Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and Its Hinterlands

Landscapes of the Xunantunich Hinterlands

Landscapes of the Xunantunich Hinterlands Jason Yaeger part ii turns from the Xunantunich site core outward to the surrounding countryside and the polity’s hinterlands. “Landscapes of the Xunantunich Hinterlands” sketches the natural, social, and political landscapes of the Mopan River valley, focusing on the Late and Terminal Classic periods. This landscape was thoroughly anthropogenic, the product of human activities and environmental changes over the millennia since the valley’s initial settlement. Rivers, Hills, and Fields: The Natural Landscape Xunantunich sits in the shallow valley cut by the Mopan River through the karstic, hilly terrain of the Peten uplands over millions of years. The Classic-period Xunantunich polity encompassed both the broad alluvial bottomlands and the immediately adjacent limestone hills, likely extending across the limestone hills east to the Macal River valley (see fig. 1.1). The Mopan floodplain generally exceeds 1 km in width, but there are a few points of marked constriction where limestone ridges and hills encroach upon the river’s edge. Xunantunich is located at one of these narrow points. Over millennia, the Mopan River has deposited tons of fertile sediments , creating four main alluvial terraces: the modern, active floodplain; a second terrace that is rarely inundated; and two higher terraces that rarely, if ever, flood (Willey et al. 1965:30; Smith 1998). Despite the Mopan River’s relatively large volume, water levels tend to change slowly, and the river rarely crests above the current floodplain, even in periods of heavy rains. Most Precolumbian settlement in the bottomlands is located on the upper two terraces. Despite its modern stable regime, geomorphological 234 Jason yaeger studies have demonstrated intense flooding during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods that buried Maya settlements (Holley et al. 2000; VandenBosch 1992; Yaeger 2000a). The Mopan and Macal rivers offered rich resources for the region’s inhabitants. The rivers provided an abundant and reliable supply of fresh water, supplemented by the springs and seeps that are common in the adjacent limestone hills. The rivers are home to many edible species of fish, turtles, mollusks, and crayfish. One particularly important food resource was the jute snail (Pachychilus spp.) (Healy et al. 1990). Finally, the rivers’ floodplains provided rich soils for cultivation. Scott Fedick (1988, 1995) has shown that the better-drained alluvial soils of the Mopan and Belize river floodplains were among the most productive soil groups available to Maya farmers. Some floodplain soils have qualities that are especially amenable to growing tree crops like cacao (Muhs, Kautz, and MacKinnon 1985; also Willey et al. 1965). Beyond subsistence resources, the rivers were important communication routes. Canoes can move easily from the mouth of the Belize River on the Caribbean coast up to the confluence of the Mopan and Macal rivers, a distance of 190 km. Along the Macal, canoes can reach as far as Vaca Falls with portaging (Mazzarelli 1976:224). Along the Mopan, the tufa dams formed by the carbonate-rich river water would have obstructed canoe travel, and upstream travel would have required portages or the creation of canoe channels through the soft tufa formations. Uplands of karstic hills flank the Mopan and Macal rivers. Their Tertiary and Cretaceous limestone bedrock forms the parent material for a variety of soils (Cornec 1986; Smith 1998), many of which have high productivity rankings (Neff, chapter 11; Fedick 1988). Stone-faced agricultural terraces carpet most hillsides, even those with relatively gentle slopes, inhibiting soil erosion and increasing water retention (Neff, chapter 11, 2008; Wyatt 2008). The valley’s farmers could expect the onset of the rainy season in June, followed by a few weeks of drier weather during the canícula in July or August before the rains resumed in September. Contemporary swidden agriculturalists grow maize and other staples during the rainy season. In the recent past, they sometimes planted a second crop of maize after harvest, using a short-maturation land race that allowed them to gain a second crop that year. Although many fields lie unused during the dry Landscapes of the Hinterlands 235 season, farmers grow cash crops like vegetables by irrigating from the rivers and springs. Precolumbian farmers during the Late Classic period likely labored under broadly similar climatic conditions and created elaborate, small-scale irrigation systems (Wyatt 2008). The limestone uplands contain chert-bearing strata, and streambeds and ancient alluvial beach and bar deposits are often rich in chert cobbles. These deposits provided raw material for...