Ancient Maya Water Control, Wetlands, and the Fiery Pool

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of Steve Houston’s sublime volumes is The Fiery Pool, which was also a groundbreaking exhibit. These explored the themes of the Maya and their relationships with water. Here we consider the themes from The Fiery Pool from the perspectives of ancient Maya Wetland fields, "creatures", and water control and quality. Water and water management has grown to be a major part of Maya studies with research into water features such as terraces, dams, diversions, reservoirs, canals, and wetland field complexes. Steven Houston has had an eye on all of this work from insights into terracing at Tamarindito decades ago to the massive El Zotz reservoir and dam to wetland fields popping out in unexpected places. We focus on Houston’s contributions to our shared work in each of these areas over the decades as the environment and particularly water and climate have burgeoned as Maya topics from the perspectives of archaeological science.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24962