Maya Farming Communities and the Long View of Sustainability at Tzacauil

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the landscape of the archaeological site of Tzacauil, Yucatán, Mexico as a record of long-term interactions between Maya farmers and their local environment. Using the framework of historical ecology, the author argues that we can enhance understanding of modern agricultural sustainability through rigorous study of past farming communities. The archaeology of past farming communities can draw out the entanglements between political, social, economic, and environmental dynamics underlying sustainability. To show this, the author situates archaeological perspectives in the five principles of sustainable agriculture outlined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN): efficiency, conservation, rural livelihoods, governance, and resilience. This approach is applied to the specific case of the modern Maya town of Yaxunah, Yucatán, and its ejido or collective agricultural landholding. Yaxunah’s ejido includes the pre-Hispanic archaeological site of Tzacauil, where two farming communities formed in the past. The first formed during the transition to full-time agriculture in the Maya lowlands (Formative period, ca. 2000 years ago). The second formed during the height of pre-Hispanic population in the region (Classic period, ca. 1000 years ago). Weaving together interdisciplinary approaches including ethnographic work with Yaxunah farmers and extensive archaeological excavations, the author demonstrates how Tzacauil’s landscape can be “read” as an environmental history of interactions between people and place. Tzacauil’s landscape shows that the Formative hinterland farming village that formed here was essentially a graft of a segment of urban settlement. The Formative villagers practiced intensive, place-based agricultural and social practices. Households were individually autonomous but also participated in community-building strategies. However, emerging social inequalities, political instability, and environmental changes made the Formative Tzacauil community vulnerable, and it was abandoned. By the time a later settlement formed here in the Classic period, new rural Maya lifeways had developed, as well as new forms of political leadership. Farming communities transitioned to more flexible and shifting agricultural strategies. Households pooled labor collectively and were more mobile on the landscape. Evidence suggests that political leaders endorsed this transition, and that it may have been resilient enough to allow hinterland farmers to persist through the major changes of the Maya collapse. After discussing archaeological work at Tzacuail, this dissertation also delves into more recent histories of farmers and land in Yucatán. The author traces the environmental history of the Yaxunah ejido and its farmers into the present, showing how 21st century practices are increasingly at odds with the careful balance struck between farmers and political leaders in the past. In particular, neoliberal land privatization directly undermines notions of flexible land tenure that are essential for long-term sustainability in Maya farming. Returning to the FAO’s principles of sustainable agriculture, the author assesses the long view of sustainability at Tzacauil by synthesizing 2000 years of farmers’ interactions with this particular place. The dissertation concludes by arguing that Maya farmers are not static bystanders in larger political and environmental processes. Rather, farmers are active agents of change in social and agricultural sustainability. By studying past agriculture, the author argues that we can discern long-term processes of environmental learning in the landscape, and take those insights as lessons for the future.