The Contributions of Vernon Scarborough in Water Management and Sustainability, Part 2: The Classic Maya
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
Working in Maya during the last three decades almost certainly includes reading the works of Dr. 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 water management and sustainability in the Maya area and how they have impacted their own research.
Other Keywords
Water Management •
Maya •
Landscape •
Geoarchaeology •
Agriculture •
Irrigation •
Migration •
Ecology •
Wetlands •
Urbanism
Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica •
Central America
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)
- Documents (9)
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Ancient Water Collection and Storage in the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands (2016)
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The Elevated Interior Region (EIR) of the Maya Lowlands posed especially difficult challenges for year-round ancient human occupation and urbanization. Accessible surface and groundwater sources are rare and a 5-month dry season necessitated the annual collection and storage of rainwater in order to concentrate human population. Here we review ancient Maya water storage adaptation in the EIR including urban and hinterland reservoirs as well as residential scale tanks and cisterns. Large...
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Comparing Ancient Human-Nature Reslationships at Tikal, Guatemala and Caracol, Belize (2016)
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Gordon Willey wrote about the importance of settlement patterns, focusing on the ways that humans distributed themselves over the landscape. While his and other early researchers’ efforts incorporated built features, they did not really research or assess the impact of the human-nature relationship within a given landscape. Vern Scarborough’s work has helped to fill in this gap in the Maya area, particularly relating to Tikal, Guatemala and to northern Belize. This paper builds on Scarborough’s...
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A Flow of Ideas: Water Management from an Aguada and into Wetlands (2016)
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The approach taken by Vernon Scarborough to the study of water management in the Maya area has been a thorough investigation of the role of water in the formation of both the relationships of people with their environment, and also the impact of water in the organization of people among themselves. While I was a student of Vern Scarborough's from 2003 through 2005, he emphasized three key points in my thinking. The first is an openness to seek is a cross cultural analogy. Secondly, he stressed...
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The Flow of Knowledge: Ancient Water Systems and Mentorscapes (2016)
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From his initial doctoral work at Cerros in the late 1970s to his most recent investigations in Tikal, Vernon Scarborough’s research goals have consistently used water control as an instrument to better understand social complexity. His research has spanned a period of our own history when more sustainable approaches to growth are desperately needed as access to water is of an ever increasing concern. As his student, now colleague, this paper will highlight how Vernon Scarborough and his work...
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Irrigation Systems and Other Forms of Intensive Agriculture at the Ancient Maya City of Tikal (2016)
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In addition to an extensive short fallow system and the intensive cultivation of dooryard gardens and orchards that probably produced a major portion of the food supply at Tikal, other forms of primary food production were being utilized, as well. Significantly, the Maya seem to have developed intensive hydraulic agriculture in the lands south of the Perdido Reservoir. Stratigraphic profiles, δ13C data, and other forms of archaeological evidence clearly indicate that maize was being cultivated...
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Maya Archaeology: Research & Interpretations with Dr. Scarborough (2016)
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More than 25 years of collaborative research with Dr. Scarborough has provided for interesting ups & downs in understanding prehistoric Maya activities. Beginning at Cerros, intervening distant research, rejoining at Kinal (Guatemala), and culminating in NW Belize (for now) has allowed for a fascinating journey of archaeological investigations. Presented here are both scientific endeavors as well as events from field activities during nearly three decades of mutual research interests from...
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Sacred Water Mountains of the Copan Valley: A View from Rastrojon (2016)
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The temples and stone monuments of Copan are replete with symbols of water and sustenance, both driving forces in the development of complex society throughout the Maya region and greater Mesoamerica. Like other urban environments, Copan harnessed the power and religious nature of water, mountains, maize, ancestors, and the divine ruler, juxtaposed to their dualistic counterparts of fire and drought, to construct their urban landscape, cosmovision and social structures. Research on ancient water...
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Three Tropical Thoughts: Vern Scarborough and the Migration to Tropical Ecology (2016)
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Vern’s collaborative research fosters a number of insights both across investigators and disciplines. My top-three picks are tropical ecology, water cities, and Gulf Coast origin of Lowlands occupation. (1) Vern focuses on understanding implications of tropical ecology, central to which is high diversity and therefore low density. Working through the implications of this for human settlements has perhaps been his most important accomplishment. (2) Maya water cities are obvious attempts to break...
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Upstream, Downstream, Sacred Worlds (2016)
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Archaeological study of ancient water management has grown tremendously in recent decades. Vern Scarborough has contributed centrally to advances in this domain, in the Maya area of Mesoamerica, as well as in cross-cultural examinations extending to the U.S. Southwest, and more distantly, South and Southeast Asia. Even his early concerns with ancient American ballcourts and ballgames link to water, with regard to the watery underworld to which the courts were entry portals. Scarborough’s...