House and City: Ancient Maya Water Management in Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "“The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The rainfall-dependency of the ancestral Maya shaped their daily and seasonal existence in homes, communities, and cities. They adapted quite well to the annual wet and dry seasonal cycles—as well as extreme weather events like hurricanes, tropical storms and severe droughts, resulting in an enduring history in the tropical jungles of Belize. From farmer to royals, integral to their survival were diverse scales of water features to capture, store, move and drain water—especially for agriculture and a consistent supply of drinking water, as well as for construction (e.g., plaster production), manufacturing (e.g., ceramics), bathing, cooking, and so on. The Maya also treated water with the respect it was due resulting in sacred watery landscapes in addition to those shaped by subsistence water systems creating a complex relationship with water. Maintaining water features required long-term, sustainable management and skill that provided the means to withstand the elements for millennia and provide lessons for present and future water management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• “The Center and the Edge”: How the Archaeology of Belize Is Foundational for Understanding the Ancient Maya   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38117.0