Agricultural Intensification in Another Mesoamerican Lake Basin: Recent Evidence from Pacific Nicaragua

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Deborah Nichols explored the relationship between subsistence, especially agriculture, and changing modes of settlement and social organization throughout her career. For the most part, her contributions on these topics focused on the Basin of Mexico, where early inhabitants clustered along the shores of shallow lakes, taking advantage of resources of the lakes, lakeshore, and adjacent uplands. Archaic period exploitation of wild resources eventually gave way to lake-margin farming, which intensified during Early through Late Formative times. Another large lake basin, that of Lake Xolotlan and Lake Cocibolca, in modern Nicaragua, has not been investigated as intensively as the Basin of Mexico, but recent research shows surprisingly early evidence of maize, continuous lake margin farming during Early and Middle Formative times, and creation of black earth anthrosols for maize, cotton, and probably other crops on the slopes south of Lake Xolotlan. A symposium honoring Deborah Nichols’ contributions seems an appropriate venue to present some of these recent results.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50013