Nicholas P Dunning
Biographic Data
| ID | 104637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas P Dunning |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas P |
| FAMILY NAME | Dunning |
| SIGNATURE | DUNNING N P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cincinnati |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1843-3088 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 618 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Growth and decline of a sustainable city: A multitemporal perspective on blue-black-green infrastructures at the pre-Columbian Lowland Maya city of Tikal
The New Urban Agenda’s call for long-term visions in urban planning fails to recognise that ‘long-term’ implies different longevities depending on context of assessment. Compared to other social sciences, archaeological approaches add rigour to envisioning urban sustainability over several centuries and millennia. The archaeology of the pre-Columbian Lowland Maya urban tradition is an interesting case because data have been used to support confli…
Evaluating Broadscale Deep Learning for Maya Settlement Detection in G-LiHT Lidar
Examining Lidar data is an efficient way to detect ancient Maya features across the Yucatan Peninsula. Automated object detection powered by deep learning leverages Maya archaeologists’ specialist knowledge in detecting the presence of ancient Maya settlements. By using a broadscale approach in its training, our new efficient multi-regional model Q2000 achieves comparable performance across a significantly broader and more diverse geographic regi…
Pre-Mamom Pottery Producers in the Heart of the Yucatan Peninsula
Recent research in the Maya Lowlands has revealed substantial new evidence for the first pottery producers at about 1000-600 bc, during the early Middle Preclassic period. This comparatively late adoption is a special case in Mesoamerica, where pottery appeared elsewhere up to a millennium earlier. Although archaic lifeways had long been established in the region, and pottery technology was likely known to some archaic communities, these new data…
Interpreting δ 13 C Values Obtained on SOM from Ancient Maya Reservoirs and Depressions
Elemental analyzer (EA) Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry was used to measure ∂ 13 C values on soil organic matter from reservoirs and depressions at the ancient Maya urban centers of Tikal, Guatemala and Yaxnohcah, Mexico. Variation in δ 13 C values on soil organic matter were > −2.0‰, which suggests enrichment from C4 plants including maize, other tropical grasses (Poaceae), and tropical sedges (Cyperaceae), CAM plants (Clusia sp.), and cyanobact…
The Development of Landesque Capital in the Maya Lowlands During the Middle Preclassic
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 …
The Neighborhood Marketplaces of Yaxnohcah
This study focuses on the identification of Maya neighborhood marketplaces during the Late/Terminal Classic period (550-900 CE) in the urban landscape of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico. We use a configurational and contextual approach to identify four marketplaces that are situated in a strategic inner ring 1.5-2.5 km from the epicenter of the city. Physical features of the marketplaces include a plaza area of 2000-3100 m2, low perimeter platforms s…
Wetland Farming and the Early Anthropocene: Globally Upscaling from the Maya Lowlands with LiDAR and Multiproxy Verification
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…
Ancient Maya Rural Settlement Patterns, Household Cooperation, and Regional Subsistence Interdependency in the Río Bec Area: Contributions from G-LiHT
Research on intensive agricultural features contributes to the social relations of farming, including the means by which farmers mobilize labor and the possible destination of surplus. Lidar provides high-resolution data on ancient houses and agricultural features at a regional scale. This paper uses lidar data from NASA’s G-LiHT airborne imager to derive insights about rural demography, interhousehold cooperation, and subsistence interdependency…
Ancient Maya water management, agriculture, and society in the area of Chactún, Campeche, Mexico
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…
Applied Perspectives on Pre-Columbian Maya Water Management Systems: What Are the Insights for Water Security?
Water security is a fundamental global challenge for humanity. Suggesting that scholars, water management engineers, and policy-makers draw from a wide range of examples, this chapter argues that knowledge gained from archaeological research provides unique insights into the long-term function and efficacy of water management systems. This chapter presents six cases of water management systems in the pre-Columbian Maya lowlands, from the Yalahau,…
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…
Imperial resource management at the ancient Maya city of Tikal: A resilience model of sustainability and collapse
Geochronology and Paleoenvironmental Framework for the Oldest Archaeological Site (7800-7900 Cal Bp) in the West Indies, Banwari Trace, Trinidad
Banwari Trace, a well-stratified shell midden located in southeastern Trinidad, provides the oldest known archaeological evidence of human settlement in the West Indies and has been crucial to our understanding of the initial peopling of the greater Caribbean region. Detailed excavation profile descriptions, soil and faunal analyses, accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating, and stable carbon isotope …
Water uncertainty, ritual predictability and agricultural canals at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
The Pueblo population of Chaco Canyon during the Bonito Phase (AD 800–1130) employed agricultural strategies and water-management systems to enhance food cultivation in this unpredictable environment. Scepticism concerning the timing and effectiveness of this system, however, remains common. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sediments and LiDAR imaging, the authors located Bonito Phase canal features at the far west end of the can…
An Enigmatic Maya Center: Climate Change, Settlement Systems, and Water Adaptations at Xcoch, Puuc Region, Yucatán
Volcanic minerals in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico and their archaeological significance
Employing airborne lidar and archaeological testing to determine the role of small depressions in water management at the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico
Micro-flotation removal of coal contaminants from archaeological radiocarbon samples from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA
Plantation Soilscapes: Initial and Cumulative Impacts of Colonial Agriculture in Antigua, West Indies
This paper examines physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils and sediments from landforms in eastern Antigua, West Indies, to better understand the long-term consequences of colonial plantation agriculture for soil health. Plantation farming played a central role in the history of Caribbean societies, economies, and environments since the seventeenth century. In Antigua, the entire island was variably dedicated to agricultural pursu…
The perfect storm: Climate change and ancient Maya response in the Puuc Hills region of Yucatán
Evaluating soil salinity and water management in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
Catastrophic volcanism and its implication for agriculture in the Maya Lowlands
Boots on the Ground at Yaxnohcah: Ground-Truthing Lidar in a Complex Tropical Landscape
This study proposes a sampling method for ground-truthing LiDAR-derived data that will allow researchers to verify or predict the accuracy of results over a large area. Our case study is focused on a 24 km 2 area centered on the site of Yaxnohcah in the Yucatan Peninsula. This area is characterized by a variety of dense tropical rainforest and wetland vegetation zones with limited road and trail access. Twenty-one 100 x 100 m blocks were selected…
The Nature and Origins of Linear Features in the Bajo de Azúcar, Guatemala: Implications for Ancient Maya Adaptation to a Changing Environment
Scholars have long puzzled over the ancient human use of swampy depressions (bajos) in the interior part of the Maya Lowlands. Part of this debate has centered on the reputed, but undocumented, existence of canals in the bajos of the northeastern Peten District of Guatemala. We report on the use of satellite imagery along with fieldwork to reveal numerous linear features in the Bajo de Azúcar, the largest bajo in the northeast Peten. We conducted…
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 Evolution of a Neotropical Landscape and the Rise of Maya Civilization
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: Ancient Maya Soil Conservation in Northwestern Belize
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: Ancient Maya landscapes in northwestern Belize
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…
Intensive Surface Collection of Residential Clusters at Terminal Classic Sayil, Yucatan, Mexico
Information from intensive surface collections at the urban center of Sayil in the hill country of SW Yucatan, Mexico, has begun to elucidate the complex interaction of settlement, environment, and demography in a dry and demanding tropical lowland setting. Fine-grained surface collection techniques outlined in this report have produced a detailed picture of the distribution of artifacts within one portion of the site and provide the foundation f…
Interpreting Prehistoric Settlement Patterns: Lessons from the Maya Center of Sayil, Yucatan
Interpreting the tangible remains of prehistoric settlements is a major goal of settlement archaeology. While most studies of large, complex archaeological sites have employed morphological/stylistic attributes of architecture and data from architecturally targeted excavation to interpret ancient communities, they often cannot account for two major conditions: the formal aspects of architecture do not always reflect the variable ways buildings we…
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…
Lords of the Hills: Classic Maya settlement patterns and political iconography in the Puuc region, Mexico
A regional investigation of the ancient Maya settlement patterns of the Puuc suggests that this region was occupied by increasing numbers of people seeking to maximize control over prime agricultural soils during the Late Classic period. During the Late Classic the eastern Puuc region was controlled by numerous autonomous major centers that carried on the Classic Maya tradition of divine kingship. During the late ninth centurya.d., the city of Ux…
Use Ofaguadasas Water Management Sources in Two Southern Maya Lowland Sites
Aguadas, either natural or human-made ponds, were significant sources of water for the ancient Maya.Aguadasare common features in the Maya Lowlands and make valuable locations for collecting archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. This article discusses research conducted at fouraguadasaround two adjacent Maya sites, San Bartolo and Xultun in Peten, Guatemala. Both San Bartolo and Xultun were established during the Preclassic period. However,…
Ancient Maya water management, agriculture, and society in the area of Chactún, Campeche, Mexico
Settlement, Environment, and Politics in the San Bartolo-Xultun Territory, El Peten, Guatemala
This article examines the cultural and ecological history of a single Maya territory from circa 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1100. An ancient Maya territory is defined as an area of land and population under the jurisdiction of a particular capital. In addition to the capital, there are minor centers, household groups, and temporary settlements, which together comprise the population of a territory. Here, the San Bartolo-Xultun territory in the northeastern…
Boots on the Ground at Yaxnohcah: Ground-Truthing Lidar in a Complex Tropical Landscape
This study proposes a sampling method for ground-truthing LiDAR-derived data that will allow researchers to verify or predict the accuracy of results over a large area. Our case study is focused on a 24 km 2 area centered on the site of Yaxnohcah in the Yucatan Peninsula. This area is characterized by a variety of dense tropical rainforest and wetland vegetation zones with limited road and trail access. Twenty-one 100 x 100 m blocks were selected…
Evidence for volcanic ash fall in the Maya Lowlands from a reservoir at Tikal, Guatemala
Lords of the Hills: Ancient Maya Settlement in the Puuc Region, Yucatan, Mexico
The Neighborhood Marketplaces of Yaxnohcah
This study focuses on the identification of Maya neighborhood marketplaces during the Late/Terminal Classic period (550-900 CE) in the urban landscape of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico. We use a configurational and contextual approach to identify four marketplaces that are situated in a strategic inner ring 1.5-2.5 km from the epicenter of the city. Physical features of the marketplaces include a plaza area of 2000-3100 m2, low perimeter platforms s…
Water uncertainty, ritual predictability and agricultural canals at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
The Pueblo population of Chaco Canyon during the Bonito Phase (AD 800–1130) employed agricultural strategies and water-management systems to enhance food cultivation in this unpredictable environment. Scepticism concerning the timing and effectiveness of this system, however, remains common. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sediments and LiDAR imaging, the authors located Bonito Phase canal features at the far west end of the can…
The Nature and Origins of Linear Features in the Bajo de Azúcar, Guatemala: Implications for Ancient Maya Adaptation to a Changing Environment
Scholars have long puzzled over the ancient human use of swampy depressions (bajos) in the interior part of the Maya Lowlands. Part of this debate has centered on the reputed, but undocumented, existence of canals in the bajos of the northeastern Peten District of Guatemala. We report on the use of satellite imagery along with fieldwork to reveal numerous linear features in the Bajo de Azúcar, the largest bajo in the northeast Peten. We conducted…
Ancient Maya Rural Settlement Patterns, Household Cooperation, and Regional Subsistence Interdependency in the Río Bec Area: Contributions from G-LiHT
Research on intensive agricultural features contributes to the social relations of farming, including the means by which farmers mobilize labor and the possible destination of surplus. Lidar provides high-resolution data on ancient houses and agricultural features at a regional scale. This paper uses lidar data from NASA’s G-LiHT airborne imager to derive insights about rural demography, interhousehold cooperation, and subsistence interdependency…
Plantation Soilscapes: Initial and Cumulative Impacts of Colonial Agriculture in Antigua, West Indies
This paper examines physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils and sediments from landforms in eastern Antigua, West Indies, to better understand the long-term consequences of colonial plantation agriculture for soil health. Plantation farming played a central role in the history of Caribbean societies, economies, and environments since the seventeenth century. In Antigua, the entire island was variably dedicated to agricultural pursu…
The perfect storm: Climate change and ancient Maya response in the Puuc Hills region of Yucatán
Evaluating soil salinity and water management in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
Mayacene’ floodplain and wetland formation in the Rio Bravo Watershed of northwestern Belize
This is the first article to characterize the soil and fluvial geomorphology of the Rio Bravo’s fluviokarst watershed in the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, northwestern Belize. Although the watershed has had little-altered tropical forest cover since c. 1000 BP, humans inhabited it for millennia, especially during the Maya Preclassic and Classic, c. 3000–1000 BP. We studied soils and floodplain formation in four excavation transects …
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed: The Paleoecology of Laguna Tamarindito, El Peten, Guatemala
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
Geochronology and Paleoenvironmental Framework for the Oldest Archaeological Site (7800-7900 Cal Bp) in the West Indies, Banwari Trace, Trinidad
Banwari Trace, a well-stratified shell midden located in southeastern Trinidad, provides the oldest known archaeological evidence of human settlement in the West Indies and has been crucial to our understanding of the initial peopling of the greater Caribbean region. Detailed excavation profile descriptions, soil and faunal analyses, accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating, and stable carbon isotope …
Intensive Surface Collection of Residential Clusters at Terminal Classic Sayil, Yucatan, Mexico
Information from intensive surface collections at the urban center of Sayil in the hill country of SW Yucatan, Mexico, has begun to elucidate the complex interaction of settlement, environment, and demography in a dry and demanding tropical lowland setting. Fine-grained surface collection techniques outlined in this report have produced a detailed picture of the distribution of artifacts within one portion of the site and provide the foundation f…
Lords of the Hills: Classic Maya settlement patterns and political iconography in the Puuc region, Mexico
A regional investigation of the ancient Maya settlement patterns of the Puuc suggests that this region was occupied by increasing numbers of people seeking to maximize control over prime agricultural soils during the Late Classic period. During the Late Classic the eastern Puuc region was controlled by numerous autonomous major centers that carried on the Classic Maya tradition of divine kingship. During the late ninth centurya.d., the city of Ux…
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…
Interpreting Prehistoric Settlement Patterns: Lessons from the Maya Center of Sayil, Yucatan
Interpreting the tangible remains of prehistoric settlements is a major goal of settlement archaeology. While most studies of large, complex archaeological sites have employed morphological/stylistic attributes of architecture and data from architecturally targeted excavation to interpret ancient communities, they often cannot account for two major conditions: the formal aspects of architecture do not always reflect the variable ways buildings we…
Archaeology, Volcanism, and Remote Sensing in the Arenal Region, Costa Rica
Lords of the Hills: Ancient Maya Settlement in the Puuc Region, Yucatan, Mexico
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
Human-Environment Interactions in a Tropical Watershed: The Paleoecology of Laguna Tamarindito, El Petén, Guatemala
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: The Paleoecology of Laguna Tamarindito, El Peten, Guatemala
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
Temple mountains, sacred lakes, and fertile fields: Ancient Maya landscapes in northwestern Belize
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 Evolution of a Neotropical Landscape and the Rise of Maya Civilization
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: Ancient Maya Soil Conservation in Northwestern Belize
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…
Impacts of the ancient Maya on soils and soil erosion in the central Maya Lowlands
In the maw of the Earth monster: Mesoamerican ritual cave use
Ancient Maya Life in the Far West Bajo: Social and Environmental Change in the Wetlands of Belize
Book Review| January 01 2006 Ancient Maya Life in the Far West Bajo: Social and Environmental Change in the Wetlands of Belize Ancient Maya Life in the Far West Bajo: Social and Environmental Change in the Wetlands of Belize. Julie L. Kunen. Nicholas Dunning Nicholas Dunning Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Agricultural History (2006) 80 (1): 114–115. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-80.1.114 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Sh…
Settlement, Environment, and Politics in the San Bartolo-Xultun Territory, El Peten, Guatemala
This article examines the cultural and ecological history of a single Maya territory from circa 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1100. An ancient Maya territory is defined as an area of land and population under the jurisdiction of a particular capital. In addition to the capital, there are minor centers, household groups, and temporary settlements, which together comprise the population of a territory. Here, the San Bartolo-Xultun territory in the northeastern…
Evidence for volcanic ash fall in the Maya Lowlands from a reservoir at Tikal, Guatemala
Kax and kol: Collapse and resilience in lowland Maya civilization
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…
Use Ofaguadasas Water Management Sources in Two Southern Maya Lowland Sites
Aguadas, either natural or human-made ponds, were significant sources of water for the ancient Maya.Aguadasare common features in the Maya Lowlands and make valuable locations for collecting archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. This article discusses research conducted at fouraguadasaround two adjacent Maya sites, San Bartolo and Xultun in Peten, Guatemala. Both San Bartolo and Xultun were established during the Preclassic period. However,…
A Tale of Two Collapses: Environmental Variability and Cultural Disruption in the Maya Lowlands
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 …
Tropical Landscapes and the Ancient Maya: Diversity in Time and Space
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to mode…
Growth and Decline in Classic Maya Puuc Political Economies
The Classic period Puuc region presents Maya archaeologists with significant challenges. One challenge to interpretation lies in the fact that, despite a form of agro-urban settlement that proved highly resilient in the Maya Lowlands overall, Puuc cities flourished relatively briefly, beginning on a grand scale in the sixth century C.E. and with a halt in major building construction and depopulation in the tenth century C.E. This chapter focuses …
Water and Landscape: Ancient Maya Settlement Decisions
In this chapter we present the major transitions in Maya history from the Late Preclassic through Terminal Classic periods in the Maya Lowlands, focusing first on major settlement and subsistence systems, followed by major social and environmental costs. We particularly focus on how the Maya built and relied on increasingly complex water and agricultural systems to adapt in the humid tropics where everything in life was rainfall dependent. The se…
Geography (51 works) · Archaeology (47 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (41 works) · Maya (36 works) · Ecology (20 works) · Geology (18 works) · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond (16 works) · Latin American history and culture (16 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (12 works)