[Aztlan] dating slash and burn agriculture

[J. L. Baker]

I would have to agree with Richard here that dating
the exact onset of slash and burn agriculture is very
difficult. Part of the problem also stems from how
slash and burn agriculture is defined (which I will
not go into here).

Nevertheless, I'll provide a brief overview of
evidence for the beginnings of agriculture in the Maya
Lowlands.

Ursula Cowgill and her colleagues cored a Lake
Petenxil in the early 1960s (Cowgill et al. 1966). The
bottom of this core showed a savanna-like environment,
which was dated to 2000 BC. Subsequent researchers
(Deevey et al. 1979) suggested that the date was
contaminated by "old carbon" and substantially
predated the onset of agriculture in the Maya
Lowlands. This attitude prevailed among most Mayanists
until the 1990s. Mary Pohl and her colleagues
undertook an extensive coring program in northern
Belize, and found a great deal of evidence for both
early agriculture and the early onset of at least
partial deforestation (Pohl et al 1996). 

Using AMS dating, Pohl and others identified maize
dating back to the fourth millenium bc, with John
Jones (1994) finding similar evidence for the early
arrival of maize in the Maya Lowlands. (I am currently
working out of town, and do not have access to a more
exact date), with "deforestation" starting as early as
2500 BC. I place deforestation in parenthesis because
of the difficulty in accurately identifying
deforestation in the Maya Lowlands. Arboreal pollen in
lake and wetland sediments is dominated by a limited
number of wind pollinated tree species. These species
(including Brosimum alicastrum and Trophis racemosa)
are emergents and tend to dominate a mature forest,
while being rare in secondary forests. Thus, a decline
in arboreal pollen could be an indication that primary
forest was being replaced by a patchwork of secondary
forest dominated by trees that are insect pollinated
(Insect pollinated trees are poorly represented in
pollen cores because they produce less pollen than
wind pollinated trees and because their pollen is not
widely distributed by the wind). 

Based upon pollen date and settlement pattern data, I
have argued that the Maya of the Middle Preclassic
(ca. 1000 BC) period were practicing a more intensive
form of agriculture than their descendants in the
1960s (Baker 2007). This is not to say that Middle
Preclassic Maya were practicing intensive agriculture
(there is no conclusive evidence for intensive methods
this early).

As far as when slash and burn began, the decline of
arboreal pollen starting at 2500 bc suggests, to me,
that, the Maya were already using slash and burn
methods at this early date. How much earlier than this
date that slash and burn agriculture was utilized is
difficult to determine. There is no clear evidence for
the methods being used in the 4th Millenium BC when
pollen first appears in the paleobotanical record in
the Maya Lowlands.


Thanks,

Jeff Baker

References:


Baker, Jeffrey L, 2007, The Wet or the Dry?:
Agricultural Intensification in the Maya Lowlands. In
Seeking a Richer Harvest: The Archaeology of
Subsistence Intensification, Innovation and Change,
edited by Tina L. Thurston and Christopher T. Fisher,
pp. 63-90. Springer, New York.

Cowgill, Ursula, Clyde E. Goulden, G. Evelyn
Hutchinson, Ruth Patrick, A. A. Racek, Matsuo Tsukada
1966	The History of Laguna de Petenxil: A Small Lake
in Northern Guatemala.  Memoirs of the Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 17. Connecticut
Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Haven.

Deevey, Edward S., Don S. Rice, Prudence M. Rice,
Hague H. Vaughn, Mark Brenner, Michael S. Flannery
1979	Mayan Urbanism: Impact on a Tropical Karst
Environment.  Science 206: 298 – 306.

Jones, John G.
1994	Pollen Evidence for Early Settlement and
Agriculture in Northern Belize.  Palynology 18: 205 –
211.

Pohl, Mary D., Kevin O. Pope, John G. Jones, John S.
Jacob, Dolores R. Piperno, Susan D. deFrance, David L.
Lentz, John A. Gifford, Marie E. Danforth and J.
Kathryn Josserand
1996	Early Agriculture in the Maya Lowlands. Latin
American Antiquity 7: 355 - 372.



--- "Diehl, Richard" <rdiehl at as.ua.edu> wrote:

> 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
> 
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