Where the Water Meets the Land: An Archaeological Case Study of Two Millennia of Wetland Utilization at K'axob, Belize

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Patricia McAnany博士和她的同事们将在位于伯利兹热带低地的K‘axob遗址进行为期两个季节的考古田野工作。McAnany博士在该遗址进行的大量先前工作表明，玛雅人的聚落范围广泛，跨越了玛雅史前的发展和古典时期。与定居点相关的是一系列农业特征，被称为“凸起的田地”，由凸起的拉长的“田地”和分隔它们的运河或排水沟组成。麦卡纳尼博士希望了解这些田地是如何以及何时建造的，使用了多长时间，以及上面种植了什么作物。她希望将定居点模式和规模的变化与田地系统的发展和变化进行比较。为实现这一目标，她将：1.制作一张完整的K‘axob湿地运河和岛域系统地面真实地图；2.对从已知采样框架中抽取的具有统计意义的岛域和运河样本进行考古挖掘；3.使用光学显微镜对湿地沉积物进行微形态分析，以阐明形成过程；4.对沉淀柱进行磁化率和总磷分析，以便于区分沉积序列；6.综合年代和地层挖掘结果与邻近高地上的定居点挖掘结果。低地玛雅人在恶劣的热带低地环境中繁衍生息，并成群结队地生活在今天基本上无人居住的环境中。考古学家希望了解允许这种花期的农业做法，并追踪这些做法是如何随着时间的推移而发展和变化的。到目前为止，还没有达成共识，科学家们对这些事件发生的年代和它们的作用方式存在强烈的分歧。麦克阿纳尼博士精心设计的项目应该能为这些问题提供答案。这项工作也很重要，因为它可以揭示湿地管理的洞察力，其中许多数据可能与今天的管理实践相关。玛雅人似乎能够长期利用湿地，并在不破坏其本质的情况下将其用于农业生产。这个项目的结果将会引起许多科学家的兴趣。它将为湿地管理提供潜在用途的数据，并为史前玛雅人的生存实践提供新的线索。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Patricia McAnany and her colleagues will conduct two seasons of archaeological fieldwork at the site of K'axob, located in the tropical lowlands of Belize. Extensive prior work at the site by Dr. McAnany has indicated an extensive Mayan settlement which spans the development and the classical period of Mayan prehistory. Associated with the settlement are a series of agricultural features, termed `raised fields` which consist of raised elongated `fields` and canals or drainage ditches which separate them. Dr. McAnany wishes to understand how and when these fields were constructed, how long they were used and just what crops were grown on them. She wants to compare changes in settlement pattern and size with development and changes in the field system. To accomplish this she will: 1. construct a complete ground-truthed map of the wetland canal and island-field system at K'axob; 2. conduct archaeological excavation of a statistically significant sample of island fields and canals drawn from a known sampling frame; 3. use optical microscopy for micromorphological analysis of wetland sediments to clarify formation processes; 4 apply magnetic susceptibility and total phosphate analysis to sediment columns to facilitate the discrimination of depositional sequences; 6. synthesize the chronology and stratigraphically derived excavations with that of settlement excavations in the adjacent uplands. The lowland Maya flourished and lived in large groups in a harsh tropical lowland environment which is essentially uninhabited today. Archaeologists wish to understand the agricultural practices which permitted this florescence and to trace how these developed and changed over time. To date no consensus exists and scientists disagree strongly on the age of these occurrences and just how they functioned. Dr. McAnany's carefully designed project should provide an answer to these questions. The work is also important for the insight it can shed on wetland management and many of the data may be relevant to management practices today. It appears that the Mayan people were able to utilize wetlands for extended periods of time and use them for agricultural production without destroying their essential nature. The results of this project will be of interest to many scientists. It will provide data of potential use for wetland management and shed new light on the subsistence practices of prehistoric Mayan peoples.