the ancient Maya constructed lines of rock to cause water to pool in localized depressions, either by dividing existing basins or surrounding them to direct water back inward, where it was maintained into the dry season so that valuable plants were encouraged to thrive for a longer period of time. Sinuous lines of rock were constructed to provide the base for a fish weir. Rock alignments were built at various points along the topography to take advantage of varying annual hydroperiods.
Author: Nuria Torrescano- Valle
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030317196
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
This book provides essential information on Mexico’s Holocene and Anthropocene climate and vegetation history. Considering the geography of Mexico – which is home to a variety of climatic and environmental conditions, from desert and tropical to high mountain climates – this book focuses on its postglacial paleoecology and paleoclimatology. Further, it analyses human intervention since the middle Holocene as a major agent of environmental change. Offering a valuable tool for understanding past climate change and its relationship with present climate change, the book is a must-read for botanists, ecologists, palaeontologists and graduate students in related fields.
Author: Helga Geovannini Acuña
Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
The main subject discussed in this study is the way in which the ancient Maya of Calakmul (modern Mexico), who thrived between 900 B.C. to A.D. 1000, managed their landscape in order to survive in the tropical rainforest. Their lithic technology, the hot, humid climate with a prolonged dry season, the lack of permanent surface sources of fresh water, and thin soils, considered insufficient for sustained agricultural production, are factors that were addressed successfully by the Maya in developing their complex civilization. The author's research begins with landscape, archaeological, and edaphological analyses, after which she explores the areas most advantageous to permanent habitation, suitable agricultural zones, land potential of the region and the capability of the area for supporting population. In addition, a complex agricultural channel irrigation system is explored as a critical factor for managing productive terrain for agriculture in karstic depressions (bajos). Similarly, an impressive rain harvesting system is exposed as an option to optimize hydrological resources for canalizing excessive rain during the wet season and storing water during the dry period. Finally, a reconstruction of the agricultural landscape is proposed.
