Buried solutions: How Maya urban life substantiates soil connectivity

Evans, Daniel; Vis, Benjamin N.; Dunning, Nicholas P.; Graham, Elizabeth; Isendahl, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114925

Cited by 21 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(121 reference statements)

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“…These analyses document a multiscalar organization to water management within the Waka’ urban core that likely ran the gamut from individuals up to civic and state institutions. Although some infrastructural landscape features within Classic Maya cities may have, at times, been regulated by “centralized” authorities, many others were built and managed, in practice , by households and local communities that maintained and managed their own resources in response to local needs (e.g., Ersten 2010; see also Chase 2016; Evans et al 2021). Although its intricacies remain to be fully elucidated, this example offers an alternate path to theorizing about water management practices from traditional binary approaches.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Survey, Soil Coring, and GIS Methods to Improve Reservoir Capacity Estimates in the Maya Lowlands

Ricker

Austin

2022

Adv. archaeol. pract.

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This study reports water capacity estimates for four reservoirs within the Classic Maya city of El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala. Combining field survey, soil analysis, and a variety of GIS interpolation methods, it illustrates ways to more fully quantify a challenging resource—water—and its availability using an interdisciplinary approach. This is accomplished by comparing surface interpolation methods for estimating reservoir capacities to demonstrate that most provide reliable estimates. Reported estimates are further enhanced by analyzing internal reservoir soil morphology to better understand and quantify formation processes and refine estimates from field survey. These analyses document a multiscalar organization to water management within the Waka’ urban core that likely ran the gamut from individuals up to civic and state institutions. Although intricacies remain to be fully elucidated, this example offers an alternate path to theorizing about water management practices from traditional binary approaches.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Survey, Soil Coring, and GIS Methods to Improve Reservoir Capacity Estimates in the Maya Lowlands

Ricker

Austin

2022

Adv. archaeol. pract.

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“…It is likely that the practice of intensively managed mixed gardens (individualized mixes of seed, root, and tree crops) adjacent to residences was initiated from the outset of sedentism or semi-sedentism. Such gardening was dependent on the careful management of soil to limit erosion, maintain open space, limit weed competition, and maintain or enhance fertility over time-likely including intentional addition of organic matter in the form of human and kitchen waste, green mulching, and occasional re-burning after fallow (Evans et al 2021). However, with the progressive removal of forest cover, the capture of both inorganic dust and ash from nearby burning, both integral to higher phosphorous levels, is reduced, and soil fertility declines sharply (Das et al 2011).…”

Section: Creation Of Landesque Capital Through Accretional Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Landesque Capital in the Maya Lowlands During the Middle Preclassic

Reese-Taylor

López²,

Dunning³

et al. 2022

Ancient Mesoam

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In this article, we argue that landesque capital was integral to the development of complexity in the Maya Lowlands. Such features involved permanent investments in the landscape that supported material and ideological practices, resulting in increased sustainability and well-being. We contend that these developments stemmed from accretional modifications to soils in the Preceramic/Early Preclassic, as well as intentional investments of labor in agricultural features, large public works, and select civic complexes during the Middle Preclassic. Capital improvements were particularly important during the Middle Preclassic, when sedentary occupations and civic life were established. The timing and location of the investments strongly correlate with other aspects of Middle Preclassic lifeways, such as the transition to sedentism, acquisition and control of resources, changes in lithic production, and the emergence of an elite class. We note that some of the largest investments in landscape management during the Middle Preclassic occurred in the Central Karstic Uplands, where substantial cities rose in the Late Preclassic. We conclude that during the Middle Preclassic an ontology of landesque capital developed, based on the synergistic fusing of daily and ritual practices with physical features, which provided a foundation for resilience, sustainability, and well-being in subsequent generations.

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“…The landscape created by the milpa cycle embraces infield home gardens and diverse, accessible outfields interspersed among secondary growth and mature, closed canopy forests. The field-to-forest cycle, described for the ethnohistoric and contemporary Maya (Roys, 1931;Villa Rojas, 1945;Hernández Xolocotzi et al, 1995;Zetina Gutiérrez, 2007;Cook, 2016;Evans et al, 2021;Ford et al, 2021), creates this patchwork and demonstrates how the mosaic landscape provides resources to fulfill daily requisites of food, condiments, fiber, oils, fuel, gum, furnishings, supplies, medicine, toys, construction materials for buildings, household utensils for cooking, spinning, baskets, and habitat for animals; in short, all the everyday household necessities (Fedick, 1996). If these resource strategies can be projected back in time (Morell-Hart et al, Forthcoming), the entire landscape, with soil characteristics, geological assets, and animal habitats, was part of environmental interactions undertaken to meet common human needs.…”

Section: The Milpa Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%

Scrutinizing the paleoecological record of the Maya forest

Ford

2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Human expansion into and occupation of the New World coincided with the great transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch, yet questions remain about how we detect human presence in the paleoecological record. In the Maya area of southern Mesoamerica, archeological evidence of the human imprint is largely invisible until ∼4,000 years ago. How do environmental changes after that time correspond and relate to human impacts? Are the archeological signatures of initial settlements in the Early Preclassic detected? Later, by ∼2,000 years ago when the Maya had fully settled the landscape, how does the evidence of forest compositional changes relate to human intervention? This paper evaluates published paleoecological data in light of the rise of the Maya civilization and reflects on interpretations of how swidden agriculture and the milpa cycle impacted the environment. Evaluating the contrast between the long archeological sequence of successful Maya development and paleoecological interpretations of destructive human-induced environmental impacts requires a concordance among pollen data, archeological evidence, ethnohistoric observations, ethnological studies of traditional Maya land use, and the historical ecology of the Maya forest today.

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Buried solutions: How Maya urban life substantiates soil connectivity

Cited by 21 publications

References 89 publications

Combining Survey, Soil Coring, and GIS Methods to Improve Reservoir Capacity Estimates in the Maya Lowlands

Combining Survey, Soil Coring, and GIS Methods to Improve Reservoir Capacity Estimates in the Maya Lowlands

The Development of Landesque Capital in the Maya Lowlands During the Middle Preclassic

Scrutinizing the paleoecological record of the Maya forest

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