Living with Water: Classic Maya Reservoir Management and Urban Engineering at El Peru-Waka', Guatemala

Summary

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

Since the first descriptions of their jungle-covered ruins by European explorers, scholars have wondered how the artistically and architecturally vibrant centers of the Preclassic and Classic Maya (ca. 500 BCE – 900 CE) flourished in what is often characterized as a difficult tropical environment, with one vital and difficult resource being water. Investigations of water management by the Waka’ Archaeological Project (PAW) at the Classic Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ in the western Petén, Guatemala have focused on how the coupled processes of water movement, water storage, and soil formation impacted and constrained urban water availability and quality maintenance. These investigations collected archaeological and geological data through the coring and excavation of previously identified reservoirs and adjacent residential architecture. In this paper, these data will be used to explore the hypothesis that these particular water catchment features, and Lowland Maya reservoirs in general, functioned and were maintained as living ponds, water gardens filled with plant and animal life that would filter out urban waste and other contaminants, ensuring a supply of fresh, potable drinking water to tropical urban inhabitants.

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): 53226