Timothy Beach
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 92504 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Timothy Beach |
| NOMBRES | Timothy |
| APELLIDO | Beach |
| FIRMA | BEACH T |
| AFILIACIONES | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0097-7973 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 565 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1994 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Geoarchaeology and Agroecosystems of the Booth’s River Depression
Geoarchaeological and agroecological research in the Three Rivers Region of northwest Belize and specifically in the Booth’s River Depression started in the 1990s. Regional geology is structured by normal faults creating escarpments and depressions that evolve into fluvial karst valleys that host agroecosystem features including wetland fields, terraces, canals, dams, and reservoirs. Our initial research in the Three Rivers Region followed accoun…
A multimethod approach to the study of Classic Maya houselots and land tenure
The need for stewardship of lands exposed by deglaciation from climate change
Alpine glaciers worldwide will lose most of their volume by the end of the 21st century, placing alpine ecosystems and human populations at risk. The new lands that emerge from retreating glaciers provide a host of challenges for ecological and human adaptation to climate change. In these novel proglacial landscapes, ecological succession and natural hazards interplay with local agriculture, hydroelectric production, mining activities, and touris…
Tropical wetland persistence through the Anthropocene
Origins and spread of formal ceremonial complexes in the Olmec and Maya regions revealed by airborne lidar
Floodplain and Terrace Legacy Sediment as a Widespread Record of Anthropogenic Geomorphic Change
Anthropogenic erosion and sedimentation are critical components of global change that involve life-sustaining natural resources of soil and water. Many geomorphic systems have responded to intense land use disturbance with episodic erosion and sedimentation, often orders of magnitude greater than background geological rates in the Holocene. Accelerated sedimentation is a metric for land use change and provides evidence of geomorphic change in fan…
Wetland Farming and the Early Anthropocene
Of multiple ways to assess the geography of the early Anthropocene, three ongoing efforts are establishing the extent, intensity, and chronology of human impacts on landscapes and connecting impacts to global change through greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes. Landscapes interact with GHGs, and these have global climate implications. LiDAR, capable of precisely mapping through forest gaps, has revolutionized our ability to characterize and quantify human…
Monumental architecture at Aguada Fénix and the rise of Maya civilization
Ancient Maya agriculture
Ancient Maya agriculture varied across time and space from long-fallow swidden to highly intensive forms of cultivation. Over time, Maya people devised agricultural systems that were highly adapted to environmental settings ranging from steeply sloping land to both perennially and seasonally inundated terrain. While it is clear that the Mesoamerican triad of maize, beans, and squash played a central role in ancient agricultural practices, the May…
Growing the Ancient Maya Social-Ecological System from the Bottom Up
Archaeological data can be represented in quantitative models to test theories of societal growth, development, and resilience. This chapter describes the results of simulations employing integrated agent-based, cellular automata, and network models to represent elements of the ancient Maya social-ecological system. The purpose of the model is to better understand the complex dynamics of the Maya civilization and to test quantitative indicators o…
Ancient Maya wetland management in two watersheds in Belize
Soil and slaughter
"Challenges of the "Anthropocene
Paleoecology and Geoarchaeology at El Palmar and the El Zotz Region, Guatemala
A new paleoecology record from the El Palmar Cival adds to the emerging geoarchaeological record of El Zotz, Guatemala. El Palmar's 3 m stratigraphic record began in the Archaic period before 1500 B.C. at or just before initial Maya impacts. From the lowest level, Late Archaic organic deposition, with evidence for diverse tropical forest and a steady water table, transitioned to Early Preclassic clay deposition, decreased forest taxa, three known…
"The view from the "Anthropocene
Sky-earth, lake-sea
A Neighborly View
A Tale of Two Collapses
An expanding array of data is becoming available on past climate changes affecting the Maya Lowlands region. We examine the strengths and weaknesses of these data sets, both in terms of identifying general trends and specific events. We then use these data to develop a model based on adaptive cycles that addresses both environmental and cultural changes that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic and the Terminal Classic periods in several areas of …
Archeological and environmental lessons for the Anthropocene from the Classic Maya collapse
Kax and kol
Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas others recovered more quickly. We examine the dynami…
Tropical Wetland Formation in Belize
Arising from the Wetlands
Research on human and environmental interactions in the Maya Lowlands has included important case studies of ancient water and soil management, impacts of climatic fluctuations, and diverse agricultural adaptations over millennia. Studies also have shed light on landscape and soil formation, including past periods of soil erosion and aggradation of several parts of these tropical lowlands. This study uses water, soils, radiocarbon, and archaeolog…
Water Chemistry Constraints And Possibilities For Ancient And Contemporary Maya Wetlands
Much Maya research has studied water management, but very little has studied water quality. Water chemistry reflects local and regional geology, soil, and land uses. Thus, it can supply a useful link between past and contemporary environmental conditions. This research analyzes the water quality of sources near archaeological wetland sites in the Three Rivers Region, northwestern Belize to better understand Precolumbian Maya land and water use po…
In Search of an Ancient Maya Market
Market economies are notoriously difficult to identify in the archeological record. This is particularly true in the subtropical Maya lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize because most utilitarian items and consumables were made of highly perishable materials. We explore the hypothesis that ancient marketplaces can be identified through analysis of chemical residues in soils from open and easily accessible spaces in and about ancient Maya cit…
Impacts of the ancient Maya on soils and soil erosion in the central Maya Lowlands
In Search of an Ancient Maya Market
Market economies are notoriously difficult to identify in the archeological record. This is particularly true in the subtropical Maya lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize because most utilitarian items and consumables were made of highly perishable materials. We explore the hypothesis that ancient marketplaces can be identified through analysis of chemical residues in soils from open and easily accessible spaces in and about ancient Maya cit…
Soil Erosion, Slope Management, and Ancient Terracing in the Maya Lowlands
A puzzling aspect of Prehispanic soil erosion and sedimentation in the Maya Lowlands is the variation noted between different regions. In the Petexbatún region of Guatemala, recent investigations indicate great variation in sedimentation rates between watersheds of different sizes. In some places, soil erosion was slowed by stone terraces, possibly in conjunction with other conservation methods. A review of the surficial geology and other data on…
Arising from the Bajos
The conjunctive use of paleoecological and archaeological data to document past human-environment relationships has become a theoretical imperative in the study of ancient cultures. Geographers are playing leading roles in this scholarly effort. Synthesizing both types of data, we argue that large karst depressions known as bajos in the Maya Lowlands region were anthropogenically transformed from perennial wetlands and shallow lakes to seasonal s…
Upland Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands
In the 1970s scholars began to accept Maya terracing as the manifestation of ancient intensive agriculture and large populations. We examine many ancient terraces and berms excavated in the Three Rivers region of Belize, synthesize the geography and suggest the intent of terracing across the Maya Lowlands, and analyze the history of terracing and soil erosion. Terraces occur in several slope positions and diverted and slowed runoff, to build up p…
Temple mountains, sacred lakes, and fertile fields
Forty-three years later these words still ring true, but are too seldom followed (Fedick 1996). For several years, we have been engaged in a multidisciplinary programme of research in northwestern Belize and neighbouring areas of Guatemala, eliciting a comprehensive, integrated picture of changing ancient Maya landscapes (Scarborough & Dunning 1996; Valdezet al.1997). Our goals include a reconstructive correlation of environmental and cultural hi…
The Paleoecology and Ancient Settlement of the Petexbatun Region, Guatemala
The Petexbatun region has a series of upland ridges surrounded by lowland wetlands. In Preclassic times, ancient Maya peoples began colonizing the region along waterways. Although few in number, they cleared large areas of upland tropical forest for agriculture and induced significant soil erosion. Population contracted in the region during the Early Classic, and mature tropical forest growth returned. During the Late Classic, population expanded…
Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS
Reconstructing Agricultural Self-Sufficiency at Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico
The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program is studying the vexing questions of economic life among the ancient Maya in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico. The region constitutes an ideal laboratory in which to investigate these questions, as it has very limited agricultural potential and fewer options for intensification than are found in the southern and central lowlands, yet many times more people lived here during the Classic period than can eke out a livi…
An Ancient Maya Reservoir and Dam at Tamarindito, El Peten, Guatemala
We report a Prehispanic dam and remnants of a small reservoir at the ancient Maya site of Tamarindito in the Río de la Pasión region of Guatemala's Petén district. The remnants of the dam are on the Petexbatún escarpment, to the east of the main site in the midst of an area of residential groups and numerous and varied agricultural terracing. The dam was about 60 m long and would have held a reservoir of about 2,000 m3. This volume of water was s…
Punta Canbalam in Context
Investigations at Punta Canbalam on the Gulf Coast of Campeche reveal it is probably the largest of several important but underreported trading sites on the pan-Mesoamerican maritime trade route. The coastline has been unstable for the last thousand years, subjecting the site to sea level changes and repeated episodes of beach erosion and redeposition. The relatively dense scatter of temporally mixed, highly weathered sherds and other artifacts o…
Archeological and environmental lessons for the Anthropocene from the Classic Maya collapse
Origins and spread of formal ceremonial complexes in the Olmec and Maya regions revealed by airborne lidar
"Challenges of the "Anthropocene
Sky-earth, lake-sea
The Fate of Eroded Soil
Human-induced soil erosion has produced real-world laboratories for studying the fates of eroded soil particles in watersheds all over the world. This article investigates the spatial distribution of historical sediment and the sediment budgets of three of these laboratories in medium-size watersheds of southern Minnesota. Sediment storage is measured in various geomorphic sites or sinks including colluvium, stream-order floodplains, and reservoi…
Arising from the Wetlands
Research on human and environmental interactions in the Maya Lowlands has included important case studies of ancient water and soil management, impacts of climatic fluctuations, and diverse agricultural adaptations over millennia. Studies also have shed light on landscape and soil formation, including past periods of soil erosion and aggradation of several parts of these tropical lowlands. This study uses water, soils, radiocarbon, and archaeolog…
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed
Nicholas Dunning, David J. Rue, Timothy Beach, Alan Covich, Alfred Traverse, Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed: The Paleoecology of Laguna Tamarindito, El Petén, Guatemala, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 139-151
A multimethod approach to the study of Classic Maya houselots and land tenure
Paleoecology and Geoarchaeology at El Palmar and the El Zotz Region, Guatemala
A new paleoecology record from the El Palmar Cival adds to the emerging geoarchaeological record of El Zotz, Guatemala. El Palmar's 3 m stratigraphic record began in the Archaic period before 1500 B.C. at or just before initial Maya impacts. From the lowest level, Late Archaic organic deposition, with evidence for diverse tropical forest and a steady water table, transitioned to Early Preclassic clay deposition, decreased forest taxa, three known…
The need for stewardship of lands exposed by deglaciation from climate change
Alpine glaciers worldwide will lose most of their volume by the end of the 21st century, placing alpine ecosystems and human populations at risk. The new lands that emerge from retreating glaciers provide a host of challenges for ecological and human adaptation to climate change. In these novel proglacial landscapes, ecological succession and natural hazards interplay with local agriculture, hydroelectric production, mining activities, and touris…
Tropical wetland persistence through the Anthropocene
"The view from the "Anthropocene
A Tale of Two Collapses
An expanding array of data is becoming available on past climate changes affecting the Maya Lowlands region. We examine the strengths and weaknesses of these data sets, both in terms of identifying general trends and specific events. We then use these data to develop a model based on adaptive cycles that addresses both environmental and cultural changes that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic and the Terminal Classic periods in several areas of …
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed
Questions of past human-environment interactions are best addressed by a research agenda that recovers complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. We have used such an approach in our investigations at Laguna Tamarindito, a small lake located in the SW part of the Peten rainforest of Guatemala. In 1991, a sediment core was taken from the lake as part of a larger program of research examining the history of human-environment interact…
Wetland Farming and the Early Anthropocene
Of multiple ways to assess the geography of the early Anthropocene, three ongoing efforts are establishing the extent, intensity, and chronology of human impacts on landscapes and connecting impacts to global change through greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes. Landscapes interact with GHGs, and these have global climate implications. LiDAR, capable of precisely mapping through forest gaps, has revolutionized our ability to characterize and quantify human…
The Fate of Eroded Soil
Human-induced soil erosion has produced real-world laboratories for studying the fates of eroded soil particles in watersheds all over the world. This article investigates the spatial distribution of historical sediment and the sediment budgets of three of these laboratories in medium-size watersheds of southern Minnesota. Sediment storage is measured in various geomorphic sites or sinks including colluvium, stream-order floodplains, and reservoi…
Soil Erosion, Slope Management, and Ancient Terracing in the Maya Lowlands
A puzzling aspect of Prehispanic soil erosion and sedimentation in the Maya Lowlands is the variation noted between different regions. In the Petexbatún region of Guatemala, recent investigations indicate great variation in sedimentation rates between watersheds of different sizes. In some places, soil erosion was slowed by stone terraces, possibly in conjunction with other conservation methods. A review of the surficial geology and other data on…
The Paleoecology and Ancient Settlement of the Petexbatun Region, Guatemala
The Petexbatun region has a series of upland ridges surrounded by lowland wetlands. In Preclassic times, ancient Maya peoples began colonizing the region along waterways. Although few in number, they cleared large areas of upland tropical forest for agriculture and induced significant soil erosion. Population contracted in the region during the Early Classic, and mature tropical forest growth returned. During the Late Classic, population expanded…
An Ancient Maya Reservoir and Dam at Tamarindito, El Peten, Guatemala
We report a Prehispanic dam and remnants of a small reservoir at the ancient Maya site of Tamarindito in the Río de la Pasión region of Guatemala's Petén district. The remnants of the dam are on the Petexbatún escarpment, to the east of the main site in the midst of an area of residential groups and numerous and varied agricultural terracing. The dam was about 60 m long and would have held a reservoir of about 2,000 m3. This volume of water was s…
Prehispanic Agrosystems and Adaptive Regions in the Maya Lowlands
Soil constraints on Northwest Yucatán, Mexico
The soils and subsistence of ancient Maya Chunchucmil in northwestern Yucatán are the focus of this paper. Today and historically, the population and crop yields here have been very low. Archaeological field work, however, has shown the Late Classic site to be highly populated with densely packed walled mound and field groups. It is enigmatic that this high ancient Maya population existed in a region of meager crop and soil potential. This enigma…
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed
Questions of past human-environment interactions are best addressed by a research agenda that recovers complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. We have used such an approach in our investigations at Laguna Tamarindito, a small lake located in the SW part of the Peten rainforest of Guatemala. In 1991, a sediment core was taken from the lake as part of a larger program of research examining the history of human-environment interact…
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed
Nicholas Dunning, David J. Rue, Timothy Beach, Alan Covich, Alfred Traverse, Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed: The Paleoecology of Laguna Tamarindito, El Petén, Guatemala, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 139-151
Punta Canbalam in Context
Investigations at Punta Canbalam on the Gulf Coast of Campeche reveal it is probably the largest of several important but underreported trading sites on the pan-Mesoamerican maritime trade route. The coastline has been unstable for the last thousand years, subjecting the site to sea level changes and repeated episodes of beach erosion and redeposition. The relatively dense scatter of temporally mixed, highly weathered sherds and other artifacts o…
Temple mountains, sacred lakes, and fertile fields
Forty-three years later these words still ring true, but are too seldom followed (Fedick 1996). For several years, we have been engaged in a multidisciplinary programme of research in northwestern Belize and neighbouring areas of Guatemala, eliciting a comprehensive, integrated picture of changing ancient Maya landscapes (Scarborough & Dunning 1996; Valdezet al.1997). Our goals include a reconstructive correlation of environmental and cultural hi…
Arising from the Bajos
The conjunctive use of paleoecological and archaeological data to document past human-environment relationships has become a theoretical imperative in the study of ancient cultures. Geographers are playing leading roles in this scholarly effort. Synthesizing both types of data, we argue that large karst depressions known as bajos in the Maya Lowlands region were anthropogenically transformed from perennial wetlands and shallow lakes to seasonal s…
Upland Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands
In the 1970s scholars began to accept Maya terracing as the manifestation of ancient intensive agriculture and large populations. We examine many ancient terraces and berms excavated in the Three Rivers region of Belize, synthesize the geography and suggest the intent of terracing across the Maya Lowlands, and analyze the history of terracing and soil erosion. Terraces occur in several slope positions and diverted and slowed runoff, to build up p…
Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS
Reconstructing Agricultural Self-Sufficiency at Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico
The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program is studying the vexing questions of economic life among the ancient Maya in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico. The region constitutes an ideal laboratory in which to investigate these questions, as it has very limited agricultural potential and fewer options for intensification than are found in the southern and central lowlands, yet many times more people lived here during the Classic period than can eke out a livi…
Impacts of the ancient Maya on soils and soil erosion in the central Maya Lowlands
In Search of an Ancient Maya Market
Market economies are notoriously difficult to identify in the archeological record. This is particularly true in the subtropical Maya lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize because most utilitarian items and consumables were made of highly perishable materials. We explore the hypothesis that ancient marketplaces can be identified through analysis of chemical residues in soils from open and easily accessible spaces in and about ancient Maya cit…
Water Chemistry Constraints And Possibilities For Ancient And Contemporary Maya Wetlands
Much Maya research has studied water management, but very little has studied water quality. Water chemistry reflects local and regional geology, soil, and land uses. Thus, it can supply a useful link between past and contemporary environmental conditions. This research analyzes the water quality of sources near archaeological wetland sites in the Three Rivers Region, northwestern Belize to better understand Precolumbian Maya land and water use po…
Arising from the Wetlands
Research on human and environmental interactions in the Maya Lowlands has included important case studies of ancient water and soil management, impacts of climatic fluctuations, and diverse agricultural adaptations over millennia. Studies also have shed light on landscape and soil formation, including past periods of soil erosion and aggradation of several parts of these tropical lowlands. This study uses water, soils, radiocarbon, and archaeolog…
Kax and kol
Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas others recovered more quickly. We examine the dynami…
Tropical Wetland Formation in Belize
A Tale of Two Collapses
An expanding array of data is becoming available on past climate changes affecting the Maya Lowlands region. We examine the strengths and weaknesses of these data sets, both in terms of identifying general trends and specific events. We then use these data to develop a model based on adaptive cycles that addresses both environmental and cultural changes that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic and the Terminal Classic periods in several areas of …
Archeological and environmental lessons for the Anthropocene from the Classic Maya collapse
A Neighborly View
Paleoecology and Geoarchaeology at El Palmar and the El Zotz Region, Guatemala
A new paleoecology record from the El Palmar Cival adds to the emerging geoarchaeological record of El Zotz, Guatemala. El Palmar's 3 m stratigraphic record began in the Archaic period before 1500 B.C. at or just before initial Maya impacts. From the lowest level, Late Archaic organic deposition, with evidence for diverse tropical forest and a steady water table, transitioned to Early Preclassic clay deposition, decreased forest taxa, three known…
"The view from the "Anthropocene
Geography (35 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (32 obras) · Archaeology (28 obras) · Maya (21 obras) · Ecology (19 obras) · Geology (17 obras) · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond (12 obras) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (12 obras) · Population (10 obras) · Agriculture (9 obras)