Download or read book Pre Hispanic Maya Agriculture written by Peter D. Harrison and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Prehispanic Maya Agriculture written by Peter D. Harrison and published by . This book was released on 1976* with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Prehispanic Maya Agriculture written by Gordon Randolph Willey and published by . This book was released on 1976* with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Managed Mosaic written by Scott L. Fedick and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection draws on the most up-to-date investigations of Maya practices to show that the lowland Maya utilized a highly flexible regional and local approach in their management of agricultural, mineral, game, and water resources.

Download or read book Ancient Maya Life in the Far West Bajo written by Julie L. Kunen and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human activity during centuries of occupation significantly altered the landscape inhabited by the ancient Maya of northwestern Belize. In response, the Maya developed new techniques to harvest the natural resources of their surroundings, investing increased labor and raw materials into maintaining and even improving their ways of life. In this lively story of life in the wetlands on the outskirts of the major site of La Milpa, Julie Kunen documents a hitherto unrecognized form of intensive agriculture in the Maya lowlands—one that relied on the construction of terraces and berms to trap soil and moisture around the margins of low-lying depressions called bajos. She traces the intertwined histories of residential settlements on nearby hills and ridges and agricultural terraces and other farming-related features around the margins of the bajo as they developed from the Late Preclassic perios (400 BC-AD 250) until the area's abandonment in the Terminal Classic period (about AD 850). Kunen examines the organization of three bajo communities with respect to the use and management of resources critical to agricultural production. She argues that differences in access to spatially variable natural resources resulted in highly patterned settlement remains and that community founders and their descendents who had acquired the best quality and most diverse set of resources maintained an elevated status in the society. The thorough integration of three lines of evidence—the settlement system, the agricultural system, and the ancient environment—breaks new ground in landscape research and in the study of Maya non-elite domestic organization. Kunen reports on the history of settlement and farming in a small corner of the Maya world but demonstrates that for any study of human-environment interactions, landscape history consists equally of ecological and cultural strands of influence.

Download or read book Pre Hispanic Maya Agriculture written by Peter D. Harrison and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ancient Maya Wetland Agriculture written by Mary Deland Pohl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changes in the orientation of archaeological research in the post-World War n period affected Maya studies. The cultural ecological perspective, which was rising to prominence, put an old debate in bold relief: How had this prehistoric civilization adapted to the tropical forest environment? How could swidden cultivation have sustained the unexpectedly high population densities that settlement pattern studies appeared to be revealing? Had the ancient Maya practiced some from of intensive agriculture? Archaeologist Dennis E. Puleston went to the Maya Lowlands to investigate geographer Alfred H. Siemens's reports of possible intensive agriculture ("ridged fields") seen from the air and to study prehistoric Maya cultivation and civilization from a cultural ecological perspective. This volume presents the results of the Rio Hondo Project field research on Albion Island in northern Belize from 1973 to 1980 with the addition of selected results from Pohl's continuing work in northern Belize.

Download or read book Maya Subsistence written by Kent V. Flannery and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maya Subsistence

Download or read book The Organization of Agricultural Production at a Classic Maya Center written by Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo and published by Center for Comparative Arch. This book was released on 2002 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed analysis of the economic foundations of the prehispanic Maya city of Palenque. Full information on extensive ridged field systems in Palenque's immediate hinterland and on the rural settlement associated with them. The study concludes that, initially, the construction and use of these ridged fields systems was strongly controlled and managed by elites residing in the city itself. Later in the sequence there is a substantial decrease in central administrative control. Detailed data are available electronically. Complete text in English and Spanish.

Download or read book The Lowland Maya Area written by Scott Fedick and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we learn from the people of the Maya Lowlands? Integrating history, biodiversity, ethnobotany, geology, ecology, archaeology, anthropology, and other disciplines, The Lowland Maya Area is a valuable guide to the fascinating relationship between man and his environment in the Yucatán peninsula. This book covers virtually every aspect of the biology and ecology of the Maya Lowlands and the many ways that human beings have interacted with their surroundings in that area for the last three thousand years. You'll learn about newly discovered archaeological evidence of wetland use; the domestication and use of cacao and henequen plants; a biodiversity assessment of a select group of plants, animals, and microorganisms; the area's forgotten cotton, indigo, and wax industries; the ecological history of the Yucatán Peninsula; and much more. This comprehensive book will open your eyes to all that we can learn from the Maya people, who continue to live on their native lands, integrating modern life with their old ways and teaching valuable lessons about human dependence on and management of environmental resources. The Lowland Maya Area explores: the impact of hurricanes and fire on local environments historic and modern Maya concepts of forests the geologic history of the Yucatán challenges to preserving Maya architecture newly-discovered evidence of fertilizer use among the ancient Maya cooperation between locals and researchers that fosters greater knowledge on both sides recommendations to help safeguard the future The Lowland Maya Area is an ideal single source for reliable information on the many ecological and social issues of this dynamic area. Providing you with the results of the most recent research into many diverse fields, including traditional ecological knowledge, the difficult transition to capitalism, agave production, and the diversity of insect species, this book will be a valuable addition to your collection. As the editors of The Lowland Maya Area say in their concluding chapter: “If we are to gain global perspective from the changing Maya world, it is that understanding space and time is absolutely critical to human persistence.” Understanding how the Maya have interacted with their environment for thousands of years while maintaining biodiversity will help us understand how we too can work for sustainable development in our own environments.

Download or read book Pre Columbian Foodways written by John Staller and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The significance of food and feasting to Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures has been extensively studied by archaeologists, anthropologists and art historians. Foodways studies have been critical to our understanding of early agriculture, political economies, and the domestication and management of plants and animals. Scholars from diverse fields have explored the symbolic complexity of food and its preparation, as well as the social importance of feasting in contemporary and historical societies. This book unites these disciplinary perspectives — from the social and biological sciences to art history and epigraphy — creating a work comprehensive in scope, which reveals our increasing understanding of the various roles of foods and cuisines in Mesoamerican cultures. The volume is organized thematically into three sections. Part 1 gives an overview of food and feasting practices as well as ancient economies in Mesoamerica. Part 2 details ethnographic, epigraphic and isotopic evidence of these practices. Finally, Part 3 presents the metaphoric value of food in Mesoamerican symbolism, ritual, and mythology. The resulting volume provides a thorough, interdisciplinary resource for understanding, food, feasting, and cultural practices in Mesoamerica.

Download or read book The Maya Forest Garden written by Anabel Ford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using studies on contemporary Maya farming techniques and important new archaeological research, the authors show that the ancient Maya were able to support, sustainably, a vast population by farming the forest—thus refuting the common notion that Maya civilization devolved due to overpopulation and famine.

Download or read book Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory written by Norman Hammond and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embracing a wide range of research, this book offers various views on the intellectual history of Maya archaeology and ethnohistory and the processes operating in the rise and fall of Maya civilization. The fourteen studies were selected from those presented at the Second Cambridge Symposium on Recent Research in Mesoamerican Archaeology and are presented in three major sections. The first of these deals with the application of theory, both anthropological and historical, to the great civilization of the Classic Maya, which flourished in the Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize during the first millennium A.D. The structural remains of the Classic Period have impressed travelers and archaeologists for over a century, and aspects of the development and decline of this strange and brilliant tropical forest culture are examined here in the light of archaeological research. The second section presents the results of field research ranging from the Highlands of Mexico east to Honduras and north into the Lowland heart of Maya civilization, and iconographic study of excavated material. The third section covers the ethnohistoric approach to archaeology, the conjunction of material and documentary evidence. Early European documents are used to illuminate historic Maya culture. This section includes transcriptions of previously unpublished archival material. Although not formally linked beyond their common field of inquiry, the essays here offer a conspectus of late-twentieth century Maya research and a series of case histories of the work of some of the leading scholars in the field.

Download or read book Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World written by Lynn V. Foster and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and accessible reference explores the greatest and most mysterious of civilizations, hailed for its contributions to science, mathematics, and technology. Each chapter is supplemented by an extensive bibliography as well as photos, original line drawings, and maps.

Download or read book The Real Business of Ancient Maya Economies written by Marilyn A. Masson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely synthesis of the latest research and perspectives on ancient Maya economics, this volume illuminates the sophistication and intricacy of economic systems in the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic periods. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines move beyond paradigms of elite control and centralized exchange to focus on individual agency, highlighting production and exchange that took place at all levels of society. Case studies draw on new archaeological evidence from rural households and urban marketplaces to reconstruct the trade networks for tools, ceramics, obsidian, salt, and agricultural goods throughout the empire. They also describe the ways household production integrated with community, regional, and interregional markets. Redirecting the field of ancient Maya economic studies away from simplistic characterizations of the past by fully representing the range of current views on the subject, this volume delves deeply into multiple facets of a complex, interdependent material world. Contributors: Anthony P. Andrews | Chloé Andrieu | Beatriz Balcárcel | Adolfo Iván Batún | George Bey | Ronald L. Bishop | Geoffrey E. Braswell | Marcello Canuto | Bernadette Cap | Arlen F. Chase | Diane Z. Chase | Rubén Chuc Aguilar | Maia Dedrick | Pedro Delgado Kú, | Arthur A. Demarest | Keith Eppich | Bárbara Escamilla Ojeda | Scott L. Fedick | Luis Flores Cobá | Lynda Florey Folan | William J. Folan | David A. Freidel | Tomás Gallareta Negrón | Charles Golden | Stanley P. Guenter | Joel D. Gunn | Richard D. Hansen | Timothy S. Hare | Enrique Hernández | Rachel A. Horowitz | Scott R. Hutson | Takeshi Inomata | Eleanor M. King | Marilyn A. Masson | Patricia A. McAnany | Carlos Morales-Aguilar | Carlos Peraza Lope | Dorie Reents-Budet | Prudence M. Rice | William Ringle | Fernando Robles Castellanos | Alejandra Roche Recinos| Bradley W. Russell | Andrew Scherer | Whittaker Schroder | Payson Sheets | Edgar Suyuc | Alexandre Tokovinine | Paola Torres | Daniela Triadan | Kenichiro Tsukamoto | Clive Vella | Bart Victor | Beniamino Volta | Brent K. S. Woodfill | Andrew R. Wyatt | Norman Yoffee A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Download or read book Once Beneath The Forest written by Bl Turner Ii and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My interest in ancient Maya agriculture began late in the year of 1971 when William M. Denevan encouraged me to pursue the topic. Our interests had been perked by reports from Joseph W. Ball, JaCk Eaton, and Irwin Rovner of the presence of terrace-like features throughout the Rio Bee region of the soutnern Yucatan Peninsula. Denevan maintained a long-term interest in pre-Hispanic agriculture and population in the New World. Our studies with the emerging Rio Bee research group at the University of Wisconsin led to the conclusion that the then dominant themes of Maya agriculture were in need of reevaluation and that a number of remains of intensive forms of agriculture were likely to be found in the Central Maya lowlands of Mexico, Peten (Guatemala), and Belize, particularly wetland or raised fields in addition to the reported terraces. Our interests were heightened at this time by notification from Alfred Siemens of the finds of wetland fields in the vicinity of the Rio Bee region in the Chetumal, Mexico-northern Belize area.

Download or read book Rain Harvesting in the Rainforest written by Helga Geovannini Acuña and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 2008 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main subject discussed in this study is the way in which the ancient Maya of Calakmul (modern Mexico), who thrived between 900 B.C. to A.D. 1000, managed their landscape in order to survive in the tropical rainforest. Their lithic technology, the hot, humid climate with a prolonged dry season, the lack of permanent surface sources of fresh water, and thin soils, considered insufficient for sustained agricultural production, are factors that were addressed successfully by the Maya in developing their complex civilization. The author's research begins with landscape, archaeological, and edaphological analyses, after which she explores the areas most advantageous to permanent habitation, suitable agricultural zones, land potential of the region and the capability of the area for supporting population. In addition, a complex agricultural channel irrigation system is explored as a critical factor for managing productive terrain for agriculture in karstic depressions (bajos). Similarly, an impressive rain harvesting system is exposed as an option to optimize hydrological resources for canalizing excessive rain during the wet season and storing water during the dry period. Finally, a reconstruction of the agricultural landscape is proposed.