The Contributions of Vernon Scarborough in Water Management and Sustainability, Part 1: Global and Comparative

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Working in the Maya area and on water and sustainability issues during the last several decades almost certainly includes reading the works of Vernon Scarborough. We are fortunate to gather in this session and comment on Scarborough’s body of research. His work on anything having to do with water management and sustainability has set the stage for some of the most innovative research on these topics. Vern has taken these skill sets to another level, one that is having global implications because of his initiative and ability to accomplish what anthropologists ideally are meant to do—apply our knowledge to global concerns. Vern accomplishes this feat with aplomb via various international and national organizations, including IHOPE Maya, UNESCO, and others. He has been able to reach scholars from other fields, as well as governmental bodies. This relationship is critical as we address living in an increasingly complex world where climate instability continues to increase and people are beginning to look to anthropologists to cull lessons from the past on addressing not only sustainability but climate change. In this session, contributors focus on Vern’s contributions to global aspects of water management and sustainability and how they have impacted their own research.

Other Keywords
water • Maya • Theory • Water Management • sustainability • Geoarchaeology • Agriculture • Land Use • Landscape • comparative

Geographic Keywords
West Asia • Mesoamerica • South Asia • Central America • North America - Southwest • East/Southeast Asia

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Comparative Water Histories: An Outline of Contrastive Juxtaposition as Method in Anthropological Archaeology (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Harrower.

    Anthropology has long been marked by tension between emphasis on commonalities among histories and cultures on one hand, alongside emphasis on histories and cultures as unique, contingent, and exceptional on the other. Vernon Scarborough is one of few who have pioneered new understanding of water among ancient societies through both focused study of particular regions, as well as broad, synthetic comparison of water among ancient societies worldwide. In an era marked by a daily increasing...

  • The Contributions of Vernon Scarborough: Introductory Remarks (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Lucero.

    In this paper I highlight Vern’s career path and contributions, particularly his work on water management and sustainability, and how his other interests, such as dual economy and heterarchy, tie in with the former. I will also focus on how his interdisciplinary approaches have paved the way for applied anthropology on an international level and with global implications.

  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Ancient Water Systems. Comparative remarks along the axes of small- large and dry-wet (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Maurits Ertsen.

    In Scarborough’s comparative work, when explaining the differences between Old and New World water systems, the differences between small-scale, local and imperial, large systems are important focus points for defining these differences. Furthermore, much of Scarborough's work suggests that the wetness and dryness of these worlds matter as well. Building on these key notions of the importance of environmental conditions in building understanding of water systems, this paper discusses the growing...

  • Into International Waters (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Crumley.

    The remarkable career of Vernon Scarborough includes a long, lesser-known association with international programs of significance to archaeology and anthropology. Drawing on the meticulous investigation of Maya water management strategies, Vern has taken that interest to the global level, working in South Asia, Sri Lanka, Greece, Bali, and the American Southwest. His has been an important and persistent voice in the global change community for a quarter century, leading an enormous project on...

  • Looking at the Ancient Maya from the Outside (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sander Van Der Leeuw.

    I owe Vern Scarborough a great debt for the opportunity to look into the dynamics of Maya research in the context of the IHOPE Maya project. As a historian and prehistoric archaeologist, I have been struck by the way in which, in the research, two perspectives were commingled: the prehistorian's perspective looking (back) towards the origins of the heyday of (Classic) Maya culture and the historian's perspective looking (forward) for the emergence of certain elements of it. It seems to me that...

  • Other Archaeologies of the Present: Enduring Legacies of Past Land Use (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Morrison.

    Some scholars take the label 'archaeology of the present' to refer to the study of very recent archaeological records and material remains, but here I use it to refer to the ways in which even ancient human action has ongoing significance for the present and the future. One of the many arenas of the contemporary significance of the 'archaeological' past is the legacy of past land use, including that of irrigated agriculture, on regional and global vegetation, landforms, and even climate. I...

  • Perspectives on water management systems in Mesopotamia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Norman Yoffee.

    Over the years, Vern Scarborough has considered how water management systems have been created, altered, and in some cases abandoned, especially in response to the evolution of political systems. For a Mesopotamianist, Vern's work obviously resonates with that of Robert McC. Adams. In this paper I review some of the lasting contributions of Adams to the study of water management systems in Mesopotamia. I review especially a series of essays that Adams wrote after his retirement from the...

  • Salt Pollution and Climate Change at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Tankersley. Jessica Thress.

    In order to determine if the water management systems of ancestral Puebloans caused salt pollution during periods of climatic change and increased aridity, sediment samples were collected from ancient irrigation features and reservoirs in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Today, these features are filled with sediments. Periods of climate change were determined with AMS radiocarbon and OSL dating. Soil salinity was measured using a conductivity cell and plotted against age in order to illustrate changes...

  • Water Mountains and Water Trails: The View from Northwest Peten (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Freidel. Mary Jane Acuna. Carlos Chiriboga.

    Vernon Scarborough’s path-breaking work on lowland Maya water management has focused attention on the way that the Maya conceptualized and utilized landscape and its water sources for political, religious and economic purposes. Research in northwestern Peten suggests that canoe traffic linked the site of El Achiotal adjacent to the Central Karstic Uplands to the San Pedro Martir River by way of the San Juan River commanded by El Peru-Waka’. The Mirador hill at Waka’ was conceived as a water...

  • Water, Weather and the Fallacy of the Rationalist - Romanticism dichotomy (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Roland Fletcher.

    Angkor, in Cambodia, between the 7th and the 13th century depended on the largest urban water management infrastructure of the agrarian urban world. The key elements of this infrastructure came into being before the global climate transition of the 9th-10th century CE. That infrastructure was vital for coping with the start of the Medieval Warm Phase when other societies around the world experienced severe crises. By the 14th century, some parts of Angkor’s infrastructure were nearly 500 years...