Fire and Salt

Human Niche Construction and Holocene Landscape Evolution on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica

Hector Neff

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780826366771
• eBook ISBN: 9780826366788
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: Social Sciences

Fire and Salt traces the history of how human activities have helped build the littoral landscape of Pacific coastal southern Mesoamerica over the past five thousand years. Evidence comes from airborne lidar, surface reconnaissance and excavation within the mangrove-estuary zone, sediment coring, and a chronological framework encompassing nine ceramic complexes extending from Early Formative to Historic times.In presenting the landscape as it exists today, this volume also describes what may soon be lost. The mangrove forests harbor a record of the human past, a focus of the present volume, but they also shield the coast from storms and tsunamis, provide nurseries for commercially important marine species, and store large amounts of carbon.These threats may pale, however, in comparison to the imminent threat posed by sea-level rise over the coming decades, especially if worst-case scenarios come to pass. By inventorying resources, including cultural resources, this book makes a first step toward mitigating the effects of environmental degradation that appear all but unavoidable.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Statement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4 - Hector Neff, James T. Daniels, Paul Burger, and Heather Thaker
• Chapter 5 - Hector Neff, Paul Burger, and Marx Navarro Castillo
• Chapter 6 - Hector Neff, Marx Navarro Castillo, and Sachiko Sakai
• Chapter 7 - Hector Neff, Janine Gasco, and Marx Navarro Castillo
• Conclusion
• References
• Index