Shellfish Harvesting, Subsistence Strategies, and Human/Environmental Interactions in the Río Champotón Drainage, Campeche, Mexico

Summary

With regional occupational continuity from the Middle Formative through Postclassic Periods, the Río Champotón drainage provides an ideal case study to examine long-term change in ancient Maya subsistence strategies and human/environmental interactions during two and a half millennia of human occupation. This poster presents the results of analysis of an assemblage of over 13,000 shell artifacts generated by the Champotón Regional Settlement Survey during seven seasons of research in the Río Champotón drainage and the adjacent central coast of Campeche, Mexico. Patterns of shellfish exploitation documented in the region were embedded within broader changes in regional subsistence systems. The results of this study indicate that the long-term sustainability of sedentary communities in the region was due to two factors: the availability of diverse food resources; and adaptability, defined as the ability of communities to alter subsistence practices in the face of changing ecological, political, and social conditions. This is particularly notable during the Late and Terminal Classic Periods, which witnessed the decline and demographic collapse of urban centers across many regions of the Maya Lowlands. The central role of adaptability provides an important long-term case study in sustainability and resilience with broad relevance in the social and environmental sciences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21627