Among Mesoamericanists, the agricultural basis of the ancient Maya
civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula has been an important topic
of research—and controversy. Interest in the agricultural system
of the Maya greatly increased as new discoveries showed that the
lowland Maya were not limited to slash-and-burn technology, as had
been previously believed, but used a variety of more sophisticated
agricultural techniques and practices, including terracing, raised
fields, and, perhaps, irrigation. Because of the nature of the data
and because this form of agricultural technology had been key to
explanations of state formation elsewhere in Mesoamerica,
raised-field agriculture became a particular focus of
investigation. Pulltrouser Swamp conclusively demonstrates the
existence of hydraulic, raised-field agriculture in the Maya
lowlands between 150 B.C. and A.D. 850. It presents the findings of
the University of Oklahoma's Pulltrouser SwampProject, an
NSF-supported interdisciplinary study that combined the talents of
archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, paleobotanists,
biologists, and zoologists to investigate the remains of the Maya
agricultural system in the swampy region of northern Belize. By
examining soils, fossil pollen and other plant remains, gastropods,
relic settlements, ceramics, lithics, and other important evidence,
the Pulltrouser Swamp team has clearly demonstrated that the
features under investigation are relics of Maya-made raised and
channelized fields and associated canals. Other data suggest the
nature of the swamps in which the fields were constructed, the
tools used for construction and cultivation, the possible crops
cultivated, and at least one type of settlement near the fields,
with its chronology. This verification of raised fields provides
dramatic evidence of a large and probably organized workforce
engaged in sophisticated and complex agricultural technology. As
record of this evidence, Pulltrouser Swamp is a work of seminal
importance for all students and scholars of New World prehistory.
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