SUSTAINABLE LEGACIES OF THE PRECERAMIC ARCHAIC MAYA: RESILIENCY STRATEGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATIC CHANGE

The ancient Maya were masters at modifying landscapes to meet their settlement and subsistence needs. And, while many of the largest-scale adaptations were built during the Formative and Classic Periods, there is growing evidence to suggest that preceramic Archaic Maya populations also shaped their physical surroundings on a large but sustainable scale to achieve particular goals. In this paper, we highlight new research carried out by the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project indicating that not only were Archaic hunter-gatherer-fisher groups constructing and maintaining large-scale fish trapping structures in seasonal wetland environments, but they were also targeting so-called marginal landscapes like scrub forest, savanna, and pine ridge for a number of lucrative food and non-food resources. Part of this more intensive engagement with the landscape appears to have been catalyzed by increasingly dry conditions beginning ~4200 BP/2200 BCE and lasting about three centuries. Apart from presenting recent research that is expanding the temporal horizons of the sustainable legacy of the ancient Maya and their predecessors, this paper also problematizes how archaeological research can identify strategies of resilience among assemblages of Archaic Maya hunter-gatherer-fisher-emergent horticulturalists in the face of environmental and climatic change.