Sustainability of the Model Milpa Cycle: Connecting from Master Maya Forest Gardeners to the Ancient Maya Settlement Patterns

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.

Globally, the Mesoamerican and Maya Milpa is gravely misunderstood as primitive, called shifting cultivation by the sole focus on annual crops combined with the fallacy of fallow, accurately defined as an unseeded plowed field. The attention to the annuals ignores the intentional and patient development of perennials, the utilitarian trees grown for fruit and lumber not to mention the diverse utility of secondary forests. In this paper, we consider local Master Maya Forest Gardeners whose intimate three-dimensional knowledge of the forest as a garden link directly to the foundation of the settlement patterns of ancient Maya civilization and demonstrate a path to food sovereignty today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advancing Public Perceptions of Sustainability through Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23040