"He Entered the Water" … Maya Wetlands and Their Caretakers

Summary

An epitaph for the death of Classic Maya rulers, "he entered the water" is an apt descriptor for a Maya archaeologist whose career spanned the royal and the watery. Peter D. Harrison—whose email address contained the word ahau (ruler, using a Colonial orthography)—was a master of scalar contrast. He attended to the small-scale details of a dynastic headquarters within the Tikal Central Acropolis and also theorized grandly about the role of wetlands in Classic Maya society. He became an advocate for the aesthetic beauty and utility of these watery portals that are ubiquitous in the southern lowlands. As a member of the 1981 Pulltrouser Swamp Project, I look back on Harrison’s approach to wetlands, his impact on later scholarship and on the turbulent years that followed during which a science of Maya wetland utilization fitfully emerged.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From the Fields to the Palaces of the Prehistoric Maya: Hono(u)ring the Contributions of the late Peter D. Harrison   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage