Grasping the Green Giant: The Epistemology of Ancient Maya Agriculture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Agricultural production is a fundamental aspect of most societies, and research into agriculture has focused on invention, innovation, involution, intensification, and disintensification in varying forms worldwide. Generations of scholarship have accumulated knowledge and theorized about how agricultural systems function. Early research relied on Malthusian assumptions of population overgrowth and environmental determinism. However, significant social and technological changes over the last 200 years have led researchers to push against these boundaries and to study agricultural systems, smallholders, and landesque capital. These broader shifts have largely coincided with historical processes that include the widespread use of (and reaction to) specialized fertilizers. To a large extent, modern nitrogen fixation has underscored the importance of understanding the history of agricultural research and how perspectives have shifted on agricultural methods over time in relation to modes of production. Maya archaeology in particular has seen drastic changes in perceptions of past agricultural practices and in models of past agricultural production. Understanding the implications of these changes holds great value in reinterpreting ancient Maya settlement and overall sustainability.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36012.0