[Aztlan] dating slash and burn agriculture

[Diehl, Richard]

Hola Listeros,

Just my two centavos worth. It is impossible to tell when "slash and
burn agriculture' began because the concept is very ambiguous. All early
agricultural systems in the tropics involved the use of fire, including,
I would presume, river levee cultivation in the Olmec heartland. The
real question is, when agriculture began the Maya lowlands? I do not
have my materials at hand but it was certainly before 2,000 BC. Mary
Pohl, Kevin Pope and their colleagues studied the problem in Belize a
number of years ago and their publications would be a good place to
start. Perhaps the Mayanists amongst us can help out more than I can.
Dick Diehl