Soils and the location of Cacao orchards at a Maya site in Western Belize

Cacao was one of the most important crops of the lowland Maya. Ethnohistoric sources document that the Postclassic-Colonial Period Maya settlement of Tipu in western Belize was an important cacao-growing center, yet evidence of where the cacao was grown is not apparent. We analysed the suitability of floodplain, terrace, and bedrock soils for cacao cultivation. Our results indicate that the soils most likely to have been used for cacao growth were those on the modern floodplain of the Macal River, based on their suitable physical and chemical properties. In addition, buried stone walls of Late Classic or Postclassic age that may have been used for field demarcation were found on the floodplain, suggesting that this geomorphic surface was also utilized well before the time of Spanish contact, possibly for intensive agriculture.     

What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands

Interest in the lowland Maya collapse is stronger than ever, and there are now hundreds of studies that focus on the era from approximately A.D. 750 to A.D. 1050. In the past, scholars have tended to generalize explanations of the collapse from individual sites and regions to the lowlands as a whole. More recent approaches stress the great diversity of changes that occurred across the lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Thus, there is now a consensus that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change.     

Commentary: feeding Teotihuacan in the context of commodities research

This commentary on the Feeding Teotihuacan collection of papers provides an “outsider” perspective on the contributions, by an archeologist who conducts research on agriculture and plant use by the ancient Maya.     

Iranian Art and Archaeology

Abstract

Examination of the synthetic aperture radar imagery and of the hydraulic characteristics of Maya lowland swamps has led Kevin O. Pope and Bruce H. Dahlin (“AncientMaya Wetland Agriculture: New Insights from Ecological and Remote Sensing Research,” Journal of Field Archaeology 16 [1989] 87–106) to conclude that there is no connection between lattice patterns in the imagery and raised fields in the swamps. They further conclude that there are no significant numbers of raised fields in periodic swamps. We examine the arguments and points raised and find them tenuous at best, and disingenuous at worst. We conclude that the SAR imagery does indeed indicate raised field and canal systems and that they exist in the large periodic swamps of the Maya lowlands.     

The Maya “Protoclassic” from the Perspective of Recent Research at Nakum,Peten, Guatemala

Recently, the Maya site of Nakum has been the subject of intensive research by the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. This work has significantly enriched our knowledge of the ancient Maya of northeastern Guatemala, especially during the so-called Terminal Preclassic or Protoclassic period (ca. 100 b.c.–a.d. 300), when many Maya centers suffered decline. The Protoclassic covers the transitional moment between two important periods of Maya chronology, the Preclassic and Classic, but so far, the typical ceramic components of this phase have been found in only a handful of Maya sites. Our research indicates that Nakum underwent important building programs and stable cultural growth during the discussed period. Here we discuss evidence of architectural and cultural activity at Nakum during the Terminal Preclassic within a wider geographic context. Our research highlights the role that Nakum played within Maya geopolitics in northeastern Guatemala and also contributes to the understanding of socio-cultural processes that the Maya civilization was undergoing during the as-yet poorly understood Protoclassic period.     

Late Postclassic lowland Maya archaeology

The archaeology of the Late Postclassic lowland Maya (ca. A.D. 1200–1517) is summarized and reviewed. The history of past research is outlined, and investigations on topics of major scholarly concern are discussed. The current data allow us to present an approximate reconstruction of the events and processes that characterize the period, although the information on many areas and topics is still fragmentary. Research in Maya archaeology has focused heavily on the more spectacular developments of earlier periods, creating the impression that the last few centuries of the prehispanic era were a time of disorganization and decline. New data and interpretations indicate that the Late Postclassic was a dynamic period in which the lowland Maya were moving in new directions, restructuring their society and worldview.     

Smells like politics: planning and the inconvenient politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi‐functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive “broiler” poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper‐productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic peri‐urban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011–2016. We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post‐political decision‐making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code‐based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture.     

Early Construction of a Maya Sacred Landscape: The Sector Y “E-Group” of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ (Petén,Guatemala)

The southern lowland Maya city of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ exhibits an atypical gridded layout imposed in the Middle Preclassic period (800–400 b.c.). Sector Y, in the monumental core, consists of a two-part sub-structural platform with an “E-Group” quasi-astronomical architectural complex (Platform Y1) and a deep natural depression or fosa, Fosa Y (Platform Y2). Earliest construction began with bedrock leveling, probably around 1100–1000 b.c., followed by late Terminal Early Preclassic and transitional Terminal Early to early Middle Preclassic building, subsequent massive Middle Preclassic rebuilding, and Late Preclassic enlargement. Excavations in Sector Y provide evidence of the early phases of construction of a sacred landscape proposed to have been based on a mythical creation-crocodile’s back. More broadly, this work contributes to studies of early societal complexity and urbanization in the Maya lowlands, in Mesoamerica, and beyond.     

Survey,Settlement, and Population History at the Ancient Maya Site of Pacbitun,Belize

Abstract

Survey and excavations of mounds on the outskirts of the site of Pacbitun in western Belize provide insights into the ancient Maya settlement pattern at this medium-sized regional center. This research employed two methods: analysis of structural remains from four separate 1000 m transect surveys,and a subsequent complete (100%) survey of intervening and adjacent quadrant areas. The overlap of quadrant zones with portions of the transect units permits an examination of the accuracy of transect surveys. Excavation of a 22% sample of all identified mounds provides chronological and functional information. An estimate of 200 persons for the resident elite population of the Epicenter of Pacbit un is offered. Initial settlement occurred in the Epicenter of the site during the Middle Preclassic period (900–300 B.C.), with a population rise through time until the final phase of the Late Classic period (A.D. 700–900), when density reached 550 persons (periphery Zone) to 950 persons (Core Zone) per sq km. The impact on settlement size and distribution of topography, soils,water resources,and intensive agriculture (hillside terracing) is assessed and found to be significant. At the time of florescence,the population of the 9 sq km site is estimated to have been about 5000–6000 persons. This population estimate is compared with several coeval lowland Maya centers,and found to be reasonable for a medium-sized, Late Classic Maya center.     

Envisioning Artifacts: a Classic Maya View of the Archaeological Record

This paper explores a Classic Maya (ca. AD 250–900) “material vision”—that is, a locally determined and culturally specific way of understanding the material world, its salient qualities, and associated meanings—based on evidence found in hieroglyphic texts from across the Maya world. Understanding Classic Maya ways of seeing the material world is an important undertaking as part of exploring alignments and misalignments between ancient indigenous and modern archaeological understandings of what today we view as “artifacts.” This topic is explored in the article through two related inquiries: first, I look at “artifacts” (i.e., materials that qualify as such, in an archaeological material vision) recorded in the hieroglyphic record, yielding thematic understandings of objects related to form and function, wholeness versus brokenness, and the relational potential of objects. Second, I use ten hieroglyphic property qualifiers that indicate Maya material perceptions and categories to gain explicit insight into some organizing principles within a Maya way of visualizing the material world. Throughout the article, I ask: can we envision archaeological objects using Maya conceptions, and how does this way of seeing align or misalign with archaeological material engagements?     

Airborne LiDAR,archaeology, and the ancient Maya landscape at Caracol,Belize

Advances in remote sensing and space-based imaging have led to an increased understanding of past settlements and landscape use, but – until now – the images in tropical regions have not been detailed enough to provide datasets that permitted the computation of digital elevation models for heavily forested and hilly terrain. The application of airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing provides a detailed raster image that mimics a 3-D view (technically, it is 2.5-D) of a 200 sq km area covering the settlement of Caracol, a long-term occupied (600 BC-A.D. 250–900) Maya archaeological site in Belize, literally “seeing” though gaps in the rainforest canopy. Penetrating the encompassing jungle, LiDAR-derived images accurately portray not only the topography of the landscape, but also, structures, causeways, and agricultural terraces – even those with relatively low relief of 5–30 cm. These data demonstrate the ability of the ancient Maya to modify, radically, their landscape in order to create a sustainable urban environment. Given the time and intensive effort involved in producing traditional large-scale maps, swath mapping LiDAR is a powerful cost-efficient tool to analyze past settlement and landscape modifications in tropical regions as it covers large study areas in a relatively short time. The use of LiDAR technology, as illustrated here, will ultimately replace traditional settlement mapping in tropical rainforest environments, such as the Maya region, although ground verification will continue to be necessary to test its efficacy.     

‘Poisons Disguised with Honey’: European Expansion and the Sacred Trust of Civilization

For many centuries now, those considering themselves civilized have carried out numerous atrocities—from abductions to dispossession to massacres—against those thought to be less civilized, all in the name of civilization. This has particularly been the case in the last 500 years when Europeans came into contact with indigenous peoples in their voyages of discovery and subsequent settlement. One of the justifications for these offences was often couched in terms of the self-appointed duty of “civilized” Europeans to bring the blessings of civilization to the “savage” and “barbarian” hordes, also called the “white man's burden” or the “burden of civilization.” Many nations took up this sacred trust of civilization and the challenge of bringing enlightenment and salvation to the uncivilized peoples of the world, during which the latter were either subjugated or perished. In this article I trace the intellectual heritage of the sacred trust and note its inherent contradictions, ranging from debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas over Spain's rights of conquest in the New World to the musings of key Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Hegel, Kant, and J. S. Mill. As some of its advocates acknowledge the sacred trust and concomitant civilizing missions were inevitably and invariably violent and went against the very idea of civilization. And as Las Casas deftly highlighted, much of the reasoning underpinning the sacred trust was in the form of “poisons disguised with honey.”     

The spatial and temporal dimensions of a rural landscape: the Yucatec Maya k'ax

This article presents a case study of rural landscape concepts found in the indigenous Yucatec Maya area of Mexico. Of particular interest in this article is the contrast between the Maya conceptualization of the forest as essential to sustainable agriculture and a Western notion of the forest as the antithesis of agriculture. The former has created a tropical forest that is a product of Maya management and the basis of a sustained Maya society, whereas the latter leads to practices that destroy this forest producing a non-sustainable system. Cyclical landscape processes in the former contrast with linear landscape processes in the latter. In order to compare and contrast the landscapes, a model that identifies embedded concepts is used. It is proposed that the Maya system has an element of verticality and temporality leading to sustainability, a feature lacking in the Western conceptualization.     

Maya Crocodilians: Intersections of Myth and the Natural World at Early Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén,Guatemala

This essay pursues a four-pronged, interdisciplinary approach in considering the possibility that the unusual layout of the lowland Maya site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in the lakes region of central Petén, Guatemala, might have been modeled on the scaly back of a crocodile. Part 1 summarizes the biological characteristics of crocodilians, particularly Crocodylus moreletii, and their habitats in lowland Mesoamerica. Part 2 reviews interpretations of these reptiles in myth and art, and exploitation of the creature in the lakes area. Third, the ceremonial core of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, established in the Middle Preclassic (800–400 BCE) period, is discussed. It exhibits an unusual grid of corridors creating a landscape resembling the bony plates of a crocodilian’s back, and a natural cenote-like fosa is proposed to relate to a mythical “Starry Deer Crocodile.” Part 4 discusses probable social and political characteristics of early community leaders who planned this site’s atypical layout, viewed through selectionist theories of cooperation and costly signaling. Designed to mimic the mythical crocodile of creation, Nixtun-Ch’ich’ illustrates the role of ideological power in the development of complex societies.     

News and Short Contributions

Abstract

Muralla de Leon is a dry stone wall construction on an elevated plateau NE of Lake Macanche, in the central portion of the Department of Peten, Guatemala. Surrounded by water on three sides, the wall attains a maximum height of 4 m. and has a perimeter of 1.4 km. Twenty-one structures are located inside the wall, their construction spanning the Terminal Preclassic through the Postclassic periods. Most interesting are quantities of Floral Park Protoclassic materials as well as a Postclassic “temple assemblage” inside the wall. Problems associated with dating the fortification are discussed, and processes that may have contributed to the construction and occupation of the Muralla de Leon site are reviewed. The times of apparent construction and occupation of the Muralla de Leon area suggest the possibility of a broader role of conflict in the evolution of Maya civilization during the Protoclassic period than previously recognized, and illuminate the role of warfare in the interrelationships of Postclassic communities in the Central Peten.     

Recent Discoveries in the Classic Maya Palace Complex of Nim li Punit,Belize

Nim li Punit is a small Classic Maya (ca. a.d. 150–830) center of Toledo District, Belize. Here I describe excavations of two buildings within the royal palace group: Structures 7 and 8. Structure 8 was built in four stages all dating to the Early to Late/Terminal Classic period. It probably served as a council house. Structure 7 was the residential palace and was built in two stages. An Early Classic burial demonstrates indirect interaction with Teotihuacan. During the Terminal Classic period, the shape of Structure 7 was altered, numerous caches were placed there, and Tomb 5 was dedicated. It contained many important artifacts including a modeled effigy vase displaying the wind god, a chert eccentric, and the second largest piece of carved jade excavated legally in Belize. This, the Nim li Punit “wind jewel,” contains a long historical text and was worn by Late Classic kings. I argue that the pectoral tied Maya kings through ritual performance to breath, winds, rain, agriculture, and life.     

The potential of hyperspectral and multi-spectral imagery to enhance archaeological cropmark detection: a comparative study

Aerial photography has made the single most important contribution to our improved appreciation of the density, diversity and distribution of archaeological sites in Britain since World War Two. This is particularly the case for areas of intensive lowland agriculture where ploughed-out sites are known mainly from marks in the crops growing above them. However, reconnaissance for such cropmarks is not equally effective throughout the lowlands, because of the particular conditions of drier weather, well-drained soils and arable agriculture required before they become visible, and is highly unpredictable.     

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.     

Ancient Maya Agricultural Installations and the Development of Intensive Agriculture in NW Belize

Abstract

Archaeological study of the spatial arrangement of agricultural features such as terraces and berms yields insight into the scale, mode, and tempo of farm production and the social organization of farming communities. Data from five regions of the Maya lowlands where such features have been extensively documented demonstrate the range of strategies employed by the ancient Maya to organize agricultural production. In some previously studied regions of the lowlands, spatial patterns suggest centralized management of farmland by state institutions, while in others a smallholder strategy seems evident. In the Río Bravo region of NW Belize, the organization of agricultural labor centered neither on the state nor on the individual farm family, but on the farm community. Moreover, the incremental conversion of open lands to terraced agricultural fields was part of a long-term interactive sequence of environmental change and human response over centuries of occupation. This sequence demonstrates that the ancient Maya not only adapted to a degraded environment but used it to their advantage, developing new technologies that were successful for several centuries prior to their ultimate failure. The agricultural history of the lowland Maya demonstrates that indigenous systems of resource management in fragile environments such as the tropics were not always deleterious. The innovations and successful adaptations of ancient farmers should also be recognized.