Wetland fields as mirrors of drought and the Maya abandonment

Abstract

Getting at the Maya Collapse has both temporal and geographic dimensions, because it occurred over centuries and great distances. This requires a wide range of research sites and proxy records, ranging from lake cores to geomorphic evidence, such as stratigraphy and speleothems. This article synthesizes these lines of evidence, together with previously undescribed findings on Maya wetland formation and use in a key region near the heart of the central Maya Lowlands. Growing lines of evidence point to dryer periods in Maya history, which correlate to major periods of transition. The main line of evidence in this paper comes from wetland use and formation studies, which show evidence for both largescale environmental change and human adaptation or response. Based on multiproxy studies, Maya wetland fields had a long and varied history, but most evidence indicates the start of disuse during or shortly after the Maya Terminal Classic. Hence, the pervasiveness of collapse extended into a range of wetlands, including perennial wetlands, which should have been less responsive to drought as a driver of disuse. A synthesis of the lines of evidence for canal infilling shows no attempts to reclaim them after the Classic Period.Mesoamerica | proxies | wetland agriculture S cholars have explored many proxy lines of evidence to understand the environmental change and timing of societal transitions in the Maya Lowlands of Mesoamerica. These proxies include lake and ocean cores; speleothems; geomorphic evidence; architecture; modeling; and, recently for Mesoamerica, tree rings. One repository of evidence we examine here comes from ancient Maya wetland field systems and their canals. Over the past decade, we have studied more than 50 of these systems, which can provide unique insights into site abandonment because their canals started to fill with sediment and proxy evidence after the Maya ceased maintaining them. We can thus date the infill of sediment and use multiple proxies to study ecological change from near the time of abandonment forward. These canals also provide

Kax and kol: Collapse and resilience in lowland Maya civilization

“…Forest cover increases in height after increasing precipitation southward, becoming tropical moist forest in the southern EIR (18). Embedded within the southern forest are numerous wetlands, ranging from seasonal swamp forests in karst depressions (bajos) within the EIR to perennial wetlands in adjacent lower areas that receive spring discharge and stream flow (17). Much of this landscape was well-suited to the maize-based agricultural system of the ancient Maya, but settlements in the region faced significant vulnerabilities, particularly as population density increased.…”

“…Applying this theory to the vulnerabilities and resilient capacities of ancient Maya Lowland communities, it is clear that the elevated interior portions were significantly more susceptible to collapse and faced greater obstacles for effective reorganization than the surrounding lower-lying areas with perennial water sources. However, even many communities in these supposedly more resilient areas succumbed to abandonment (17).…”

Cultural implications of late Holocene climate change in the Cuenca Oriental, Mexico

“…Other lines of evidence can reveal the complexity of human responses to drought: For colonial Mexico, archival sources have provided important evidence on the ways existing administrative practices and social conflicts preconditioned responses to drought (25). Land use histories inferred from detailed geomorphic evidence have shed light on the ways the ancient Maya adapted to climate change (26,27). However, detailed correlative studies, like the one presented here, can identify the extent to which cultural change and environmental stressors track each other, and therefore can serve as the first step in more detailed analyses of human−environment interactions.…”

Critical perspectives on historical collapse

“…is controversial, with explanations ranging from long-distance teleconnections to arguments centered on different environmental responses in various regional, ecological contexts, originally including tropical forests and woodland. As noted by Luzzadder-Beach et al (46), this process spanned time and distance. Complex proxy data indicate several drier periods, linked to major transitions in human adaptation or response.…”