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UC pioneers research on environmental practices of ancient Maya

March 28th, 2011
UC pioneers research on environmental practices of ancient Maya
An ancient Mayan reservoir at Tikal is unearthed, providing new insights into how the ancient Maya built for water management. Credit: University of Cincinnati

Thousands of international researchers will attend the March 29-April 3 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) annual meeting in Sacramento, Calif., presenting research at more than 250 special sessions and forums dedicated to specific topic areas.

One of those special sessions is dedicated to examining University of Cincinnati research on ancient Maya agroforestry and water-management systems at Tikal, located in northern Guatemala. The ancient city was likely one of the most influential in pre-Columbian Central America. In 2009 and again in 2010, a UC team, led by paleoethnobotanist David Lentz, professor of biology, was the first North American group permitted to work at the Tikal site core in more than 40 years.

Others on that large, interdisciplinary team included Nick Dunning, professor of geography; Vernon Scarborough, professor of anthropology, and archaeologist Ken Tankersley, assistant professor of anthropology.

Specifically, the SAA symposium session will report on recent UC research related to

  • The forest resources required to build and sustain the urban center;
  • The nature of its land use;
  • The Maya's complex water-management system, consisting of a carefully designed array of canals and reservoirs, intended to conserve water during the annual dry season and to control/contain floodwaters during the rainy months.
This research breaks new ground in that it is the first to examine forest conservation and water-management at Tikal, a paramount urban center estimated to have had a population of perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants at AD 700. (Previous research, decades ago, focused on the social elite and their monumental structures.)
A UC team is unveiling groundbreaking research on the agroforestry and water-management practices of the Maya over a 1,500-year period. See this flyover of the Tikal site developed by the UC team. It shows developments of homes (in brown), temples (in orange), reservoirs (in blue) and roadways (in white) from the pre-Maya period at about 100 BC to the start of the Late Classic period in about 600 AD. Credit: Eric Weaver, University of Cincinnati

The overall goal of the UC research is to assess the manner by which the ancient Maya harvested their diverse natural resources—especially water and plant communities—in altering the engineered landscape through time.

Mayan temple

Said UC's Lentz, "The goal is to understand how the Maya lasted as a highly complex society for well over 1,500 years in a tropical environment. Their resource needs from forests were very great because they used trees to construct monumental buildings, for the creation of plaster (which was a surface cover for buildings and roadways), for cooking and many other needs. They had a sophisticated, long-lasting management system that apparently began to go awry during the Late Classic period." (AD 600-770)

He added, "It was this environmental conservation and water management that led to prosperity of a very high magnitude for a long period at Tikal. Similarly, when the city abandoned its conservation methods during the eighth century and depleted its natural resource bases, this led to a host of changes, such as altered hydrologic cycle and soil erosion on a broad scale that ultimately resulted in environmental deterioration. That, in turn, contributed to changes in availability of food, fuel, medicinal plants and other necessities. Over time, the result was societal disintegration."

In fact, Tikal's 1,500 years of affluence declined dramatically in the ninth century, and by AD 900, the site was largely abandoned.

Provided by University of Cincinnati

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