The incredible achievements of the Classic lowland Maya civilization and the subsequent disappearance of that culture have stimulated one of the greatest controversies of modern prehistory. A central element in the controversy is the role of the tropical forest lands in Maya agriculture and subsistence, and the purpose of this study is to identify

This book is the first to bring together all that is known about the humanly-modified and cultivated landscapes of Middle America just prior to the European conquest. It assesses the agricultural and human-environment conditions existing at that time, and its implications for various contemporary themes ranging from global change to the presumed 'environment friendly' Native American.

My interest in ancient Maya agriculture began late in the year of 1971 when William M. Denevan encouraged me to pursue the topic. Our interests had been perked by reports from Joseph W. Ball, JaCk Eaton, and Irwin Rovner of the presence of terrace-like features throughout the Rio Bee region of the soutnern Yucatan Peninsula. Denevan maintained a long-term interest in pre-Hispanic agriculture and population in the New World. Our studies with the emerging Rio Bee research group at the University of Wisconsin led to the conclusion that the then dominant themes of Maya agriculture were in need of reevaluation and that a number of remains of intensive forms of agriculture were likely to be found in the Central Maya lowlands of Mexico, Peten (Guatemala), and Belize, particularly wetland or raised fields in addition to the reported terraces. Our interests were heightened at this time by notification from Alfred Siemens of the finds of wetland fields in the vicinity of the Rio Bee region in the Chetumal, Mexico-northern Belize area.

The Anthropocene is an authoritative desk-top reference work for students of geography, the environment and sustainability. Through a series of 101 interconnected questions and answers spanning ten thematic sections, the book provides a comprehensive survey of humankind's impact on the global environment from the Late Stone Age to the present day. Unrivalled in scope, the book distills the latest research findings and scholarship across a remarkable range of topics concerning the evolving human-environment relationship. These include the broad history of human-induced changes in the environmental conditions of the planet; the major human impacts on the Earth and their consequences; and the different causes and rationales applied to understanding these environmental changes. All questions are answered succinctly and rigorously and draw on a wealth of contemporary evidence and scientific theories. The book is colour illustrated throughout, answers are fully cross-referenced and further readings are suggested for those wishing to delve deeper. For anyone seeking to understand the human-induced changes to our planet and the challenges these pose for sustainability, this book is an invaluable resource. It provides a masterly presentation of the human footprint on the Earth system.

This highly topical study of tropical deforestation reports on the first phase of a large, integrated, multi-institutional, and team-based study. Based in Mexico, it is designed to understand and project land changes in a development frontier that pits the rapidly growing needs of smallholder farmers to cut down forests for cultivation against federally sponsored initiatives committed to various international programmes of forest preservation and complementary economic programmes.

The Earth as Transformed by Human Action is the culmination of a mammoth undertaking involving the examination of the toll our continual strides forward, technical and social, take on our world. The purpose of such a study is to document the changes in the biosphere that have taken place over the last 300 years, to contrast global patterns of change to those appearing on a regional level, and to explain the major human forces that have driven these changes. The first section deals strictly with the major human forces of the past 300 years and the second is a detailed account of the transformations of the global environment wrought by human action. The final section examines a range of perspectives and theories that purport to explain human actions with regard to the biosphere.

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.