scholarly journals An assessment of drought on maize cropping success in ancient Maya lowlands during the last half of the first millennium ce

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 546-553
Author(s):  
Alfred Wong
Keyword(s):  
Monthly Precipitation ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Growing Period ◽  
Pattern Frequency ◽  
Data Resolution ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Small Change ◽  
Maya Collapse ◽  
Large Decline

Abstract Drought arising from a shift in intertropical convergence zone in the Yucatán peninsula during the last half of the first millennium is often cited as a determining cause in the collapse of ancient Maya polities. Some Mayanists have postulated that a small change in precipitation might have been sufficient to result in catastrophic cropping failure, with attendant large decline in population. The supporting data for this conjecture are essentially very weak. In particular, paleoclimatologists could provide only qualitative drier or wetter periods. The data resolution has not been at the level of daily or monthly precipitation in ancient times. It is well known in the cropping of maize that the pattern, frequency, and quantity of precipitation, among other things, during the growing period are of paramount importance. Present quantitative assessment suggests that a decrease of the order of 40%, uniformly over a 125-day growing season, from normal precipitation may not have an adverse impact on maize cropping success. This finding presents doubts in the hypothetical climate-based cause of catastrophic decline in population during the period of ‘Maya collapse’.

Permanent Dental Modifications among the Ancient Maya

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Tiesler ◽  
Andrea Cucina ◽  
Marco Ramírez-Salomón
Keyword(s):  
Health Risks ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Tooth Wear ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Maya Lowlands ◽  
Postclassic Period ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Dental Appearance ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Maya Collapse

This chapter explores the dental appearance, health risks, social roles, and procedures related to dental filings and inlays among the ancient Maya. To this end, skeletal data, portraiture, and ethnographic information from the Maya Lowlands were surveyed. The results show that the majority of adult dentitions had been modified during the first millennium AD, many of which emulated the Maya solar sign and sacred wind forces. The initial operation was usually performed in youngsters, although older age groups were subject to the practice as well. Maintenance measures were taken in the form of additional filing and tooth extraction, especially once tooth wear and decay set in. During the heydays of Lowland Maya kingdoms, dental reductions and inlayed materials trace varied regional and local traditions. Past the Maya collapse, during the Postclassic period, tooth modifications turned into a standardized, mostly female practice that was accomplished exclusively by dental filing.

The Last Groups Standing: Living Abandonment at the Ancient Maya Center of Minanha, Belize

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 550-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire ◽  
Scott Macrae ◽  
Carmen A. McCane ◽  
Evan A. Parker ◽  
Gyles Iannone
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Agricultural Community ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
Ideological Dimension ◽  
Maya Collapse

The most archaeologically visible dimension of the Classic Maya Collapse is the abandonment of monumental royal courts. Yet, in some cases, non-elite populations lived for centuries in and around Classic Maya centers without rulers. Processes of abandonment among Classic Maya commoners are detectable and reflect their own ritual and social practices divorced from the ritual performances undertaken by the ruling elite. We study the abandonment context and chronology of three domestic groups from the Contreras Valley, an agricultural community located on the outskirts of the Classic Maya center ofMinanha, Belize. There, several artifact assemblages were deposited at the time of abandonment, representing termination rituals. This study goes beyond the ideological dimension of termination rituals to examine how these ceremonies helped reshape the identity of social groups who were about to abandon their home. We explore how the last inhabitants of a mostly abandoned landscape lived through this process of gradual depopulation. Moreover, we evaluate potential explanations for the archaeological processes behind the occurrence or non-occurrence of termination rituals in different domestic groups.

Tikal Reports: the series continues

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (345) ◽  
pp. 743-745
Author(s):  
Norman Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Tropical Forest ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Academic World ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

The University of Pennsylvania Museum's Tikal Project of 1958–1968 was one of the great Maya investigations of the twentieth century. It was the most ambitious study of a Maya city so far undertaken, with scores of staff, graduate students and local workers engaged in a range of activities from mapping the site core and its surrounding settlement, to stripping the tropical forest from the colossal temple-pyramids and restoring them, to establishing an occupation history that eventually showed an origin for Tikal in the mid-first millennium BC and abandonment more than sixteen centuries later at the end of the Classic period. The impact of the project's results, publications and cadre of trained Mayanists moving out into the academic world was substantial and led to several decades of a Tikal-centric view of ancient Maya civilisation.

MANIOC CULTIVATION AT CEREN, EL SALVADOR: OCCASIONAL KITCHEN GARDEN PLANT OR STAPLE CROP?

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Payson Sheets ◽  
Christine Dixon ◽  
Monica Guerra ◽  
Adam Blanford
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Drought Resistance ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Kitchen Garden ◽  
Kitchen Gardens ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Garden Plant ◽  
Staple Crop

AbstractMany scholars have thought the Classic period Maya did not cultivate the root crop manioc, while others have suggested it may have been an occasional cultigen in kitchen gardens. For many decades there was no reliable evidence that the ancient Maya cultivated manioc, but in the 1990s manioc pollen from the late Archaic was found in Belize, and somewhat older pollen was found in Tabasco. At about the same time of those discoveries, research within the Ceren village, El Salvador, encountered occasional scattered manioc plants that had grown in mounded ridges in kitchen gardens. These finds adjacent to households indicated manioc was not a staple crop, and vastly inferior to maize and beans in food volume produced. However, 2007 research in an agricultural area 200 m south of the Ceren village encountered intensive formal manioc planting beds. If manioc was widely cultivated in ancient times, its impressive productivity, ease of cultivation even in poor soils, and drought resistance suggest it might have been a staple crop helping to support dense Maya populations in the southeast periphery and elsewhere.

scholarly journals Techniques for the Documentation, Registration and Analyses of Rock-Cut Tombs

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-50
Author(s):  
Sonia Carbonell Pastor
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Socioeconomic Differences ◽  
Structural Pattern ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
Socioeconomic Issues ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Study Case ◽  
Quality Graphic

The Archeology of Death, a line emerged within the processualist theoretical position, meant great advances in issues related to the study of the funeral ancient practices, mainly through anthropological studies. However, we do not always have deposits or primary contexts, usually we find the graves looted, pillaged or modified since ancient times. In this sense, this work intends to constitute a methodological example of approach to the knowledge of the funerary sphere of a society through the application of new technologies for those cases in which we do not have any type of information referred to both the biological subjects and the grave goods that accompanied them. The study case chosen is the necropolis of Cala Morell (Ciutadella), a set of several hypogea or artificial caves with different structural characteristics that seem to be framed in the middle of the first millennium BCE but whose exact chronology we cannot determine with accuracy due to the constant plundering and reuses to which the necropolis was exposed. The goals of our research try to determine if there are socioeconomic differences within the same necropolis, if we can talk about a certain structural pattern and if the results obtained can be extrapolated to the rest of the Menorcan necropolis. The technical methodology used in this research consists in developing a quality graphic documentation using photogrammetric models, the management of a database that includes the structural characteristics of each one of the funeral units treated and, finally, the statistical analysis to infer spatial or socioeconomic issues.

[South America and Mesoamerica - Tom D. Dillehay The archaeological context and interpretation: errata (Monte Verde: a late Pleistocene settlement in Chile 2). Pages, figures, tables. 2002. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press; 158834-029-5 paperback. - Paulina Ledergerber-Crespo (ed.). Formativo sudamericano, una revaluación — ponencias presentadas en el Simposio internacional de Arqueología Sudamericana, Cuenca, Ecuador, 13–17 de enero de 1992: homenaje a Alberto Rex González y Betty J. Meggers. 404 pages, 128 figures, 7 tables. 1999. Quito: Abya-Yala; 9978-04-466-3 paperback. - Colin McEwan, Cristiana Barreto & Eduardo Neves (ed.). Unknown Amazon. 304 pages, 226 colour & b&w figures, 1 table. 2001. London: British Museum; 0-7141-2558-X paperback £19.99. - William M. Ferguson & Richard E.W. Adams Mesoamerica’s ancient cities (2nd edition), xii+260 pages, colour & b&w figures. 2001. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press; 0-8263-2801-6 paperback $34.95. - David Webster. The fall of the ancient Maya: solving the mystery of the Maya collapse. 368 pages, 55 figures, 29 b&w photographs, 1 table. 2002. London: Thames & Hudson; 0-500-05113-5 hardback £19.95. - Traci Ardren (ed.). Ancient Maya women. xiv+293 pages, 69 figures, 5 tables. 2002. Walnut Creek (CA): Altamira; 0-7591-0009-8 hardback $75, 0-7591-0010-1 paperback $29.95. - John Montgomery. How to read Maya hieroglyphs. xvi+360 pages, 307 figures, tables, 9 colour plates. 2002. New York (NY); Hippocrene; 0-7818-0861-8 hardback $24. - Cecelia F. Klein (ed.). Gender in Pre-hispanic America: a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 12 and 13 October 1996. viii+397 pages, 117 figures, 1 table. 2001. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection; 0-88402-2 79-X hardback. - Jeffrey R. Parsons The last saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico: an archaeological ethnography (Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Anthropological Paper 92). xv+341 pages, 24 figures, 26 tables, 141 photographs. 2001. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology; 0-915703-51-3 paperback $26.

Antiquity ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (292) ◽  
pp. 564-565
Author(s):  
N. James
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
University Of New Mexico ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
Monte Verde ◽  
Anthropological Paper ◽  
Maya Collapse

Household Registration, Property Rights, and Social Obligations in Imperial China: Principles and Practices

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Von Glahn
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Household Registration ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Civil Registration ◽  
Ranking Systems ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Imperial China

Civil registration for the purposes of social control and the mobilization of labour has been a cornerstone of the Chinese imperial state since ancient times. This chapter traces the origins and historical development of the civil registration system of imperial China in order to clarify its ideological and institutional evolution, focusing on four key phases: the initial development of household registration for military conscription that accompanied the rise of autocratic states and the founding of the first empires during the first millennium bce; the institution of state landownership during the fifth to eighth centuries ce; the shift from the household to wealth as the basis of taxation and the introduction of household-ranking systems under the Song dynasty; and the rise and demise of the lijia system of rural social organization during the late imperial era (Ming and Qing dynasties).

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