Why a legacy study?

What long-term anthropogenic socities are we talking about?

-colonialism?

Why Belize?

## Assuming 'Longitude' and 'Latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively

Pollen Sites

  • Here we can see a number of sites which completed various proxy analysis and the corresponding radio carbon dates

The Maya Civillisation

  • Thought to have a strong relationship with their environment

  • Some major cities experienced a decline around 800AD

  • Many arguments have been proposed such as;

  • Politics- Internal conflicts, political fragility, external invasion, migration and changing trade route patterns mc (Aimers, 2007; A. Chase and D. Chase. 2001; Demarest, 2006; Dornan 2004)

  • Environemnt: Natural; Drought (Kennett et al., 2012; Stahle et al., 2011)- Kennett and ENSO Anthropogenic- land degradation (Diamond, 2005; Shaw, 2003) through deforestation

Issues with the anthropogenic hypothesis

  • the spatial heterogeneity of the collapse
## Assuming 'longitude' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively
## Assuming 'longitude' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively
## Assuming 'longitude' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively
## Assuming 'longitude' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively
## Assuming 'longitude' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively

Speleothem- Kennett et al., (2012)

  • Do these speleothem records link with the periods of decline

What extent of deforestation did occur

  • Temple Sites

What does the pollen tell us?

  • pollen suggests large phases of deforestation during the Classic period
  • Severe sampling bias- templed areas

What effect did the Maya have on their environment?

  • Historical ecologists - contemporary knowledge and modern floristic studies (Ford, 2008; Ross, 2011)

Arguments against the historical ecologists perspective

  • modern examples to understand the past
  • limited in temporal perspective

So where does that leave us?

  • Well somewhere in the middle
  • Deforestation hypothesis- limited in a spatial perspective -Ecological conscious Maya– limited in a temporal perspective

Proposed methodology- Baking Pot

Three sites -> Marco Gonzalez, Basil Jones and Baking Pot

Baking pot represents the insland site for this study

## Assuming 'long' and 'latitude' are longitude and latitude, respectively
  • Why these? Non-temple areas
  • limited palaeoecological analysis
  • island sites vs. mainland site
  • strong archaelogical data

Proposed Methodology- Palaeoecological Analysis

  • Pollen analysis- good environmental proxy for landscape change

  • Charcoal analysis- Good proxy for human influence on the environment

Modelling approach

  • limitations in pollen- how spatial heterogenous was the landscape clearence?
  • The multiple Scenario Approach (Bunting et al., 2004)- pollen characteristics
  • Regional vs. local signals of charcoal- CharAnalysis (Higuera, 2009)- Examines the regional charcoal peaks and calculate the mean fire interval to see how fire was used

Research Questions

  • What is the vegetation history of Ambergris Caye and what role did humans have in shaping it?
  • How do palaeoecological change in non-urban areas compare to urban areas in the prehispanic Maya era
  • What evidence is provided for a prehispanic Maya agroforestry system and are relics of these systems evident in the modern landscape?
  • What was the role of fire in environmental change and did its prominence change throughout time?
  • What was the natural environment’s response to periods of large scale cultural change and how do island sites respond compared to mainland sites? (Post Classic Maya? Colonialism? Modern globalisation?)

Relavence and Significance

  • Why is this important

1- pioneering palaeoenvironmental work in the area

2- using the multiple scenario approach is limited in tropical areas- what can it tell us about the Classic Maya civillisation

3- modern conservation strategies- what is natural

Bibliography

  • Aimers, J. J. (2007). What Maya collapse? Terminal classic variation in the Maya lowlands. Journal of archaeological research, 15(4), 329-377.

  • Bunting, M. J. J., Gaillard, M.-J., Sugita, S., Middleton, R. & Broström, A. Vegetation structure and pollen source area. The Holocene 14, 651-660, doi:10.1191/0959683604hl744rp (2004).

  • Chase, A. F., & Chase, D. Z. (2001). Ancient Maya causeways and site organization at Caracol, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica, 12(02), 273-281.

  • Demarest, A. A. (2006). The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Maya Collapse (Vol. 1). Vanderbilt University Press.

  • Diamond, J. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. (Penguin, 2005).

  • Dornan, J. L. (2004). Beyond belief: religious experience, ritual, and cultural neuro-phenomenology in the interpretation of past religious systems. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 14(01), 25-36.

  • Ford, A. (2008), Dominant Plants Of The Maya Forest And Gardens Of El Pilar: Implications For Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions. Journal of Ethnobiology 28, 179-199, doi:10.2993/0278-0771-28.2.179 .

  • Higuera, P. (2009). CharAnalysis 0.9: diagnostic and analytical tools for sedimentcharcoal analysis. User’s Guide, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT.

  • Kennett, D. J., Breitenbach, S. F., Aquino, V. V., Asmerom, Y., Awe, J., Baldini, J. U., & Macri, M. J. (2012). Development and disintegration of Maya political systems in response to climate change. Science, 338(6108), 788-791.

  • Shaw, J. M. CLIMATE CHANGE AND DEFORESTATION: Implications for the Maya collapse. Ancient Mesoamerica 14, 157-167, doi:10.1017/s0956536103132063 (2003).

  • Stahle, D. W., Diaz, J. V., Burnett,akae, D. J., Paredes, J., Heim, R. R., Fye, F. & Stahle, D. K. (2011). Major Mesoamerican droughts of the past millennium. Geophysical Research Letters, 38(5).