Paleoecology of Belizean Bajos

区域景观是人与环境长期动态互动的产物。地理学家在这项工作中发挥了关键作用，他们结合了历史、考古、地质考古和自然地理学的方法，帮助建立了与新大陆前哥伦布时期人口有关的有意和无意的人为环境变化的时间深度、空间范围和因果关系。该项目将测试一个模型，该模型表明，在公元前400年至公元250年间，尤卡坦半岛及其附近的玛雅低地地区被称为bajos的大型喀斯特洼地被人类活动从多年生湿地和浅湖转变为季节性沼泽。该模型是在伯利兹西北部和危地马拉邻近地区进行实地考察期间开发的。首席研究员和他的同事们认为，这种环境变化有助于回答长期困扰玛雅文明学者的几个问题：为什么许多最早的玛雅城市都建在bajo的边缘？为什么这些早期的中心在公元前100年到公元250年之间被遗弃了？为什么其他的中心建造了复杂的储水系统并存活到古典时期（公元250 -900年）？bajos的转变代表了前哥伦布新大陆记录中最重要和最持久的与人类有关的环境变化之一。该项目将使用基于古生态和考古数据的联合方法来记录过去人类与环境的关系。迄今为止收集的关于bajos人为转变的数据的一个重大限制是，研究地点靠近人类影响可能最严重的古代城市地区。该项目将把样本从伯利兹西北部扩展到远离该区域主要城市中心的地区。如果能够证明环境转型模型适用于各种大小和距离城市住区的bajo，它将巩固对这种环境变化的性质和程度的基本理解。该项目将提供比目前存在的更广泛的巴霍土壤和沉积物的空间和环境样本。在这些新样本中检测到的环境变化性质的任何可变性将很容易与周围地区考古定居点的存在与否、密度和距离相关联。因此，对于bajos从多年生湿地向季节性湿地的转变是一种普遍现象，还是一种主要限于城市附近地区的变化，应该有一个更清晰的认识。如果这种巴霍转变模式代表了影响玛雅中部和南部低地大部分内陆地区的条件，那么它将对理解玛雅文明在前古典时期末期发生的变化具有重要意义，包括米拉多、Nakbe和附近大型前古典时期城市中心的放弃。这项研究也有可能提供大量证据，驳斥“绿岛”或“原始神话”，即新大陆的生态系统相对未受前哥伦布时期占领的干扰。此外，该项目将为多达10名研究生提供实地培训经验。

Regional landscapes are the product of the long-term dynamics of human-environment interactions. Geographers have played a critical role in such work using a combination of historical, archaeological, geoarchaeological, and physical geographical approaches to help establish the time depth, spatial extent, and causation of both intentional and unintentional human-induced environmental change associated with pre-Columbian populations in the New World. This project will test a model suggesting that large karst depressions known as bajos in the Maya Lowlands region in and near the Yucatan Peninsula were transformed by human-activity from perennial wetlands and shallow lakes to seasonal swamps between 400 B.C. and 250 A.D. This model was developed during the conduct of fieldwork in northwestern Belize and neighboring portions of Guatemala. The principal investigator and his colleagues have argued that this environmental transformation helps answer several questions that have long puzzled scholars of Maya civilization: Why were many of the earliest Maya cities built on the margins of bajos? Why were some of these early centers abandoned between 100 B.C. and 250 A.D.? Why did other centers construct elaborate water storage systems and survived into the Classic period (250 -900 A.D.)? The transformation of the bajos represents one of the most significant and long-lasting human-related environmental changes documented in the Pre-Columbian New World. This project will use conjunctive method based on paleoecological and archaeological data to document past human-environment relationships. A significant limitation of the data collected to date on the anthropogenic transformation of bajos is the proximity of study sites to ancient urban areas where human impacts may have been most severe. This project will extend the sample from northwestern Belize into areas further removed from the region's major urban centers. If the model of environmental transformation can be shown to hold in bajos of various sizes and distances from urban settlements, it will solidify basic understanding of the nature and extent of this environmental change.This project will provide a much broader spatial and environmental sample of bajo soils and sediments than currently exists. Any variability in the nature of environmental change that is detected in these new samples will be readily correlated with the presence or absence, density, and distance of archaeological settlement in surrounding areas. A clearer picture therefore should emerge as to whether the transformation of bajos from perennial to seasonal wetlands was a ubiquitous phenomenon or a change largely limited to near-urban locations. If this model of bajo transformation represents conditions affecting much of the interior portions of the central and southern Maya Lowlands, it will have important implications for understanding changes that occurred in Maya civilization towards the end of the Preclassic, including the abandonment of El Mirador, Nakbe, and nearby large Preclassic urban centers. This research also has the potential to contribute to the corpus of evidence dismissing the "leyenda verde" or "pristine myth," the idea that the ecosystems of the New World were relatively undisturbed by pre-Columbian occupation. Furthermore, the project will provide field training experience for up to ten graduate students.