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We focus on pre-Columbian agricultural regimes in the Maya Lowlands, using new datasets of archaeological wood charcoal, seeds, phytoliths, and starch grains; biological properties of plants; and contemporary Indigenous practices. We address inherited models of agriculture in the lowlands: the limitations of the environment (finding more affordances than anticipated by earlier models); the homogeneity of agricultural strategies (finding more heterogeneity of strategies across the lowlands than a single rigid template); the centrality of maize in agriculture (finding more reliance on root crops and tree crops than historically documented); the focus on the milpa system as food base (finding more agroforestry, homegardening, horticulture, and wild resource management than previously documented); the dominance of swidden strategies in agricultural practices (finding more diverse practices than accounted for in most models); and the foregrounding of maize crop failure in collapse models (finding more evidence of resilience and sustainable agricultural practices than predicted). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fuelling ancient Maya cities and industries has been identified for some time now as a critical concern for the pre-Columbian Maya, especially since there is evidence of dramatic deforestation throughout the Maya Lowlands during the Preclassic and Classic periods. This article aims to trace the domestic fuel economy at the lowland site of Naachtun, Guatemala, over 8 centuries (150–950 ce) in order to discover its role in the development of society. A significant anthracological (charcoal) dataset from household contexts is examined through multivariate analyses and sequencing. A detailed statement of taxon identification is provided. The results demonstrate that there were two systems of firewood use over time. The first consisted of the sustainable use of fragmented, diverse woodlands. The second, beginning around 750 ce, changed to a heavier reliance on multi-purpose, fruit-bearing trees and pine wood. We hypothesize that forest resource management was initially linked to an extensive, subsistence-based farming system in which mature forests and fallow land were constantly renewed, ensuring their sustainability. The change towards the use of woodlands enriched with useful plants (perhaps forest gardens or fruit tree plantations) was probably an adaptation strategy at the time of the Naachtun population peak. It suggests that fuel was now subject to a city allocation system that relied on new supply sources, some of which were potentially remote. Our results also indicate a substantially drier forest cover during at least the Early Classic period in the Naachtun region, corroborating regional palaeoclimate data. This demonstrates the reliability and usefulness of charcoal studies for palaeoecological reconstructions in the high biodiversity tropical forests of the Maya Lowlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-Columbian food production in the Maya Lowlands was long characterized as reliant on extensive, slash-and-burn agriculture as the sole cultivation system possible in the region, given environmental limitations, with maize as the dominant crop. While aspects of this "swidden thesis" of Maya agriculture have been chipped away in recent years, there has been an underappreciation of the many forms of long-term capital investments in agriculture made by ancient Maya people. Here, we review the last three decades of research that has overturned the swidden thesis, focusing on long-term strategies. We demonstrate long-lasting agricultural investments by Maya people, in social capital including multigenerational land tenure, in cultivated capital including long-lived trees, and in landesque capital including soil amendments and landscape engineering projects, such as terracing and wetland modification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long argued that the ancient Maya actively exploited forest resources, but the nature of these forest economies and their long-term impact on the landscape are still vigorously debated. We address this issue through charcoal analysis at the Classic site of Naachtun (Northern Guatemala), systematically analyzing the use of the breadnut ( Brosimum alicastrum ) and sapodilla ( Manilkara zapota ) trees for domestic firewood over eight centuries. These two species are among the most economically and ecologically valuable for modern Maya people, and have been at the core of the debate concerning ancient Maya subsistence economy. We carry out an experimental anthracological study and discuss the implications of its results from a diachronic and taphonomic perspective for the ancient Maya site of Naachtun. We assume that sapodilla wood was intensively exploited as a primary source of fuel throughout the site's occupation history, and that its importance in the fuel economy until the city's abandonment was the product of careful management practices. Our results also indicate that breadnut wood use may have been much more significant than generally perceived in the charcoal records of Maya Lowland sites. An increase in breadnut wood use during the Late Classic, which corresponds to the demographic apogee of Naachtun, is evidence that this tree was of sufficient economic and/or ecological importance to be maintained despite the growing population pressure on the local forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine wood charcoal assemblages that were recovered from ash layers in Terminal Classic (A.D. 800- 950) burials at the Maya site of Rio Bee to understand the use of fuel wood in funerary rites. Compared to charcoal deposits from domestic and non-funerary contexts, the spectrum of wood taxa used in the burial deposits is unique, which suggests specific fire-related practices. Members of the Sapotaceae family and Cordia sp. dominated all contexts and were clearly primary fuels. In contrast, the use of pine (Pinus sp.), which does not grow locally today, was limited to ritual practices. In addition, it seems that a deliberate effort was made to maximize the taxonomic richness of the fuel wood used in burials Funerary charcoal deposits appear to have been carefully and intentionally "composed" for burning during funerary rites. We propose that this practice materialized the relationship between fire, ash, and the cycles of life and death, which are often symbolized by plant life cycles in the work/view of ancient Maya societies. This study also emphasizes the contribution of anthracological (wood charcoal) analysis to the reconstruction of human behavior and the importance of systematic paleoethnobotanical sampling in funerary contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Biosphere Reserve of the Maya Lowlands, the large‐scale characterisation of the current wetlands ecology and the exploitation and management of their natural resources by the ancient Maya is severely constrained by the forest. This paper presents an integrated geomatic, geoarchaeological and ecological approach, developed to overcome this obstacle in the microregion of the Naachtun Maya city. It is based on the analysis of LiDAR, and field and laboratory data. This approach has revealed the mosaic of current ecological conditions of the wetlands, thanks to the characterisation and spatial modelling of the landforms, hydrology, vegetation and soil cover. It has enabled the characterisation of numerous hydraulic and agricultural structures: 70 large reservoirs, raised fields (the largest over 1.5 km²), canals and ditches (with a cumulative length of over 300 km) and dikes. Eight morphological types of hybrid structures—hydraulic and agricultural—are described. These constructions have enabled the intensive exploitation of water and soil resources, their management and the resulting environmental risks. This study has shown that the agroecosystems of lowland areas were created as early as ~1500 B.C.E. and evolved in a polyphasic way, until a phase of radical decline around 1000 C.E. This study has made it possible to characterise the legacy of the Maya Early Anthropocene on current wetlands, as well as their important natural and cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fire rituals were performed in political buildings after city abandonment. • Charcoal spectra compared to regular Terminal Classic abandonment deposits in houses. • Display diverse patterns in terms of formation process and plant composition. • Probably reflect post-collapse occupations instead of Late Postclassic pilgrimages. • Question population mobility dynamics in Maya cities' hinterlands after collapse. This paper focuses on the process of abandonment in pre-Hispanic Maya societies. Toward the end of the Classic period (250–950 CE), the general desertion of the Central Lowland cities gave place to multiple acts – including fires and on-floor ash spreading – intended to ritually terminate the occupation of houses and buildings. While the urban area of Naachtun, Northern Peten, was apparently depopulated by the end of the Terminal Classic (830–950 CE), fire ceremonies were performed in two political buildings during the Early Postclassic (950–1250 CE). The detailed study of the remaining charcoal deposits and their comparison with habitual Late and Terminal Classic abandonment deposits in households allows us to examine the material, social and environmental dimension of these fire ceremonies. We argue that these late rituals were held by people who were still tied to the city and that they are thus distinct from those performed as part of pilgrimages to sacred landscapes during the Late Postclassic and Colonial times. Instead, we state that they reflect the continuity of rites and of collective memory drawn from Naachtun's history, providing indirect evidence that human settlements persisted around the abandoned cities for some time after the collapse of Classic political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Botanical residues recovered from excavations in the Southeast Marketplace of Piedras Negras provide information about the healing and medical activities of the site's Classic period (a.d. 350–900) inhabitants, and point towards the intersection between commerce and medicine for the ancient Maya. The plants were likely exchanged at the market then used on-site for the purposes of healing. The botanical remains are complemented by both architectural and bioarchaeological evidence for healing at this locus, including a high concentration of sweatbaths and evidence for palliative tooth extraction. With the aid of ethnohistory, we identify health care practices potentially associated with the plant remains. However, we expand on basic understandings of "healing" with a critical look at how some medicinal plants may have been ritually invoked, even when never directly ingested or applied topically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Maya early Anthropocene (2000 BCE – 1000 CE) in Mesoamerica, socio-environmental interactions contributed to the rise and decline of the ancient Maya civilisation. At the scale of the exploitation territories of the Maya cities, the temporal variations of hydrological and sedimentary dynamics in response to anthropogenic and climate drivers are still poorly known. This constrains diachronic analyses of socio-ecosystems and, more particularly, of water and soil resources in the hinterlands. This manuscript analyses and presents a regional comparison of the dynamics of one of the most transformed hydrosystems and morpho-sedimentary systems by the societies of the Southern Maya Lowlands (SMLs), during the second half of the Holocene. It focuses on the lake basin of the polje named El Infierno bajo and its watershed, which was the main water storage area for the Maya city of Naachtun – a large regional capital between 150 and 950 CE –, and which contains many remains of hydraulic and agrarian structures. This integrated palaeolimnological, geoarchaeological and hydrological approach, based on the analyses of morpho-sedimentary archives, LiDAR altimetry data and hydrological data, resulted in the construction of hydro-sedimentary baselines (pre- syn- and post-ancient Maya anthropogenic impacts). Currently, the intermittent lake (civale) of this bajo responds to strong seasonal and interannual hydrological variabilities, under climate control. During the past 5500 years, hydro-sedimentary fluctuations were marked by the alternation of seven main hydrological periods (HP), characterised by high and low lake levels (alternately perennial, intermittent and dry lake) and six main erosion and sediment transfer periods (ESTP), marked by strong and low alluvial and colluvial detrital inputs in the lowlands. Anthropogenic and climate forcings have independently or jointly controlled the hydrologic and sedimentary budgets of the lake basin. Lithofacies, depositional processes, accumulation rates and drivers of the anthropogenic detrital inputs – the so-called "Maya clays" –, are analysed and quantified from ∼1500 BCE to ∼1150 CE. It thus reveals one of the longest periods of occupation and exploitation of natural resources of the SMLs, for over 2500 years during the Preclassic, Classic and Post-classic Maya periods. The hydro-sedimentary dynamics in the bajos of the SMLs Elevated Interior Region (EIR), such as El Infierno, enabled the long-term exploitation of water and soil resources for agrarian purposes, thanks to the construction of hydraulic and agrarian palimpsest landscapes shaped by the socio-ecosystems. • Wetlands palaeolimnology, geoarchaeology and hydrology based on sedimentary, LiDAR and hydrological data. • Current strong seasonal and interannual hydrological variabilities of the bajos, under climate control. • 7 hydrological periods and 6 erosion and sediment transfer periods during the past 5500 years. • Anthropogenic and climate forcings controlled the hydrologic and sedimentary budgets of the lake. • A long-term exploitation of water and soil resources in Maya Lowlands EIR (1500 BCE to 1150 CE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phytoliths, unlike pollen and charcoal, are frequently conserved in sediments in the Maya lowlands but are rarely used as paleoenvironmental proxies. To better interpret and reconstruct paleoecological signatures and changes, it is necessary to provide current analog of fossil assemblages. To do so, we selected six modern ecosystems and differentiated them by their soil phytolith assemblages in the ancient Maya city of Naachtun (northern Petén, Guatemala). We studied the plant communities and relative phytoliths frequencies in surface soils on 4 north–south vegetation transect, composed of 43 quadrats. These transects cross forests and savannahs in low swampy areas North and South of the site, and hill forest in its center, where the city was built. Quadrats were statistically compared using multivariate analyses (CA). Six types of plant communities were characterized by their phytolith assemblages, as well as on the presence of siliceous bioindicators such as diatoms and sponges. The D/P and LU indexes developed for these assemblages allow us to provide a precise signature of the current vegetation cover, and identify the presence of undergrowth in forest areas, or forest edges in savannah areas. This first modern phytolith reference for the Maya area will contribute to the development of paleoecological reconstructions for this zone. • Botanical description of six plant communities in the Petén. • Distinction and identification of ecosystems through phytolith assemblages. • Use of phytolith indices to specify the ecology of plant formations. • First modern environmental reference for phytoliths in the Maya lowlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]