The new mapping equipment is giving a foreign team of scientists their first full glimpse of the scale and complexity of the massive city hidden during centuries of rainforest expansion in Campeche, Mexico.
“In a society like this, other people are the power. Managing and concentrating other people in a limited space, especially given the technological limitations, required a lot of thought and planning,” said Nicholas Dunning, an archaeologist at the University of Cincinnati.
Dunning, a professor in the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Systems, led a contingent of UC geography, anthropology and biology experts in a task sponsored by the National Science Foundation. UC researchers have been involved for years in studies of the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest.
UC participates in the Bajo Laberinto archaeological project led through the University of Calgary, the Autonomous University of Campeche and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The researchers used a tool called soft detection and range (lidar) to scan the hidden soil beneath the thick rainforest. What they discovered was amazing.
Lidar analyses revealed the foundations of ancient palaces, houses of various circles of relatives, temples, shrines and markets. peoples of North or South America in 700 A. D.
“In the Maya lowlands, lidar is a game-changing tool,” Dunning said. “If you are in a domain with thick forest cover, you need to visualize the soil surface in remarkable detail. It would take years and years to reflect with classical ground-based mapping. And classical mapping would lose much more sophisticated features that lidar can detect. “
The assignment of lidar studies was legalized through the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico with that of Adriana Velázquez Morlet, director of INAH Campeche. The assignment is funded through the National Science Foundation, UC and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. .
Today, Calakmul is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city was the center of the ancient Kanu’l or “snake dynasty” of the Maya between 635 and 850 AD. honor their rulers. The Kanu’l dynasty ruled the geopolitics of the Maya lowlands, controlling a vast network of vassal kingdoms.
In addition to revealing more about urban planning, the LIDAR study also showed how the ancient Maya changed their landscape to accommodate their large urban population. The city is full of canals, terraces, walls and dams to capture water and retain soil for agriculture.
“It’s an absolutely synthetic landscape,” Dunning said. We knew Calakmul as an elaborate formula of water control to be the city we see.
The UC team spent 4 weeks conducting fieldwork in Calakmul to reconstruct the water, land, and forest control practices of the ancient Maya. Like many other ancient Mayan cities, Calakmul was based on an elaborate formula of giant public depositories.
Calakmul’s dry season can stretch for months, so retaining water is key to the survival of a village of this size, Dunning said.
UC researchers such as Jeffrey Brewer and Christopher Carr from UC’s Department of Geography and GIS, as well as Duncan Cook from Australian Catholic University and Shane from the University of Calgary, have excavated 3 of the 4 largest urban reservoirs, revealing meticulous engineering in their ashlar floors and mud-anchored carved stone walls.
“We were impressed,” Dunning said. I have been running in Mayan reservoirs for 30 years and the structure in Calakmul is beautiful, with superbly placed stone walls and floors and complex hydrological engineering. “
They read about ceramics, carbon samples and other artifacts discovered in the tanks. The UC team also sampled excavation profiles to capture ancient pollen, geochemical signatures and environmental DNA that can help determine which wild and cultivated plants were developing there. This will help researchers reconstruct the land use, forestry practices and food of the ancient Maya.
UC biology professor David Lentz and UC graduate student Stephanie Meyers are conducting a botanical analysis of Calakmul to understand how the ancient Maya shaped today’s rainforest.
Previously, the UC interdisciplinary team helped reveal how the ancient Maya practiced sustainable agriculture and forestry for millennia in and around the city of Yaxnohcah, near Calakmul and Tikal in Guatemala.
In addition to identifying human structures, lidar is used to measure plants in general in the rainforest, Lentz said. In this way, scientists can compare one forest to another.
“We are in a new era of archaeology,” Lentz said.
Their DNA research also revealed a lush, wild oasis developing around Tikal’s reservoirs, creating the equivalent of an urban park in the ancient city. And in the Tikal reservoirs, they discovered evidence of complicated filtration crystalline quartz and zeolite imported from several kilometers.
“The length of the village of Calakmul is incredible,” Lentz said. “My task is to understand how they controlled to feed all those other people and get enough fuel to cook their food. “
Ancient Mayan staples, such as corn, beans, and cassava, are unsightly or even poisonous unless cooked properly. Lentz said the ancient Maya would have a stable source of firewood.
“Every society is involved in power. So were the Mayans. Their main source of energy for firewood,” Lentz said. “When you’re talking about tens of thousands of people, that’s a lot of firewood. It’s a constant request. “
Informed through the new lidar maps, the UC team and their collaborators will return to Calakmul in 2023 to continue their excavations.
You’ve read about few residential spaces in detail, Dunning said. They hope to read about those spaces in the coming years.
“It’s a real privilege to paint in Calakmul and with such a talented organization of foreign collaborators who bring so much wisdom to the research,” Dunning said.
Dunning said archaeologists were excited to resume postponed box paintings since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic: “An archaeologist who can’t make box paintings is like a canoe baseball player with a damaged arm and desperately needs to get into the game. “