NSF Grant (1357256): Collaborative Research: The Costa Escondida Project: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Two Ancient Maya Ports and Their Surrounding Coastline
Dr. Jeffrey Glover (Georgia State University), Dr. Trish Beddows (Northwestern University), Dr. Beverly Goodman (University of Haifa), Dr. Dominique Rissolo (University of California, San Diego), Derek Smith (University of Washington), and colleagues undertook research on the relationship between humans and the environment along the north coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula starting in 2016. Shorelines are dynamic places, both culturally and environmentally, and the project explored this dynamism by employing earth, biological and social sciences to elucidate the linkages between human settlements and their coastline. Working on the coast, researchers must take into consideration a distinct range of geomorphological, hydrogeochemical, and ecological variables. When these variables are connected with archaeological data, the end result is a nuanced understanding that illuminates barriers and opportunities people faced as part of a dynamic coastal landscape over millennia. By focusing specifically on coastal settlements, this research adds a much needed dimension to the growing body of literature from various parts of the world that attempts to understand how the dynamic relations between cultural and environmental factors, at local and global scales, influenced the developmental trajectory of past human societies. The results of this research can serve as the foundation for a broader understanding of the interrelated variables that modern and future groups will have to contend with as they adapt to changing coastal regimes. The project has a long history of sharing its research with the local community and will make every effort to share pertinent research results with the broader public through popular media.
Over the past three millennia, rising sea levels and fluctuating climatic regimes have dramatically transformed the physiographic characteristics of this drowning coastline, while Maya society witnessed the rise and fall of divine kings and the emergence of a market-based economy. By correlating multiple facets of the changing paleoenvironment with broader social and economic changes, the research team will be in a strong position to reveal the challenges faced, and opportunities pursued, by these coastal peoples as they adapted to their changing coastal landscape. The neighboring ancient Maya port sites of Vista Alegre and Conil are the focus of study. Located only 7 km apart, preliminary data indicate that human habitation along the coast was not continuous over the past three millennia, nor did the occupational histories at Conil and Vista Alegre mirror one another. This episodic settlement history provides tantalizing clues to the vulnerabilities and resilience of these coastal peoples. The project first aims to investigate what social and environmental factors conditioned the resilience and vulnerability of the inhabitants of Vista Alegre and Conil over the past 3000 years. It will do this by employing sediment coring, water salinity mapping, coastal ecological surveys, archaeological survey and excavations, and multi-proxy lab analyses (Loss on Ignition [LOI], δ18Ocarb and δ13Ccarb of bulk carbonate, grain size analysis, micropaleontology, and AMS radiocarbon dating). With these data collected, project members are able to understand how these factors shifted through time and correlated with one another in order to examine how their interplay shaped past lifeways.
NOAA Grant
At the northeast tip of the Yucatan Peninsula – where the Caribbean meets the Gulf – lies a wild and largely unexplored coastline that bore witness to one of the greatest seafaring traditions of the ancient New World. Maya traders once plied the waters of the Laguna Holbox in massive dugout canoes filled with goods from across Mesoamerica. Each port was a link in a chain connecting people and ideas, and supporting the ambitions of city and state. During the late 9th century A.D., Chichén Itzá demonstrated an increased reliance on maritime commerce to maintain and extend its control over much of the Yucatan Peninsula. Coastal settlements, however, have a deeper history in the Maya area. The recently formed Costa Escondida Project is a long-term, interdisciplinary research effort focusing on the dynamic relationship between the Maya and their coastal landscape.
Along this forgotten coastline lies the ancient port site of Vista Alegre. The Maya here were faced with the extraordinarily complex and harsh coastal environment of the Laguna Holbox, which is characterized by a mosaic of non-arable zones where maize agriculture was next to impossible. For a traditionally agricultural society to survive and thrive in this marginal environment required highly specialized subsistence strategies – involving perennial access to freshwater, exploitation of marine resources, and cultivation of niche plant species. In addition, little is known about the site’s shifting alliances with inland and coastal groups, or how such a site responded to the periodic tropical storms that ravaged the coast. To best contextualize this complex interrelationship between human (maritime) activity and natural features and events as expressed in the material record, we have adopted the maritime cultural landscape approach. By bringing together scholars from the fields of archaeology, coastal ecology, geoarchaeology, and hydrogeology, the proposed summer 2010 project will further this approach and explore adaptive subsistence strategies at the human-coastal interface.
By reconstructing in detail what life was like at the ancient coastal port of Vista Alegre, the Costa Escondida Project will not only provide new data for Mayanists and Mesoamericanists but will allow for cross-cultural comparisons about the past strategies used to incorporate port sites into larger, centralized political economies. Consistent with the goals of NOAA-OER, we endeavor to enhance our scientific understanding of peoples’ interaction with the sea, to engage the public through compelling and relevant stories about maritime history, and to enable local partners to better protect and preserve their coastal and submerged cultural resources.
FAMSI Grant
The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. graciously supported Rissolo and Glover in their initial research efforts at Vista Alegre. The grant funded the first mapping season at the site and provided the foundation for the start of the Proyecto Costa Escondida.