Raised Field Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands: Archaeobotanical Remains from Birds of Paradise

Summary

Up until the late 1990s, researchers believed the Maya were solely reliant on slash and burn agricultural practices. However, discoveries of rectangular canal patterns in the margins of wetlands in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico shined light on a new agricultural practice: raised wetland fields. One example of wetland fields is found at the site Birds of Paradise (BOP) in the Rio Bravo region of northwestern Belize. The macrobotanicals recovered from the raised fields and canals at BOP are compared to the four stages of occupation as outlined in the Birds of Paradise model on the basis of previous research. Since no previous macrobotanical analysis has been done at BOP, this research will make an important contribution to understanding what the Maya were growing in wetland canals and how the land changed over time with the implementation of agricultural practices.

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): 22040