Pulltrouser Swamp: The Settlement Maps
A Lowland Maya Community Cluster in Northern Belize

Peter D. Harrison and Robert E. Fry

Maps and booklet $25.00
ISBN 978-0-87480-651-9

Were Maya cities primarily ceremonial centers inhabited by a priestly class and visited by commoners only during religious events? Such was the prevailing view until the 1970s, when a number of fieldworkers proposed that lowland Maya civilization could not have depended on the slash-and-burn agriculture now practiced in the region. The numbers of houses being uncovered in the larger cities of Tikal, Mirador, and Calakmul indicated a substantial population level that must have depended on some form of intensive agriculture in the surrounding wetlands.

The 1979-81 Pulltrouser Swamp Project* in Belize was the foundation of Maya geoarchaeology, a milestone in economic archaeology, and the first attempt to marry theories about ancient Maya intensive agriculture with systematic field investigation. Excavations and surveys revealed raised fields, a large ceremonial site, artificial water channeling, and evidence that the area was continually occupied between the Middle Preclassic to the Early Postclassic—essentially the height of Maya civilization—fueling the fierce new debate over ancient Maya subsistence.

Previously unpublished, this map collection provides the first major body of settlement data associated with wetlands in the region. Since there have been few subsequent surveys of such magnitude, it will serve as the base-line study. Certainly it throws additional light on the question of how many people could have lived in the Maya cities.

The collection is a boxed, embossed set of 12 maps in their original size with an accompanying seventy-five page booklet that describes the project and presents photos of the location, fieldwork, and aerial views.

Peter Harrison directed the Pulltrouser Swamp Project and was co-principal investigator. He is adjunct associate research professor at the University of New Mexico and president of the Ahau Foundation. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.