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A hypothesis developed by Vernon Scarborough and endorsed and modified by Lisa Lucero and Anabel Ford proposes that lowland Maya elites centralized and coordinated political power by controlling access to water stored in large, centrally located reservoirs. The hypothesis presupposes that in the central and southern Maya lowlands, nonelites did not have access to viable alternative dry-season water sources. This paper demonstrates that, in the east-central and southwestern areas of the Maya lowlands, fault springs were an important source of water, particularly to rural peoples. After reviewing the evidence of Maya fault spring exploitation and documenting the hydrogeological conditions under which fault springs form, I describe wells that rural households built to expose fault springs and enhance their flow, including clay-lined and stone-lined shafts. Also documented are three well types found elsewhere in the Maya lowlands: (1) wells built to exploit permanent, generally shallow water tables; (2) wells dug to catch precipitation as it filtered down through bedrock; and (3) buk'teob, built to recover during the dry season the receding contents of pools that during the rainy season collect in aguadas. The dispersed distribution of Maya wells in rural settings and their frequent association with modest residential remains suggests that nonelite households managed them. The existence of Maya wells that supplied water to rural peoples through the dry season is inconsistent with the Scarborough-Lucero-Ford hypothesis. ᭧
A hypothesis developed by Vernon Scarborough and endorsed and modified by Lisa Lucero and Anabel Ford proposes that lowland Maya elites centralized and coordinated political power by controlling access to water stored in large, centrally located reservoirs. The hypothesis presupposes that in the central and southern Maya lowlands, nonelites did not have access to viable alternative dry-season water sources. This paper demonstrates that, in the east-central and southwestern areas of the Maya lowlands, fault springs were an important source of water, particularly to rural peoples. After reviewing the evidence of Maya fault spring exploitation and documenting the hydrogeological conditions under which fault springs form, I describe wells that rural households built to expose fault springs and enhance their flow, including clay-lined and stone-lined shafts. Also documented are three well types found elsewhere in the Maya lowlands: (1) wells built to exploit permanent, generally shallow water tables; (2) wells dug to catch precipitation as it filtered down through bedrock; and (3) buk'teob, built to recover during the dry season the receding contents of pools that during the rainy season collect in aguadas. The dispersed distribution of Maya wells in rural settings and their frequent association with modest residential remains suggests that nonelite households managed them. The existence of Maya wells that supplied water to rural peoples through the dry season is inconsistent with the Scarborough-Lucero-Ford hypothesis. ᭧
Over the past thirty years, geoarchaeology has moved from the fringe to mainstream status within Mesoamerican archaeological investigations. This review focuses on works published since the year 2000. Five themes are identified as central to recent studies: (1) the correlation of environmental change and cultural history; (2) anthropogenic environmental impacts; (3) ancient land cover, land use, and diet; (4) archaeological prospection; and (5) provenance studies. These themes are often interwoven in the application of complex systems approaches that allow scientists to more accurately model the intricacies of ancient human-environment interactions. C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Light detection and ranging (lidar) and pedestrian survey are employed to document regional settlement patterns associated with the well-known center of Izapa in Chiapas, Mexico. Within an area of 47.5 km 2 , we located 413 previously undocumented mounds with associated time diagnostic artifacts. These mounds are the remains of both monumental architecture defining regional centers as well as domestic house mounds. This paper presents new data of overall occupation levels from the low hills zone that complements previously published patterns from the piedmont surrounding Izapa as well as eight newly documented Middle and Late Formative period (850 cal. BC-AD 100) monumental centers of various sizes that are coeval with Izapa. In addition to these substantive archaeological findings, the efficacy of lidar data acquired from two environmental zones (low hills and piedmont) are compared to evaluate how well Prehispanic mounds were detected under different vegetation covers. We conclude that the lower density of lidar collection from the low hills zone was as effective at detecting archaeological mounds as the higher density collection campaign used in the piedmont zone. The implication of these findings is that higher-density collection strategies may not always improve the documentation of archaeological features.
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