ANCIENT MAYA GEOARCHAEOLOGY OF REDISCOVERED LANDESQUE CAPITAL AND APPLIED QUATERNARY SCIENCE

Maya archaeologists often use Quaternary science for the broader impacts of their studies and some geoscientists use Maya archaeology for their broader impacts. A key concern by both fields has been how to show their work is relevant to the burgeoning challenges of the modern world. Most applied Quaternary science to Maya studies has been on climate change or degradation impacts, which too often have been deterministic or linear correlations with ‘collapses’. Maya geoarchaeology, however, has discovered a treasure trove of ancient Maya ‘landesque capital’, including vast numbers of reservoirs, terraces, and wetland canals and fields. Excavation and analysis of these features can show lost cultural knowledge about many of the challenges of today such as responses to sea level rise, water quality changes, climate changes, the ‘Early Anthropocene’, and epochs of erosion. Here we outline modern applications from each of these and then focus on ancient Maya wetland agroecosystems. We excavated dozens of these features over twenty years of research and recently acquired nearly 300 km² of LiDAR that shows widespread networks of previously unknown ancient Maya wetland fields. The coverage indicates extensive wetland canal and field systems and intensive, polycultural complexes of upland terraces and lowland wetland fields. Some features correlate in time to droughts, soil erosion, sea level rise, and add to the wider evidence of the Early Anthropocene. All have applications to and profound applications for myriad modern problems.