Lessons Learned from the Past UC Research Highlights Ancient Civilization s Relationship with Nature

Learning from the past to plan for the future – University of Cincinnati research into lessons learned from the ancient Maya civilization will be prominently highlighted at the 110th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). The meeting Nov. 16-20 in Montreal, Canada, will feature hundreds of sessions and draw thousands of people interested in the field of anthropology.

University of Cincinnati researchers are among an international group of scholars that are comparing several regions of the globe through time – examining what lessons can be learned from the past and applied to the world today through archaeology, history, ecology and computational modeling. UC’s vast research into the ancient Maya of Central America will be highlighted at the conference through this project, IHOPE (Integrated History and Future of People on Earth), an endeavor sponsored by the Stockholm Resilience Center (Sweden) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, among others.

“We are about finding solutions to our present problems by assessing what past environmental changes have occurred, and how humanity has adjusted to these changes socially, economically and even politically between various ecosystems,” explains Vernon Scarborough, a UC professor of anthropology and co-chair of IHOPE’s sessions. The research will focus on cultural and environmental issues surrounding sustainability.

Here are highlights from Nov. 17 sessions, led by Scarborough and Arlen F. Chase, chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Central Florida:

Session Theme – The Resilience and Vulnerability of Ancient Landscapes: Transforming Maya Archaeology Through IHOPE

Once thought to be little more than the scholarly study of ancient pottery types, untranslatable hieroglyphs and dead kings, Maya archaeology is in the midst of recasting and rejuvenating its legacy. With an infusion of new ideas borrowed from ecology, Maya archaeologists are revitalizing and contemporizing the field to focus on issues relevant today – the socio-natural boundary and the coupled human-nature dynamic. The ancient Maya occupied a diverse range of tropical environments that permits a comparative exploration of past permutations in adaptive responses and may also be instructive concerning issues of overexploitation. The variety of places that the Maya occupied afforded diverse opportunities and constraints. By providing access to long-term historical interactions between peoples and their landscapes, archaeology is uniquely qualified to define, examine and interpret topics like sustainability, resilience and vulnerability that are as equally significant to the past as they are to the present. Because Maya archaeology is well-positioned to analyze ancient variability in political structures and cultural adaptations that can be related to differential societal success and decline, the discipline can contribute to broader, more current, debates concerning climate change, population limits, urban forms, landscape modifications, and stability.

Diversity, Resilience and IHOPE-Maya: Using the Past to Inform the Present

Archaeologists working through IHOPE-Maya are using archaeological data and ecological reconstructions to explore human-nature couplings.  By standardizing datasets and questions, researchers are identifying types and degrees of resilience, stability, rigidity, and pan-regional interaction that exist within the ancient Maya context. The research highlights past cultural developments in the humid tropics that broaden scientists’ understanding of the many forms of human complexity. This presentation provides the background for IHOPE-Maya and better contextualizes the ancient Maya through an examination of their diverse human-nature couplings, hinting at the details through a case studies approach and demonstrating the relevancy of this exercise to modern issues facing our global populations.

Lead Presenters
Vernon Scarborough, UC; Arlen F. Chase, University of Central Florida

Water and Landscape: Ancient Maya Settlement Decisions

Because the ancient Maya were a rainfall-dependent agricultural society, timing was everything. Seasonal, as well as spatial variability had a major bearing on their decision-making, diachronically and synchronically. Water and agricultural land availability impacted how people lived, built, and moved across the landscape. A clear signature of how these vital subsistence elements were managed are engineering features intended to provide access to, control, and improvement of water and soil resources.

Project Researchers
Lisa J. Lucero, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne
Scott L. Fedick,  University of California, Riverside
Nicholas Dunning, University of Cincinnati
David Lentz, University of Cincinnati
Vernon L. Scarborough, University of Cincinnati

Growth Dependency and Decline in Classic Maya Puuc Political Economies

The Puuc region presents Maya archaeologists with significant challenges. One is the contradiction of great regional agricultural potential, yet the archaeological record indicates that the region remained relatively lightly occupied into the Late Classic, when  population levels rose dramatically and numerous urban settlements were established.  An important factor influencing this chronology is the extreme scarcity of regional natural water sources. This presentation examines the nature of Puuc water management as an adaptation to scarcity, including the development of a water collection and storage system with both communal and household components. Despite a soilscape among the most fertile on the peninsula and elaborate water management, the Puuc was essentially abandoned toward the end of the Terminal Classic. An important clue to the region’s “collapse” is to be found in long-term changes in the energy budget of the agricultural economy. 

Project Researchers
Nicholas Dunning, University of Cincinnati
Christian Isendahl, Uppsala University
Jeremy A. Sabloff, Santa Fe Institute

The Alternative Economy: Resilience in the Face of Complexity from the Eastern Maya Lowlands

The ancient Eastern Maya Lowlands as characterized by the Three Rivers Region emphasized the role of small, highly resilient communities. The growth of the largest centers in the region resulted in significant landscape modifications that precipitated accelerated erosion and sedimentation concerns. The smaller communities separated by 2-to-5 kilometers dispersed across the landscape established a circle of interdependency between one another, and a spatial separation from the largest centers. Degrees of sustainability were achieved through time by way of a negotiated settlement and land use balance within the relatively fragile biophysical environment. A dual or alternative economy is proposed in the context social complexity. 

Presenters
Fred Valdez, University of Texas, Austin
Vernon L. Scarborough, University of Cincinnati

Other University of Cincinnati research reflecting the theme of the AAA meeting, “Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies,” include:

Traces of Home, Legacies of Culture: Business Development Among Nigerian Immigrants in New York City

For a growing immigrant community in the United States, setting up shop means blending tools of the trade from home with discoveries made in the new country, and there’s a strategy that’s threading through an array of small businesses.

Presenter
Leila Rodriguez, UC assistant professor of anthropology

Beyond Types: Animating Evidence and Potential in Booking Photographs

New research from the University of Cincinnati brings into focus the connection between routine, police station mug shots and the marketing-savvy snapshots captured by the fashion police.

Presenter
Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, UC assistant professor of anthropology