Not Your Backyard Garden: Terraces in the Shadow of La Milpa’s Temples

Summary

Terrace construction for agriculture was integral to the survival and growth of ancient Maya centers in the Lowland Neotropics. Terraces supplied communities with food for consumption and trade, materials for construction and goods production, and plants of medicinal and ritual significance. Research into ancient Maya agricultural practices has been largely situated in wetlands contexts, known to be sites of extensive landscape modification for agricultural purposes. Nevertheless, terraces are also identified as being integrated into the architectural arrangement of the cores of large urban centers throughout the Maya Lowlands. This paper discusses one such set of terraces, built and maintained adjacent to the public monumental core of Classic-period La Milpa, the third largest ancient Maya urban center in Belize. Excavations conducted on this system of terraces, positioned in the shadow of the three largest monumental temples at La Milpa, uncovered a series of modestly constructed retaining walls spanning the crest and shoulders of a 7 m-high limestone outcrop. This presentation examines some of the preliminary results from these excavations, and provides a discussion of the methods that will be used to identify the types of plants that were cultivated on these urban terraces, emphasizing macro-botanical, phytolith, and starch analyses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20553