Aventura: Understanding Sustainable Cities

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As over half of the world lives in cities today, there is perhaps no more pressing question than: how can people create cities that are sustainable? Archaeology is uniquely suited to answer questions about the longevity of cities, because archaeologists excavate long expanses of human history. The social, political, economic, and environmental pressures that modern people and cities face are not new and archaeology provides a means to evaluate how people in the past successfully and unsuccessfully dealt with challenges in establishing and maintaining cities. This presentation examines archaeological evidence and public education programs generated by the Aventura Archaeology Project. With a five millennia history, Aventura provided humans a home across periods of vastly differing environmental and socio-political conditions. The PreColumbian Maya city at Aventura thrived during the period of the Terminal Classic Maya collapse providing a window to understand how cities survive periods of political and environmental disruption. Public education programs focus on developing local partnerships to sponsor events for a broad range of stakeholders: archaeology fairs for families, summer camp experiences for kids, and workshops for educators and adults.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25114