Prehistoric Human-Environment Interactions in the Southern Maya Lowlands: The Holmul Region Case

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With National Science Foundation's support, archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli and geographer David Wahl will lead a team of US and Guatemalan students in an interdisciplinary study of the dynamics of human settlement and the environment of Maya civilization in the fragile wetlands of northeastern Guatemala. Environmental change, either anthropogenically induced and/or associated with natural climate variability, has been posited as contributing to two periods of marked population decline in the southern Maya Lowlands. The first episode occurred ~A.D. 200 and is thought to have affected a number of large Preclassic centers across the southern Maya Lowlands; the second occurred at the end of the Late Classic period ~A.D. 900, and affected most sites in the southern Maya lowlands. In both cases, paleoenvironmental data have been interpreted to suggest that climate change and environmental degradation were the primary causes of extensive demographic decline. However, a full picture of the chronology and causes of environmental change during the Pre-Hispanic period has not emerged because many records are insecurely dated, are lacking from key cultural areas, or lack sufficient resolution. Moreover, the Maya Lowlands is a very heterogeneous region, with distinct prehistoric cultural landscapes and local adaptations to specific environmental conditions. Examination of these landscapes on a case-by-case basis will provide the foundation for drawing broader conclusions about the dynamic human/environment relationship.This study will provide a detailed record of human occupation and environmental change from the Holmul region, an area of the Maya Lowlands where settlement was first established around 1000 B.C. and large urban centers flourished in the Late Preclassic (300 B.C.-A.D. 250) and Classic periods (A.D. 250-900) but for which paleo-environmental data is lacking. In order to model the effects of environmental degradation and/or climate change on the cultural trajectory of the region, this research will use a wide range of paleoenvironmental indicators in conjunction with detailed settlement history. Lake sediments from the vicinity of human settlement will be studied using a variety of techniques including pollen, charcoal, stable isotope analyses, and radiometric AMS dating. Survey transects cross-cutting local ecotones will document residential and land use features systematically. Evidence of environmental change that is connected to local demographic shifts and temporally correlated to similar evidence in other areas across the Maya Lowlands has the potential to offer strong support to these models. Thus, this project will build upon previous paleoenvironmental work in the Maya Lowlands in order to identify whether large-scale processes, across a wider section of the southern lowlands, affected local settlement patterns. The broader impact of this study lies in its ability to 1) provide a detailed record of human-environment interactions in the history of Maya civilization, separating human impacts from climate change, and evaluate any correlation with regional site abandonments; 2) fill an important gap in our knowledge of landscape evolution and climate variability in an area of fragile wetland environments; 3) generate baseline archaeological data on the earliest settlement of the Maya Lowlands and 4) provide initial support for two anthropological dissertation theses.