Go with the Flow: Tracking Water Management and Climate Adaptations in the Maya Lowlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists have documented correlations between societal change and environmental variability in the Maya lowlands, particularly during significant events like the Terminal Classic “collapse”, which has been linked with severe drought. Water-based infrastructure played a crucial role in daily life and the sustainability of ancestral Maya communities, and its construction likely also varied with climate. This study complies and models published radiocarbon dates associated with water management features from across the Maya lowlands to examine the timing of their construction and frequency of use in relation to periods of drought. Results show that Preclassic (~1000 BCE–300 CE) Maya communities maintained relatively low levels of investment in formal, large-scale water management features until their adaptive strategies shifted at the end of the Late Preclassic, around 1 CE, in the face of multi-century drought. Clear patterns of post-drought construction appear at the start of the Classic period (300-900 CE), and peak around 600-700 CE when elites began investing in constructing reservoir systems in the monumental site cores of major polities. Though the pace of construction slowed during the Terminal Classic, water control likely became more important as a resilient adaptation to population growth, landscape degradation, and climate change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52611