Wetland fields as mirrors of drought and the Maya abandonment

Abstract

Getting at the Maya Collapse has both temporal and geographic dimensions, because it occurred over centuries and great distances. This requires a wide range of research sites and proxy records, ranging from lake cores to geomorphic evidence, such as stratigraphy and speleothems. This article synthesizes these lines of evidence, together with previously undescribed findings on Maya wetland formation and use in a key region near the heart of the central Maya Lowlands. Growing lines of evidence point to dryer periods in Maya history, which correlate to major periods of transition. The main line of evidence in this paper comes from wetland use and formation studies, which show evidence for both large-scale environmental change and human adaptation or response. Based on multiproxy studies, Maya wetland fields had a long and varied history, but most evidence indicates the start of disuse during or shortly after the Maya Terminal Classic. Hence, the pervasiveness of collapse extended into a range of wetlands, including perennial wetlands, which should have been less responsive to drought as a driver of disuse. A synthesis of the lines of evidence for canal infilling shows no attempts to reclaim them after the Classic Period.

Fig. 1.

Northern Belize Maya sites and wetlands. Chan Cahal site (Upper) and BOP site (Lower). (Photographs courtesy of A. Padilla, Ecological Communications Corporation, Austin, TX and S.L.-B.).

Fig. 2.

Chan Cahal generalized soil profile and canal proxy evidence model. (Reprinted from Quat Sci Rev, 28, Beach T, et al., A review of human and natural changes in Maya Lowlands wetlands over the Holocene, 1710\x{2013}1724, Copyright (2009), with permission from Elsevier.)

Fig. 3.

BOP generalized soil profile and canal proxy evidence model (Reprinted from Quat Sci Rev, 28, Beach T, et al., A review of human and natural changes in Maya Lowlands wetlands over the Holocene, 1710–1724, Copyright (2009), with permission from Elsevier.)