Wetland Maize Farming by 6000 BP Gave Way to Upland Farming with the Rise of Ancient Maya Settlements and Political Centers

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent research in the American neotropics suggests that cultivation of plants for food began early in the Middle Holocene (ca. 7500 BP) and continued for millennia prior to the adoption of surplus agricultural production of domesticated staple foods by 5000 BP in South America and 4000 BP in the Maya lowlands. Data reflecting early plant cultivation in the Maya lowlands are patchy, lacking information on shifts in farming strategies leading to intensification. Limited data from sites in southern Mexico and northern Belize suggest that by 6000 BP maize and other crops were being cultivated. We present multiproxy isotopic, microbotanical, and paleoecological evidence from wetlands in southern Belize indicating production of C4 plants (likely maize) by 6000 BP. Our data suggest a cessation of wetland farming after 2200 BP, corresponding with a shift to upland cultivation evidenced at the nearby Classic period site Uxbenká. This shift is contemporaneous with the initial construction of settlements with stone architecture on a landscape where swidden and mulch farming of upland hillslopes has persisted for 2.5 millennia and is still practiced today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• 2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36714.0