Inequality and changing responses to food scarcity may create a stigmatization complex around certain foods. Here, we conduct a literature search to develop a working definition of “famine foods” in the Maya lowlands, centering qualities such as hardiness, productivity, nutrition, preparation, and stigmatization complexes. An analysis of the nutritional characteristics that might make up such a food yields the idea that famine foods are likely members of a time- and place-specific arsenal of plant resources. We compare the results of the literature search to botanical data from a rejollada survey from Xuenkal and a solar (house garden) survey conducted in Yaxunah. Examining the data through the lens of a history of manipulation of food access, shifting relations of power, and modern responses to food insecurity illuminates cultural plasticity and resilience in diet and agricultural strategies in the Maya lowlands. We conceptualize solares and rejolladas as food-related resilience strategies.

The concept of the Anthropocene is based on the premise that humans have had a profound and increasing impact on our environments. Yet many environmental conditions (earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, fire, disease, and other dramatic natural phenomena) can easily overpower human capacities and result in significant change. Incremental processes such as soil creep, vegetation growth, oxidation, and material fatigue similarly act against human intentionality by causing deterioration and decay whose denouement is unpredictable in timing and magnitude. The sentient world of animals, in which behavioral patterns have evolved for viability in a diverse world of predators and reproduction strategies, similarly presents challenges when managed under the assumption that humans are the primary determinant of comportment. In this volume, we consider the agentive effects of natural phenomena to which the direct human response is primarily reactive. The objective is twofold: to highlight that even within the "Anthropocene, " not all natural phenomena can be anticipated, much less controlled, by humans; and second, to critically evaluate the variety of past human responses to natural and biological entities as seen through the archaeological record.The archaeological study of human-environmental dynamics has been heavily weighted on the "human" side of the equation. In recent years, that focus has been augmented by an increasingly pointed indictment of the way human activities can