Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond

Jean T. Larmon, Lisa J. Lucero, Fred Valdez Jr., Jean T. Larmon, Lisa J. Lucero, Fred Valdez Jr.

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781646422319
• eBook ISBN: 9781646422326
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond investigates climate change and sustainability through time, exploring how political control of water sources, maintenance of sustainable systems, ideological relationships with water, and fluctuations in water availability have affected and been affected by social change. Contributors focus on and build upon earlier investigations of the global diversity of water management systems and the successes and failures of their employment, while applying a multitude of perspectives on sustainability.
 
The volume focuses primarily on the Precolumbian Maya but offers several analogous case studies outside the ancient Maya world that illustrate the pervasiveness of water's role in sustainability, including an ethnographic study of the sustainability of small-scale, farmer-managed irrigation systems in contemporary New Mexico and the environmental consequences of Angkor's growth into the world's most extensive preindustrial settlement. The archaeological record offers rich data on past politics of climate change, while epigraphic and ethnographic data show how integrated the ideological, political, and environmental worlds of the Maya were.
 
While Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond stresses how lessons from the past offer invaluable insight into current approaches of adaptation, it also advances our understanding of those adaptations by making the inevitable discrepancies between past and present climate change less daunting and emphasizing the sustainable negotiations between humans and their surroundings that have been mediated by the changing climate for millennia. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in climate change, sustainability, and water management in the archaeological record.
 
Contributors: Mary Jane Acuña, Wendy Ashmore, Timothy Beach, Jeffrey Brewer, Christopher Carr, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Carlos R. Chiriboga, Jennifer Chmilar, Nicholas Dunning, Maurits W. Ertsen, Roland Fletcher, David Friedel, Robert Griffin, Joel D. Gunn, Armando Anaya Hernández, Christian Isendahl, David Lentz, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Dan Penny, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Michelle Rich, Cynthia Robin, Sylvia Rodríguez, William Saturno, Vernon Scarborough, Payson Sheets, Liwy Grazioso Sierra, Michael Smyth, Sander van der Leeuw, Andrew Wyatt
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. Introduction to a Path to Sustainability: The Past and Future Role of Water Management
• 2. Harvesting Ha: Ancient Water Collection and Storage in the Elevated Interior Region of the Maya Lowlands
• 3. Ancient Maya Intensive Agriculture and Water Management Practices
• 4. Many Visions of Water
• 5. Three Tropical Thoughts: The Migration to Tropical Ecology
• 6. Water Trails and Water Mountains: The View from Northwest Petén
• 7. Caracol, Belize, and Tikal, Guatemala: Ancient Maya Human-Nature Relationships and Their Sociopolitical Context
• 8. From “Preclassic” to “Classic” and “Postclassic” among the Maya: The Role of Information Processing and Socioenvironmental-economic Values in the Emergence and Decline of “Watery” Cities
• 9. Scale and Impact in Southeast Asia: Resilience and Complexity at Angkor
• 10. Acequias: Trust and Hydrosocial Territory
• 11. How Do We Get Out of This Mess? Landscape Legacies, Unintended Consequences, and Tradeoffs of Human Behavior
• Index
• Contributors