"The World is a Garden": Human-Animal Relations and Sustainability Comparative Studies of Classic Maya and Early China

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The interactions among organisms along with environmental factors in non-Western cultures, require to be re-examined since Western humanity-nature binary explanations fail to take into account indigenous ontologies. In the title, I prioritize environment among these three objects because I want to demonstrate that it is a prerequisite, helping shape the ways of human and nonhuman interaction. Ancestral Maya and early Chinese cosmologies share similar considerations of animals as fellow beings, each having roles in maintaining the world.

In the presentation, I propose that ancestral Maya pursued a respectful, sustainable interaction with wildlife and the forest in the Classic period from 300 to 900 CE by archaeofaunal and paleo-environmental evidence from diverse contexts, combined with ideology and ethnography records.

I will first address the ontological shift from Western notions and introduce how indigenous worldview reframes Environment-Human-Animal relations. Next, I will discuss sustainability in natural resources. Through the case study from the ancestral Maya world, I prospect that this project may provide a reference for re-examining similar topics in early China.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40433.0