Predators and Prey among the Ancient Maya: A GIS Approach to Understanding Archaeofauna and Past Environments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human-caused environmental changes and their effects on the Classic Maya continue to be topics of vital research importance. Zooarchaeological data can provide valuable inferences about ancient Maya environments but must be assessed with care. In the Maya area, habitat fidelity models use high predator abundances to indicate the local presence of the mature forest that many prefer. Foraging ecology, traditionally focused on food prey, suggests that high abundances of “non-preferred food prey” (which would include predators since most are not preferred as food) would instead be indicative of a disturbed ecosystem subject to high hunting pressure. In the ancient Maya world, however, predators were often very highly valued for other cultural reasons, particularly as political symbols of wealth and power. Their abundance in Maya archaeological assemblages thus may represent either the local availability of their habitats or their value as a resource worth high effort including long-distance hunting forays, trade, or even captive rearing. We use GIS to map zooarchaeological data on terrestrial predators, preferred food prey, and preferred non-food prey alongside settlement data on population sizes and social and political complexity, and other non-faunal environmental reconstructions, to evaluate the utility of predator frequencies as environmental predictors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36204.0