New Perspectives on the Bajos of the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands: PfB and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the early 1990s, Fred Valdez, Vernon Scarborough, Nicholas Dunning and others initiated a project examining ancient Maya land use in the Programme for Belize including several small bajos. These karst depressions are common physiographic features within the Elevated Interior Region (EIR) of the Maya Lowlands and are often fringed by ancient Maya settlement. Views on the attraction of bajos for the Maya have ranged from their function as agricultural breadbaskets to their general unsuitability for cultivation. A more nuanced understanding of bajos within the EIR is emerging with the aid of lidar surveys and intensive field and lab investigations of soils, water, and multiple paleoecology proxy lines of evidence. Bajos have proven to be environmentally varied, and ancient Maya adaptations to these features were similarly and fascinatingly varied.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52703