Listeros,

Research conducted by Anabel Ford, archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara
and director of the University's MesoAmerican Research Center, and her
team, are disputing claims that the Maya agricultural practices let to
their collapse. They state that the Maya forest gardens sustained
biodiversity and the animal habitat while producing plants for food,
shelter and medicine. The Maya cultivated the forest for thousands of
years. The team believes that changes at 2500-1000 BCE were due to
unstable climactic conditions which forced the Maya to develop the
"Maya Forest Garden," which sustained the Maya for 2000 more years
from 1000 BCE-1000 CE.
The changes in forest cover which was seen as evidence of the Maya
denuding their forests can be seen as a form of forest management. due
to climactic change.

DNAIndia has the story here;
http://www.***.com/

A tiny URL;
http://www.***.com/

Mike Ruggeri

Mike Ruggeri's Maya Archaeology News and Links
http://www.***.com/

This is the press release from UCSB:

    http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2144

A line surprises me:

"She added that the present-day Maya's knowledge of forest gardening
is not formally documented in any comprehensive way. "We could save
the Maya forest garden if we could learn from these farmers and their
observance of nature," Ford said."

Contemporary Maya, even here in California, often create small-scale
milpas. I've done it myself. It can be done on any scale; there are
"forest milpa" because they are old. However, the techniques are
widespread. I've learned some of them by talking with neighbors over
many years. Why is it hard to "learn from... farmers" or observe
nature?

Listeros,

Jeff Baker posted this response at our Aztlan listserv;

Mike Ruggeri

This is my quick (unedited), long-winded and meandering critique of
Ford's model on the Maya (and I apologize in advance for the length,
but, hopefully, if you make it to the end, it will have been worth
it). I don't really talk about the collapse, more about the data she
bases her model on, and a brief interpretation of why I have a
completely different model.

The statement that many archaeologists support a swidden based model
may have originated with the reporter who wrote the article rather
than Anabel Ford. For never really says that the current model is a
swidden model, but, in the intro does imply that the modern milpa is
unchanged from the Classic Period. I have problems with that simply
assumption. First, if the system is unchanged where are the raised
fields and the terraces (as Maxime mentions in her post)?

Before turning to Ford's article, a brief review of other theories
about forest gardens/artificial rainforests is in order. In the 1930s,
the botanist Cyrus Lundell suggested that the Maya might have
cultivated the ramon tree based upon his observation on the
correlation between ramon trees and Maya sites. Dennis Puleston was
the next person to promote this idea, and in his master's thesis,
Puleston mapped the distribution of ramon at Tikal and measured the
productivity of one ramon tree at Tikal. Puleston relied upon his
Guatemalan workers to identify the trees. Most of the milperos/
chicleros reply upon bark to identify trees. According to Nick Brokaw,
an ecologist that I had the opportunity to work with in the early 90s,
identifying trees based upon bark only produces a 60-70% success rate
(personal communication). In addition, Puleston's workers identified
three different types of ramon (ramon rojo, ramon blanco and ramon
amarillo), which Puleston
assumed were types of Brosimum alicastrum. In reality these tree types
of trees are three different species of trees: Brosimum alicastrum,
Trophis racemosa, and, Chlorophora tinctura.

In the late 70s, two different teams of researchers measured the
distribution of trees on Maya sites and used that evidence to argue
for the Maya use of tree crops (Coba: Folan et al. 1979; Lamanai:
Lambert and Arnason 1978). In regard to Coba, Turner and Miksicek
argued that the patterning of trees observed by Folan et al. extended
to economic species introduced by the Spaniards, and argued that the
patterning observed at the site was the result of post-conquest/modern
practices rather than prehispanic practices. In this light, it is
worth noting that a recent project at Coba noted that small size of
the trees at the site, and suggested that a forest fire had decimated
the vegetation at the site in the recent past (Manzanilla and Barba
1990).

Lambert and Arnason (1979), after further study of their data,
reversed their stance and argued that the distribution of Brosimum
alicastrum trees at Lamanai was an ecological relationship, with the
distribution of trees (including ramon) on limestone outcrops being
similar to the distribution of trees on large Maya structures. The
distribution of trees on and around small structures was distinctly
different.

In 1978, as part of his dissertation, Frederick Wiseman (1978a)
studied modern pollen rain in the Peten, looking at pollen rain in
milpas and "undisturbed forest." In his dissertation, Wiseman
concluded that the data did not support the "artificial rain forest
model" although elsewhere, he argued in support of the "artificial
rain forest model." (Wiseman 1978b). I should note at this point, that
I don't think his study of modern pollen rain provided sufficient
analogs for analyzing the prehispanic pollen record. A more detailed
and more diverse study is needed for that.

In the recent past, the only people that have been arguing for a
managed forest model of Maya subsistence are Arturo Gomez-Pompa and
Anabel Ford.

Turning more specifically to Ford's (2008) article on El Pilar. Early
on Ford (pg. 184) notes that there were settlements in the El Pilar
area at the time of the Spanish Conquest, during the Colonial area and
into the 19th and 20th centuries.

She also notes a major disconnect between Classic Period settlement
patterns in the area and Posclassic and Historic settlement patterns
in the area (pg. 183-184).

Ford is correct to note that most of the trees in the tropical forest
are animal (insects, birds and bats) pollinated and, therefore, not
highly visible in the lake sediments. But, that does not mean that we
have underestimated the amount of trees present. Ford notes that
palynologists have relied upon ramon-type pollen (including pollen
from Brosimum alicastrum, Trophis racemosa and Chlorophora tinctura)
to reconstruct the forestation and deforestation of the Maya Lowlands.
In this regard, I think she is correct that the relying solely upon
the limited number of emergent tree species that are wind pollinated
for our reconstruction limits our options.

In her discussion of palynology there are two statements that I
disagree with her on: (1) "Ramon, however, is both a pioneer as well
as a high canopy species." (pg. 191). While ramon may move into areas
very quickly it is not a species that I would call (or, I suspect,
most ecologists) a pioneer species. Pioneer species are fast growing
species like the trumpet tree (Cecropia sp.) and varies species of
Melastomes (I don't know of any common names for this plants) and
Acacias (bullhorn thorn, ant-acacia, Mimosa). All three of these
species also are wind-pollinated, although the presence of these
species are not common in forested areas because they need sunlight to
grow in.

Nor do I agree with Anabel on the statement that ramon-type pollen
(she uses the term Moraceae pollen) rebounds in the Terminal Classic.
In some lake cores, ramon-type pollen does rebound in the Terminal
Classic/Early Postclassic (e.g. Lake Peten-Itza [Islebe et al. 1996]),
while other locations do not show a rebound in ramon-type pollen until
ca. AD 1500 (e.g. Aguada Chilanche [Brenner et al. 1990] and Sierra de
Agua [Baker 2003]) (I should note that the analysis for Sierra de Agua
was undertaken by John Jones. I don't have his reference handy), and
in at least one case, ramon-type pollen never recovered (Cob Swamp
[Pohl et al. 1996]).

In the case of pollen, looking at pollen cores for the presence of
true pioneer pollen types (Cecropia, Melastomes, Acacia, and
Burseraceae), every core I have looked at shows a period when all
arboreal pollen is very low (including pioneer pollen and ramon-type
pollen), while grass and cheno-am pollen (cultivars and/or weedy
species) are high. At the end of this period, there is a brief spike
in the pioneer arboreal pollen, after which both pioneer pollen and
grass and cheno-am pollen drop off. In some cores, ramon-type pollen
comes back at this time. In other cores, it doesn't come back for
sometime.

If Ford's model was correct, and the Maya were using some sort of
managed forest, then the pioneer trees would never have had the
opportunity to multiply as they appear to have done. The orchards
managed by the Maya would have gradually been overtaken by other non-
economic trees. And, Ford strongly implies that this forest management
never ceased, which would further reduce the opportunities for the
pioneer species to have the population surge that is clear in the
pollen core.

This pattern of a peak in the pioneer pollen species suggests to me
that there were many clearings/cleared areas for these tree species to
grow in and repopulate, and even dominate the landscape of for several
generations (of trees).

The failure of the ramon-type pollen to recover in some areas before
the conquest suggests to me that these areas might have had a
landscape dominated by secondary tree species, and be indicative of a
swidden regime in the postclassic, with stands of trees continually
being cleared for milpas on a regular basis (a ...

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