Human Impacts on the Maya Forest
Linking the Past with the Present
For the Future of El Pilar
BRASS/El Pilar Program
Report on the 2004 Field Season
Introduction
The interdisciplinary and multifaceted El Pilar Program carried out its 2004 research and conservation program on several fronts. Research was focused on three interrelated endeavors; excavation, survey and ecology. The field excavations were focused at the stone tool workshop site of Cahol Tok adjacent to the LDF chert site of El Pilar. The settlement survey program focused on developing and testing our Maya settlement predictive model. The ecological efforts focused on the Maya forest garden, comparing the Maya forest species of El Pilar to the traditional forest gardens around El Pilar. Excavations at the workshop related site of Cahol Tok revealed the variety of land use activities that are part of the ancient Maya economy. The survey efforts provide a basis for understanding the extent of ancient Maya land use and the mosaic of intensity of the use. And the ecological evaluations of the contemporary forest gardens of traditional village farmers demonstrate the great conservation potential of traditional polycultivation where tiered and layered economic plants are mixed to create an economic landscape with analogies to the past. These field activities have helped to reinforce the importance of community management of the Maya forest both past and present.
Collaboration
The season's activities involved the continued collaboration with Grinnell College, with the French engineering school Ecole Supérieure des Géomètres Topographes (ESGT), and with Help for Progress. These institutions have a history of collaboration with the El Pilar Program and in working together, we are meeting critical goals of understanding the cultural and natural values inherent in the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna. Operating in coordination, data gathered and analyzed over the course of the 2004 season build the increasingly complex picture of the ancient Maya landscape and provide a basic for understanding the cultural and natural resources of El Pilar. The ancient Maya landscape was occupied based on farming choices. To carry out those activities, tools were required. And to understand the nature of the agricultural activities, we have sought understanding from the vanishing segment of traditional forest gardeners who once provided the staples of local subsistence.
Objectives
The objectives of the 2004 season were multifold but each tangibly linked to the understanding of El Pilar. The archaeological field component focused on the Grinnell collaboration in the excavation and analyses of the workshop site adjacent to the chert site at El Pilar. With geographic engineers from ESGT, we compiled, refined, and tested the first stage predictive model for Maya settlements in the Belize River area using the Geographic Information System (GIS). In the laboratory, we addressed the ceramic analyses for El Pilar, working to complete the formal studies of the final year's excavations and systematizing the database for comparisons. Finally, we worked with Help for Progress and rare but valuable traditional forest gardeners who live adjacent to El Pilar, recording the plants of their gardens and evaluating their composition as compared to the Maya forest. These specific activities have filled gaps in our growing research database and provide clues to how the ancient Maya developed their complex society centered at El Pilar.
Figure1: Central Lowland Maya area with El Pilar and other centers indicated
Excavations at Cahol Tok Grinnell College
Working collaboratively with the El Pilar Program, a six-person research team from Grinnell College, headed by anthropology professors Kathryn Kamp and John Whittaker, excavated an area adjacent to a deposit of lithic debitage known as the LDF Chert Site at the Maya center of El Pilar. The location named Cahal Tok (Place of Flint) is a limestone rise with scant structural evidence that appears to be associated with the designated LDF Chert Site. The excavations at the site took the form of five 1-meter wide trenches that crossed the defined area of investigation. They were excavated in detailed cultural levels through the shallow deposits down to bedrock. The results are both anticipated and surprising: there is ample data to support the presence of a workshop; the recovery of a large collection of broken spindle whorls was unprecedented. Analyses and experimental studies support the conclusions that this was a workshop site as well as a locus of a special, perhaps ritual, deposit of spindle whorls.
Excavations revealed that the major activities in the area dated to the Late Classic. This is consistent with the excavations in the LDF Chert site itself. The ceramic collection included more than 4,000 sherds, yet only 5% were considered diagnostic based on rim shape, slip characteristics, and vessel features. Jars and bowls made up the main part of the diagnostics, not an assemblage that represents domestic activities such as cooking. Interestingly, the jars were characteristically large, suggesting a consecration on dry storage.
Figure 3: Ceramic Vessel Shapes
As expected, activities included specialized flint knapping that produced chert axes at the Cahol Tok locus, first on a cleared limestone shelf, then on a prepared cobble platform. Analyses indicate that smaller primary flakes were in situ, but that the larger debris was swept off the edge of the platform to the east, into the LDF Chert site, supporting its context as a dump. To the west of the first platform was another relatively insubstantial structure, possibly a second platform. Curiously, between the two platform structures we found a dense scatter of nearly 200 broken limestone spindle whorls. Replication experiments and other evidence suggest the whorls must have been purposely fractured. The deposit must have been a symbolic one, rather than the result of normal, accidental use, breakage, and discard. They remain an enigmatic deposit apparently unrelated to the chert manufacturing activities. Given that the ceramics are all Late Classic in date, there may be evidence of two facets, one related to the chert production and the other to the ritual spindle whorl deposit.
The investigations of Cahal Tok present yet another complexity to understanding the ancient Maya. The field excavations were undertaken to gain a better understanding of the chert tool production process at the LDF site. Indeed data were gathered that directly bore on this issue. The majority of the debris associated with the east, well-defined platform was related to the flint knapping. Flakes derived from bifacial production predominate in the deposits at Cahol Tok. The materials are skewed towards smaller flakes of soft hammer when compared with the LDF deposit. This is interpreted to be a result of the nature of production activities whereby the larger (hard hammer) materials would be swept off into the dump area. Interestingly, the characteristics of the debris are similar in the two phases of the deposit giving the impression of consistency of activities. Moving west and towards the ill defined structural remains, the lithic collections, while continuing to show a bias towards biface production, become more generalized and similar to common household activities: knapping poor materials, more cortex flakes, high proportions of angular shatter, and evidence of indistinguishable bits of flakes.
The spindle whorls deposit was a surprise and was uncovered in relationship to the area between the knapping platform and the ill-defined structural remains. The deposit is a concentration, and we are certain that there is more to this problematic deposit. The whorls are not merely discards of natural use in a work area, but are instead some kind of intentional deposit. A total of 198 spindle whorl fragments were recovered in the special deposit representing 194 individual whorls. The high number of broken whorls is unusual and experimental breakage experiments could only replicate the breaks when deliberately impacted.
The extraordinary number and the variation within the assemblage argue that they were made, and probably used, by many different spinners. They are largely limestone and of a style common to the region. The size and estimated weight along with the estimated diameter of the perforation for the spindle suggest the use for cotton spinning. The common shapes grouped into four different cross sections and five different decorative patterns. A full 1/3 of the whorls had no designs on them.
Figure 4: Spindle Whorl Designs
The spindle whorls could relate to the use of the western part of Cahal Tok for spinning activities. An offering of whorls would make sense if it accompanied the burial of someone involved in cloth making, or as a closing deposit for a spinning area. Seeing the whorls as evidence of a spinning workshop nearby would produce a nice symmetry of knapping, presumably by men, at one end of the site, and spinning, perhaps by women, at the other. There is no direct evidence, however, that spinning took place at Cahal Tok, as there is for knapping. In any case, it seems someone organized a gathering of whorls from many spinners into one offering. The chert debitage surely represents the work of many knappers in one place. Whether we see that as evidence of centralized control of production at a factory close to the high-status monuments, or as a back-alley industrial area where individual artisans came to work for companionship, efficiency, and convenient waste disposal depends more on our biases about the Maya than the evidence of this site.
Examining Cahol Tok in the social context of the ancient Maya civilization and the major center of El Pilar suggests a narrow focus of actions. The ceramic assemblage is truncated, with little evidence of cooking, a major domestic activity. The significantly high proportion of chert biface reduction flakes and the special deposit of spindle whorls all point to a concentration on craft production in general. There is no doubt that one of the crafts of the area relates to chert tool production. It seems that this activity was isolated from domestic activities at El Pilar and from other activities that may have related to the products. In addition, Cahol Tok could not have been the sole source of the deposition related to the LDF Chert Site at El Pilar as it extends 50 by 50 meters and is known to have a depth of at least 2 meters. Likely other such local ephemeral platforms may be located around the location of the proposed dumpsite. Yet, chert production was not the sole aspect of Cahol Tok. There within the context of the flint knapping, came the unusual deposit of spindle whorls. How were the chert specialized activities related to the spinning activities? Was Cahol Tok a locus of craft specializations that balanced the male flint working with the female spinning? Was the spinning deposit an unrelated event before or after the chert workshop deposits? These are difficult questions that cannot be answered with the data at hand.
The Maya Landscape and El Pilar
The Maya forest region is characterized by rolling limestone ridges covered by a deciduous hardwood forest. This verdant jungle thrives on an annual rainfall of 1000 to 3000 mm that falls mainly from June to January. A drought-like dry-season runs from January to June. Activities today are impacted by this wet/dry seasonal deluge and drought sequence, as they were in the Maya prehistory.
A composite mosaic of regional land resources underwrites the foundation of Late Classic Period settlement distribution and intensity in the Maya forest. Settlement densities are the greatest in the well-drained ridges across the region. Ridge lands are concentrated in the interior and are characterized by shallow, fertile, mollisol soils of excellent quality, representing only 1% of the world's tropics yet up to 50% of the Maya forest. These soils are superior for hand cultivation methods but are inappropriate for contemporary industrial methods, which relate to the conservation risks in the region today.
These well-drained zones preferred for Maya settlement are unevenly distributed across the region, resulting in dispersed settlement patterns. There is a distinct relationship between the availability of well-drained ridges, settlement density, and the regional Maya hierarchy. This is evident in the local settlement around El Pilar.
The ancient Maya occupation of the central lowland region can be traced back into the third millennium BC. The material archaeological record, however, is firm for the Middle Preclassic before 1000 BC. Steady settlement expansion typified the first millennium BC, based essentially on household farming decisions. In the Late Preclassic, around 250 BC, land use intensity diversified and civic-ceremonial centers made a full appearance across the region. Settlements expanded over the area, focused initially on rivers, then lakes and, ultimately, spread across the entire interior area.
There is ample evidence that the interior Petén area around Tikal dominated the region in the Late Classic Period, AD 600-900. During this time period, Maya settlement expansion and construction was at its maximum. Yet Maya cites do not fit traditional notions of urbanism, suggesting a value for "green space" that would allow for the forest garden. Even visual metaphors expressed values they placed on nature. Jaguars, monkey, and cacao figure prominently in Maya art and iconography. The presence and pervasiveness of these animals, as well as a myriad of water loving creatures have habitat implications for the Maya forest in ancient times.
The centralization
process was sustained through AD 900, when the Maya civilization "collapsed."
Major administrative and political centers, such as Tikal in the central
Petén, witness abrupt halts in public projects; but settlements
persist through the Terminal Classic Period (AD 900-1000). Settlement
evidence between Tikal and Yaxhá, in the Belize River area, as
well as in northern Belize attest to persistent occupation. Further, monument
building continued at El Pilar through this period, to cease in the Postclassic.
Our GIS research focuses on the Late Classic period settlement distribution and uses the geographic variables of slope, water, and soil characteristics to identify patterns of settlement that would be best explained by farming choices. The development of the UCSB Maya forest GIS has involved the compilation, georeferencing, and verification of key data on the geographic and archaeological data. Settlement from the BRASS settlement surveys and the geographic data have been compiled on the basis of digitized, shared, and compiled digital and paper inputs from local regional and international sources.
Focusing on the local scale at 1:50,000, we have developed the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the topographic contours, the water input based on stream flow records on the topographic sheets, and the soil fertility and drainage characteristics based on the UK soils study of the Belize River area. These geographic data were refined and verified in the field and with the paper maps over the past 2 years. The settlement data derive from the BRASS surveys of 1983 and 1984. The original survey maps were scanned and georeferenced and the original CAD files were converted and read into the GIS. These fundamental data layers provide the first basis for the ancient Maya settlement predictive model. Our results at once provide a basis for understanding the ancient Maya land use strategies and a criterion for protecting the most sensitive areas from development. This season, we are focused on the local Belize River area. As we gain increasing confidence in the statistical analyses, we plan to take the focus down to the El Pilar site-specific scale as well as expand the results to the Maya region as a whole in an effort to test the cross scale qualities of the results.
Reconstructing Maya Settlement Patterns: At all scales, well-drained zones have been shown to be preferred by Maya settlement over time and across space. By the Late Classic, all the well-drained uplands evidence high settlement, resulting in dispersed patterns relative to the location of the well-drained zones. Our GIS research and model is designed to scrutinize the relationship between the availability of well-drained ridges, settlement density, and the regional Maya hierarchy. Using the BRASS settlement surveys as the principal dependent input, we have been able to examine the correlations of settlement against key independent geographic variables that are known world wide in impact settlement choices. With the first level results, we have conducted field validation and examination at the local scale with the survey of cleared fields in the north side of the Belize River area with the GPS. In addition, we targeted specific areas and located them with the GPS to verify low probability and high probability areas. These field efforts have provided data that are now compiled into the predictive settlement base and provide the foundation for future modeling across the Maya landscape.
Spatial distribution of Water, Soil and Vegetation: The porous limestone of the Maya forest leaks water to subsurface aquifers. Annual rainfall distribution is seasonal, focused on June to January. Water collection in the interior area is limited to the wet season. This seasonal regime characterizes the region overall, except for drought periods. Given continuity in climate regime and lithology, the major impact on the environment is human land use. For our examination of the Belize River area local scale, we focus on spatial distributions of soil qualities with topography to correlate them with Maya settlement distribution.
We simulate the actual spatial distribution using landscape-weighting factors developed in our work using Weights of Evidence (WofE). The WofE origins are in mining geology. The essential tools have been integrated into a GIS software package, ESRI's ArcView 3.2. Gary Raines, who helped build the ArcView extensions for WofE analysis has worked in the development of GIS data standards (geology.usgs.gov/dm/), and has collaborated in our WofE predictive modeling to the Maya forest.
Figure 6: The Four Themes of the Weights of Evidence
The WofE analysis follows six steps: 1) select known points of some feature such as farming sites that are to be modeled, 1) select thematic maps that are suspected to contribute to the explanation of a distribution, 2) using the correlation analysis tools of WofE, convert selected map layers to binary or categorical form, 3) test for conditional independence comparing prior and posterior probabilities by class combinations, eliminating those maps which do not contribute explanatory power, 4) create a set of weights to use for each layer using Bayesian methods, and 5) develop posterior probability and the associated uncertainty maps using the weighted layers. The probabilities are then used as environmental weights in the agent based land-use model. This is the method we used in the initial model development for 2003 and has been refined this field season. Our predictive model results are a significant improvement over our earlier efforts and demonstrate the significant value of the GIS in spatial analyses.
For our independent variables we used the following themes: topographic slope, soil drainage, and distance to streams. Topographic slope was based on digitized contour lines from the 1:50,000 maps and the SRTM data. Overall, the digitized data were more resolute. From these data we generated the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) that was used to provide slope data. Soil characteristics of drainage and fertility were based on data originally digitized by Scott Fedick from the soil maps of the Belize River area. These data were refined, georeferenced, checked against field data collections, and field verified before employed in the GIS analyses.
The context for our research is the Maya forest and the study area the Upper Belize River Area, essentially the domain of El Pilar. Working with the data from the Upper Belize River Area as our local scale, we used the independent variables of slope, water, soil fertility and soil drainage as input layers that would be the potential predictors of the dependent input of actual ancient Maya settlement locations. The following illustrations are of the independent variables.
These independent variables were analyzed with the WofE program and our preliminary results are promising. In our test of farming criteria for the location of settlements, we expected that good soil fertility and good soil drainage would play a major role in site selection. We anticipated that location of water would be important and that settlements would prefer areas of moderate relief. Our model with the settlement data from the BRASS surveys provides a good fit with the farming choices of households. We found that our preliminary model:
· Explains 75% of settlement locations
· Eliminated lakes, Strahler order, Belize River as contributory factors
· Determined that streams are important up to 400m
· Validated the model with GPS field data
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We are still in the process of refining the model, and the results demonstrate that there are material foundations of Maya settlement. The results represent a mosaic of land use ranging from intensive settlement, extensive occupation, and limited use based on the settlement patterns. Land use would range from permanent homes, field houses, specialized activities, and unoccupied areas. Settlement locations are largely accounted for by smallholder farming choices, just the same choices that are made today by the vanishing traditions of the forest garden.
The overall pattern speaks to farming choices. Intensive land use where densities are greater than 100 residential units per sq km would be those areas of permanent occupation and home gardens. Areas with an average of 40 residential units with moderate settlement density would have been seasonally occupied zones where more extensive rotational field farming might be expected. Other areas with little occupation would have been more extensively cultivated and managed forests. Areas without occupation are those areas with serious limitations: too steep, too wet, or too poor soil. These areas would serve for purposes other than cultivation, providing various economic resources for hunting and collecting.
Our model has another important potential. It could prove a major asset in the management of cultural resources of the Maya forest and give probability strategies for locating ancient settlements. With the refinement of the independent predictors, especially the slope characteristics, we expect that the model could be significantly improved. As development encroaches on the Maya forest, the cultural heritage is subject to loss. With the tiers of settlement probabilities based on the WofE model, we can begin to classify areas by their archaeological sensitivity. This could be a major development tool for the Institute of Archaeology. As we work on the model for the regional scale, this will be a distinct asset to include in the land management designs of the country.
These results provide a strong basis to extending the model to regional scale. We have good data for the DEMs and the water layers for the regional level. One of the major problems has been the comparability of the soil characteristics across national boundaries. We are presently working on the development of the regional model with the 1:250,000 scale soil data from Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Our foundation data are those from Guatemala where the soil fertility and drainage are well mapped. We also have good soil layers for Mexico based on FAO criteria; these need to be transformed for comparability. We have determined that the best data set on soil for Belize is the 1959 Wright data; the paper maps are readily available. We have been developing these data by digitizing Wright's soils for Belize. Our data need to be comparable to the work we have done with Simmons for Guatemala, and INEGI for Mexico. We will use the digital elevation model of the Shuttle Radar Thematic Map (SRTM) with 90-meter resolution for the slope layer. For the streams we will use the Paseo Pantera Consortium data with our data georeferencing and corrections. Our initial regional scale data for the UCSB Maya forest GIS is now available on the Alexandria Digital Library www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/adl.
The Maya Forest Gardens of El Pilar
The ancient Maya were an agrarian society with a well-documented development process that transformed the Maya forest into a productive garden for their 2000-year civilizational process. In looking at the range of cultural adaptations to the Maya forest, we can see that human culture and the environment mutually influence each other in a dynamic, considered in the domain of historical ecology. Our work with the ancient Maya settlement patterns and the contemporary forest gardeners links these arenas both in time and space.
Examining the contemporary Maya forest from a historical ecological perspective enriches our interpretation of ancient Maya settlement patterns and the evaluation of the relationship between the forest and the traditional farmers of the region. The prevailing view is that the present forests of the Maya area are essentially anthropogenic, that they are a result of human interaction with the forest, manipulating the species composition to increase the value of the forest for the economy of the culture. By actively nurturing and providing preferential attention of some species over others in the forest and planting and caring for economic plants in the garden, there is a blur in the distinction between the wilderness and the garden. This is the realm of the forest garden, the legacy of the Maya and the heritage of the local traditional farmer. In an effort to explain Maya settlement patterns, long recognized as dispersed, we have begun to look at contemporary traditional forest gardens and at how they relate to the forest today.
We are not the first to imagine this connection. Rosita Arvigo, in her quest to understand the use of medicinal plants of the Maya area, came to apprentice with Elijio Panti. Panti is among the vanishing numbers of people who have known the forest as a garden. His strength was concentrated on the medicinal qualities, but certainly he knew how to use the whole repertoire of assets the Maya forest offers. With Panti, we have some of the wisdom codified through the valiant efforts of Arvigo's team. But the Maya forest is much more than a pharmacy. It provides all the necessary resources for everyday life: ornaments, food, spices, dyes, poisons, construction and household products, toys, beverages, rituals, and fodder among the many. Indeed, the historical foundations of lumbering and chicle so essential to the historical development of the Maya forest are dependent on the forest as a garden. Logically, the inhabitants, those who depended on the forest for their survival, must have crafted the economic qualities of the forest. Thus, the forest garden must be a result of the cumulative strategies for survival. The Maya forest demonstrates the Maya mastery of nature as a legacy of their construction of biological capital. They made nature a product of their culture. It is the contemporary forest gardeners who can reveal the secrets of the Maya forest and who can show how to balance cultural prosperity with conservation.
In beginning to examine the biodiversity of the Maya forest, we had seen evidence that supported the diminishing diversity of landscapes that appeared to relate to the length of time they had been exposed to human habitation. Considering Conservation International's data on the 25 most endangered tropical zones of the world, we note:
· West Africa: 9,000 plant species
· Southeast Asia: 12,000 plant species
· Mesoamerica: 24,000 plant species
· Amazon: 48,000 plant species
Based on this global pattern, we proposed to look at the Maya forest scale to see if the global pattern would hold at the regional level. Our working hypothesis was that where there was intense human evidence in the Maya forest there would be less biodiversity and where there was less evidence there would be more biodiversity. As we began to work with the data, we found that the overall biodiversity was comparable among the sample sites of high, medium, and low settlement density. Further, that the dominant species of each sample area was similar and that the plant species of the oligarchy were overwhelmingly of economically important species (~90%). And importantly, those same species were highly adapted to cutting and burning, the major management tool of humans in the tropics. These initial results presented a new view of the Maya forest, one where we could see that the entire landscape was managed and now was growing wild, or feral. The cultural selection of the ancient Maya is evident in the structure of the Maya forest today, a structure that has developed in the context of the Maya civilization and is considered the second most biodiverse place on earth. These new insights turned our attentions to the Maya forest as a feral garden.
We set out to document that the Maya forest is a feral garden. Examining the contemporary forest from this perspective, we discovered that: 1) the alpha diversities, known as biodiversity, of the Maya forest is low compared to similar forests that have not been occupied intensively over millennia; 2) the beta diversity, the difference in species composition among widely-spaced samples of these forests, is small and that the forest is relatively uniform when compared to other tropical zones; and 3) the oligarchies, the top species by abundance/space, of these forests are comprised principally of species that were and continue to be of economic value to the people in the area.
Our data suggest that the forest of the ancient Maya still bears the evidence of manipulation. The development of the ancient Maya from at least 2000 BC has modified the nature of the forest to favor species that are useful to the inhabitants. This cultural selection process has reduced biodiversity in comparison to a forest like the Amazon where no civilization emerged. In addition, the Maya construction of their biological capital in the standing Maya forest increased economic species, yet maintained an eclectic structure of the forest as well as the utility that supported the Maya population. Finally, the cultural selection process was an active part of the forest management in both zones of intensive and extensive occupation, homogenizing the forest across the landscape.
The native Maya forest is now a feral forest, but there are still traditional forest gardeners who know the values and maintain them in their intensive home gardens, their distant out fields, and in their purposeful reserves. We have come to know a number of these living treasures, who, like Elijio Panti, have cultivated the nature of the forest, nurtured desirable sprouts, eliminated competition, and appreciated balances they experienced. These forest gardeners are the core of a new emerging network that can showcase the ecological history of the Maya forest. We seek to introduce their forest gardens, their strategies, and their strengths to support the conservation of El Pilar.
Figure 8: Marcelo Medina and Alfonso Tzul discuss crop rotation
To compare the feral forest to the managed garden, we have begun to evaluate the traditional forest gardens in the El Pilar area. These are polycultivation plots of home gardens and out fields that are managed by farmers who are involved in household endeavors and market enterprise. Not every villager or every farmer has the qualities of a forest gardener. Research conducted by Help for Progress has demonstrated that the select calling of forest gardeners requires skill, practice, and experimentation. The forest gardeners possess unique qualities that separate them from the average cultivator. They are independent thinkers who have keen observation skills. They have used many methods to guide their occupation. They are prone to experimentation and gather data that they use from empirical experience.
The forest gardeners seek to learn empirically from nature as well as from other experiences. Examples of their insight into the workings of the forest are found in their way of cataloging plant resources as they encounter them in their own gardens, fields, and reserves, as well as in the work at El Pilar. They are able to identify potentials and willing to take opportunities in their garden experiments that they think will resultin improvements. But as the agricultural sector has transformed, and the "Green Revolution" overwhelmed the time honored traditional techniques, the recognition of direct empirical strategies have
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Figure
9: Forest Gardeners learn technniques from each other at
a Network meeting |
While forest gardeners were a vital component of the subsistence sector in historic times, their role has diminished with the advent of modern demands that require new skills and capital. While the knowledge they have was legitimately exploited to underwrite the early lumbering operations and provided the success of the chicle industry in their times, the intimate knowledge of the forest as a garden supported even archaeological projects that were required to domicile in the jungle for seasons at a time. The Maya mastery of nature is evident in the forest itself and the traditional forest gardeners have continued to manage this valuable asset that is presently threatened. Their personal and confident understanding of the relationship of plants, their habits and habitats, their importance to animals and the animal's importance to them and their values have become virtually invisible. This is curious, as never before has their knowledge been in more demand as the Maya forest is exposed to the greatest perils in its co-evolution with humans and the developed world is on a heightened quest for conservation designs.
Our collaborative team of the El Pilar Program, including the BRASS/El Pilar project and the Help for Progress organization, has recognized the value and potential of the forest gardeners for some time. In the vision for the management of the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna, we have envisioned their participation, their development of the forest garden values that can frame the ancient Maya monuments at El Pilar, and their transfer of knowledge by teaching the next generation how to care for the El Pilar forest as a garden. This is the way to conserve the valuable unwritten empirical data that are housed in the wisdom of the forest gardeners.Our challenge was how to find the forest gardeners and how to collectivize the knowledge of their experience. From this grew the notion of the El Pilar Forest Garden Network. This new concept and group are beginning to recognize their gifts and share their knowledge among each other. This is the first essential step to gathering the empirical information together. We have many types of gardeners gravitating to the emerging network. Most have specialties, the areas of forest gardening that they are most conversant with: ornamentals, fruits, and seeds. Some have concentrated on the variety of fruit and hardwood trees, others are focused on food, still another knows much of the fodder of the forest, while another is more comfortable in the management of the garden. And there are the gardeners that know more of the hunting, medicinal, or foraging aspects.
Each forest gardener shares a common base that emerges when together, yet each has explored his or her specialty and has discovered and learned from that individual experience. It is these collective and unique experiences that need to be shared, transferred, and maintained for the conservation of the Maya forest and that can be showcased at El Pilar. Further, we propose then that this traditional Maya land use, both contemporary as in the past, can provide a way to use and conserve the Maya forest and is an alternative to the modern and introduced strategies.
We have begun to work with approximately 20 forest gardeners in the El Pilar area. We have initiated our research by inviting them to share their work and interests in their gardens. We began by asking them the plants that they nurture and grow in their gardens. From this basis we have assembled a foundation database on the nature of the forest garden, the plants that are cared for, their uses and their origins.
In addition, we have begun to work with Environmental Studies students of Sacred Heart Junior College. We have called our student group Enlaces as they link the academic to the practice. They have joined the El Pilar Forest Garden Network to continue our inquiry with more in-depth studies. They have focused on a gardener in turn; they intend to interview each forest gardener of the El Pilar Forest Garden Network to gather in their stories and life history as related to their interest in their forest garden. They have also begun to gather systematic species data from proscribed plots in the forest gardens to build a data set on the gardens that we can compare to the forest. They are also developing maps and voucher specimens they hope to lodge in the governmental herbarium.
Our initial data come from on-site interviews and accounts from farmers themselves who have identified and demonstrated their involvement with the forest as a garden. From these target interviews with 18 traditional forest gardeners we have found that there are over 350 species of plants within these gardens, clearly maintaining biodiversity in the forest garden. Moreover, 53% of the garden species are native to the Maya forest, suggesting that the forest structure provides an important quality to the gardens. Importantly, the oligarchy identified in the Maya forest is an embedded component of the forest gardens. In other words, the dominant species found in the wild lands of the feral Maya forest are critical components of the traditional managed forest garden. This lends support to the ancient Maya selection creating the forest as a garden.
Figure 10: Habit, Origin, and Use of Plants in the El Pilar Forest Garden Network
The diversity of the gardens is dazzling. An inexperienced visitor may not fully comprehend the forest garden at first view. It is biodiverse and complex, representing layers that mimic the native forest in complexity and diversity. Further, is does not give the appearance of a carefully managed space: there are tumbles of compost, bee hives and trash, along with covering vegetation under which you may be shown a nursery of mahogany trees. Yet this is indeed a carefully managed garden. Each gardener can show you the newly sprouting cedar under a protective cover of leaves or a nursery of saplings ready to transplant in amongst green vines. Insects are fostered and leaves are piled in ways that are protective of roots and shoots. It is an entirely distinct way of management but one that empirically has worked over the ages. The amazing qualities of the forest garden can be seen in our species list and in our summary. The collective forest gardens have a wide diversity of plants and the species include:
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150 trees
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81 shrubs
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64 herbs
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37 lianas or vines
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15 palms
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8 grasses
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4 epiphytes
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2 ferns
The plants are nurtured for medicine, ornaments, food, spices, dyes, poisons, construction, household products, toys, beverages, rituals, fodder and many more household needs. These forest gardens may at first look more like a compost heap and untamed jungle, but as you spend time with the farmers, you come to understand the management strategies and the alliance that actively engages in the verdant environment. While plants introduced over the past 500 years influence these contemporary gardens, more than 90% of the native forest oligarchy is nurtured in the traditional forest garden suggesting that the structure of the forest and the forest garden is much the same.
These native traditionalists are the heroes of the Maya forest. They are attentive to innovations and willingly share ideas and experiences. As the elder generation of forest gardeners was approached with innovations, they were eager to incorporate them in their cultivation efforts. Agricultural extension officers who were active in the 60s and 70s would have the potential to influence strategies and plantings. When new concepts were promoted, these farmers were among the first adapt them to their fields. Yet, when the seeds and processes of the "Green Revolution" were introduced to the Maya forest agricultural enterprise, problems emerged. The experimental hybrid maize developed in the temperate climes away from local native predators worked well for the experimental area, but once reintroduced to Mesoamerica, they turned out to be problematic, requiring significant capital outlay to maintain, in contrast to the hardy local maize varieties. Other issues arose. The hybrids were designed for machine planting and machine reaping, yet the traditional farmers plant and reap by hand. Further, the shucking of corn was also intended to be a machine process, but these farmers still store and process the ears of maize by hand so the loose fitting husk now works as a disadvantage for long-term storage. While hybrid maize can out-produce native races because of ear and kernel size, this advantage was only captured in the first few years of use as production diminished for local insect predation. The continued use of hybrid seeds made investment in petrochemicals synthesized for monocrop production a requisite, changing fieldwork habits and demanding scarce capital for the application to maize fields. In interviews, the El Pilar Forest Garden Network participants argue that they now reject the Green Revolution techniques and vocalize their mistrust in the manner in which they were introduced. They are actively working to find and propagate traditional heritage seeds and cultivate in the more time-honored polycultivational manner where field management was a dynamic of changing household needs, participation, and use.
The knowledge of how to manage the forest as a garden is vanishing. The self identified forest gardeners who are becoming involved with the El Pilar Forest Garden Network are the unsung and yet invisible heroes of the Maya forest, actively conserving the inherent values of the forest as they manage their household affairs. This intangible knowledge must be supported and continue as the future of the Maya forest depends on it. The development of the El Pilar Forest Garden Network is one way to encourage exchange and development of the traditional forest garden knowledge and to increase the visibility of this unwritten style of resource management. Another important way to encourage this conservation alternative is to promote the forest garden at El Pilar, bringing the forest gardeners into the management regime at El Pilar, maintaining a forest garden at Tzunu'un, developing the verdant landscape around the monuments of the site, and training the enlightened future landscape managers to carry forth the traditional knowledge of the forest as a garden. This would showcase "archaeology under the canopy."
The Enlaces are a promising link for the development and investment in El Pilar. They are trained in environmental studies, they have education with an AA degree, and they are involved with the El Pilar Forest Garden Network. They have connections in the villages and links to the wider system and they are appreciative of the practice as a critical component of conservation. Along with the forest gardeners, they are the link to the successful future of forest gardening and the conservation of the Maya forest. With fresh views and interests, there is promise of new garden-to-market enterprises that will cultivate the conservation of the Maya forest as a garden, exploring new local and international ventures that can bring economic opportunities to the rural component and increase the visibility of traditional strategies as alternatives for maintaining the culture and nature of the Maya forest.