Environmental Justice and the Water Temple at Cara Blanca, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Nestled between stark white limestone cliffs and freshly burned agricultural fields, the Cara Blanca, Belize, water temple complex sits teetering on the edge of a 60+ m deep cenote. The Ancestral Maya built the structures so as to integrate the structure and the landscape—with materials from the Cara Blanca waters and items (such as water jars) that connected construction and use of space. This “ecological transformation,” which was a pivotal community space for Ancestral Maya during the Terminal Classic period, has subsided into the landscape, becoming heavily overgrown and partially falling into the water. Today, the infrastructure of the space, the water temple complex, is playing a pivotal role in the protection of the landscape, including the health of the Cara Blanca waters. This paper will explore the duration of infrastructural intention and impact of archaeological infrastructure on movements of environmental justice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37604.0