No abstract

In April 2009, a lidar survey flown by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping recorded 200 square kilometers of terrain that comprised the Classic Period Maya city of Caracol, Belize. The data revealed a highly manipulated landscape of dense settlement, agricultural terraces, and residential reservoirs. Literature on Maya agriculture has discussed the benefits of terraces in controlling soil erosion, retaining water, and managing the gravitational flow of water; however, until now these benefits have not been quantified or demonstrated on the ground at scale. This research utilizes these lidar data and data derivatives in order to test the degree to which the ancient Maya manipulated their environment and were able to support large-scale populations through their landscape management practices. As such, the research provides evidence supporting the significance of agricultural terraces and their impact on limiting soil erosion, increasing water retention, and permitting flow control over rainfall runoff. This research also highlights the conscious effort by the ancient Maya to manage the hydrology of their terraced landscape.

The Classic Period Maya (300 CE to 900 CE) built many of their cities away from standing, flowing, or subterranean water resources. Because of this, scholars have suggested that one key manifestation of ancient Maya ritual and political authority was the control and management of water housed in large central-site reservoirs, rectilinear excavated features that were lined with stone and coated with plaster or clay to catch and store rainfall runoff. This research assesses those arguments by using remote sensing data to map residential reservoirs-smaller versions of the monumental reservoirs in city centers-from the intensively investigated city of Caracol, Belize. The Caracol Maya were entirely dependent on rainfall and built monumental and residential reservoirs throughout their city. Using a 200-square kilometer Digital Elevation Model created from LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data, research uncovered the extent of ancient water capture at Caracol. Analysis of the LiDAR data reveals a conservative count of 1590 reservoirs at Caracol; this is more than 25 times the number of reservoirs identified by traditional ground survey methods. These data demonstrate how the people of Caracol were able to successfully harness the water available in their environment. In addition, the decentralized nature of Caracol's reservoirs suggests that elite power, at least in this ancient city, was not based on control of water resources due to the ubiquity of residential reservoirs throughout the site.

Archaeology and heritage management in the Maya area have developed differently in the various modern-day countries that make up ancient Mesoamerica. In the country of Belize, heritage management has been conjoined with archaeology since at least the late 1970s. Long-term projects, such as the 1985-to-present archaeological investigations at the ancient ruins that comprise the immense city of Caracol, Belize, demonstrate the evolution of heritage management. This abandoned metropolis has also been the location of concerted stabilization and conservation efforts. Research and heritage management efforts at this urban center have been coordinated and intertwined since the project’s inception. This article contextualizes the long-standing relationships between archaeology and cultural heritage as it has been practiced at Caracol, Belize within the broader field of Maya Studies.

Introduction Lidar has had a revolutionary effect on archaeology. After a decade of use in Belize, it has transformed our understanding of ancient Maya settlement and has profoundly affected archaeological interpretations of the past. In Mesoamerica, the technology is now recognized as an important tool for identifying and interpreting past settlements. Yet, the introduction of lidar to the research repertoire has also raised a host of ethical issues that must be resolved. The introduction of broad-scale lidar to Maya archaeology over a decade ago has resulted in a paradigm shift in the field (Chase et al. 2012), leading researchers to examine models of ancient complexity reflected in more broadly sampled landscapes (e.g., Canuto et al. 2018; Chase 2017; Chase and Chase 2016a). Lidar constituted a major advance in Mesoamerican settlement studies by demonstrating the extent of ancient occupation, land use, and terraforming, as well as offering clues to settlement boundaries (e.g., D. Chase and A. Chase 2017; Chase et al. 2014a, 2014b). Lidar has permitted a much broader view of sites, landscapes, and land use by revealing new public architecture, extensive settlement, roads, and the remnants of large agricultural systems (e.g., A. Chase et al 2010, 2011; D. Chase et al. 2011; Canuto et al. 2018; Reese-Taylor et al. 2016; Ringle et al. 2017). New analyses and techniques are also permitting more sophisticated research questions to be addressed through the use of lidar, such as those regarding the control of water flow, the design of ancient space, and the identification of inequality (e.g., Chase 2016b, 2017; Chase and Weishampel 2016). And, while lidar ground-truthing has been called for by some researchers (e.g., Ford and Horn 2018), others are realizing that, rather than on-the-ground checks, what is needed is more extensive archaeological excavation to determine the dating and function of identified features (e.g., A. Chase and D. Chase 2017; Inomata et al. 2018, 2020). The ability to undertake large-scale spatial analysis with lidar has increased archaeological foci from site cores to entire regional systems (e.g., Chase et al. 2012, 2014b). As researchers have the tools to examine new questions relative to the use of ancient landscapes (e.g., Chase and Chase 2016b), older paradigms that saw the Maya as simple chiefdoms practicing slash-and-burn agriculture (e.g., Webster 1998) are being put to rest. While lidar has served as a catalyst for reframing research questions in Mesoamerican archaeology, in the Maya area, it has also raised a host of ethical questions that are not fully resolved. Some of these ethical questions may be exclusive to Mesoamerican archaeology, but others are framed by the wider use of broad scale lidar throughout other parts of the world (e.g., Evans et al. 2013; Stott et