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A hypothesis developed by Vernon Scarborough and endorsed and modified by Lisa Lucero and Anabel Ford proposes that lowland Maya elites centralized and coordinated political power by controlling access to water stored in large, centrally located reservoirs. The hypothesis presupposes that in the central and southern Maya lowlands, nonelites did not have access to viable alternative dry-season water sources. This paper demonstrates that, in the east-central and southwestern areas of the Maya lowlands, fault springs were an important source of water, particularly to rural peoples. After reviewing the evidence of Maya fault spring exploitation and documenting the hydrogeological conditions under which fault springs form, I describe wells that rural households built to expose fault springs and enhance their flow, including clay-lined and stone-lined shafts. Also documented are three well types found elsewhere in the Maya lowlands: (1) wells built to exploit permanent, generally shallow water tables; (2) wells dug to catch precipitation as it filtered down through bedrock; and (3) buk'teob, built to recover during the dry season the receding contents of pools that during the rainy season collect in aguadas. The dispersed distribution of Maya wells in rural settings and their frequent association with modest residential remains suggests that nonelite households managed them. The existence of Maya wells that supplied water to rural peoples through the dry season is inconsistent with the Scarborough-Lucero-Ford hypothesis. ᭧

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Through analyses of data recovered at Itzdn, Guatemala, this paper examines the architectural morphology and the probable functions of "invisible" building remains in the Maya Lowlands. Invisible building remains are buried, leave no surface traces, and cannot be detected during surface survey, which is the principal settlement detection technique employed by Mayanists. Data at Itzdn and other sites suggest that Maya invisible buildings are a more abundant settlement category than many archaeologists have supposed.A travis de informaci6n recuperada en Itzdn, Guatemala, examino la arquitectura y lasfunciones probables de las construcciones no visibles en las tierras bajas de los mayas. Los vestigios de las construcciones no visibles son completamente sepultados, y no pueden ser descubiertos mediante el reconocimiento de terreno, que es la base de la ticnica utilizada por los mayistas para establecer patrones de asentamiento. La informacidn de Itzdn y otros sitios sugiere que las construcciones no visibles Mayas son de una categoria residencial mds comdn que los arquedlogos han supuesto. For 50 years archaeologists have collected settlement data in the Maya Lowlands almost exclusively through surface survey.While it is true that subsurface testing has been an important component of many settlement surveys, generally it has been conducted with the goal of dating and establishing the function of surface-visible mounds rather than discovering buried architectural remains that leave no surface traces. Even as they rely on surface survey, archaeologists have expressed concern that culturally important components of the Maya settlement system could be buried and that surface-collected survey data, consequently, could be incomplete and nonrepresentative. In the literature, this possibility is described as the "invisible settlement" problem (settlement data have been collected predominantly through surface survey, archaeologists are expressing doubts about how representative those data may be. Partly in response to these concerns, study of the environmental and archaeological factors that affect the exposure (or the lack thereof) of settlement remains on landscapes has emerged during the last two decades as a major research topic (e.g.ing discoveries at the site of Itzain, Guatemala. Specifically, I examine the architecture and artifact assemblages of eight invisible structures, several of which are clustered in patio groups. As indicated by their architecture and artifacts, the structures are house remains. The discovery at ItzLin and other sites of invisible structures has important ramifications for Maya archaeology. "Invisible settlement" consists of largely or completely buried settleme...

The long-term effects of deforestation on tropical forest soil carbon reservoirs are poorly understood, but they are important for estimating the future consequences of human land use on the global carbon cycle. The Maya Lowlands of Mexico and Guatemala provide a unique opportunity to assess this question, given the widespread deforestation by the ancient Maya that began ~4000 years ago. Here we present past changes in the mean soil transit time of plant waxes (MTT wax ), determined by comparing the radiocarbon ages of plant waxes and plant macrofossils, in sediment cores collected from three lakes in the Maya Lowlands. Catchment-scale analyses of modern soils and This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature's AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 18:28:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Magnetic, palynological, and paleoecological data indicate that in the Rio de la Pasion drainage, one of the most thoroughly investigated areas of the southern Maya lowlands, a refugee population remained in the Laguna Las Pozas basin long after the Classic Maya collapse and the Terminal Classic period, previously identified by archaeologists as eras of near-total regional abandonment. During the Early Postclassic period, ca. A.D. 900 to 1200, agriculturalists colonized and deforested the Laguna Las Pozas basin for agriculture while adjacent, abandoned terrain was undergoing reforestation. After discussing the archaeological utility of magnetic analyses, we conclude thatfollowing the Maya collapse, some refugee populations migrated to geographically marginal non-degraded landscapes within the southern lowlands not previously occupied by the Classic Maya. Los resultados de analisis magneticos, palinologicos y paleoecologicos muestran que en el Valle del Rio de la Pasion, una de las zonas ma's estudiadas de las Tierras Bajas del sur del a'rea Maya, una poblacion de refugiados permanecio en la cuenca de la Laguna Las Pozas hasta mucho despue's del colapso de la sociedad maya del Clasico y del periodo Clasico Terminal, hasta ahora considerados por los arqueologos como periodos de Abandono casi total de la zona. Durante el Poscla'sico Temprano, c. 900-1200 d. C., Ia cuenca de la Laguna Las Pozas fue colonizada por campesinos y desforestada para el cultivo, mientras que el terreno abandonado adyacente experimentaba un proceso de reforestacion. La aplicacion paralela de te'cnicas de ana'lisis magne'ticos y palinologicos constituye una herramienta de investigacion muy poderosa para el estudio de los cambios ambientales ecoge'nicos y antropoge'nicos. Los ana'lisis magne'ticos revelan tendencias de erosion y modificaciones del terreno local, mientras que los ana'lisis de polen ayudan fundamentalmente a determinar los cambios en la vegetacion a nivel regional. En este trabajo, tras una discusion sobre la utilidad arqueologica de los ana'lisis magne'ticos, llegamos a la conclusion de que despue's del colapso Maya, algunos grupos de refugiados emigraron a terrenos geogrdficamente marginales no degradados, dentro de los limites de las Tierras Bajas del sur (por ejemplo, a la cuenca de la Laguna Las Pozas), que no habian sido ocupados intensivamente por los mayas durante el periodo Clasico.A mong the collapses of ancient complex societies investigated by archaeologists, that of the southern lowland Classic Maya is distinctive because of its alleged catastrophic character (Yoff...