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From Calakmul to the Sea: The Historical Ecology of a Classic Maya City That Controlled the Candelaria/Champoton Watersheds

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The Holocene and Anthropocene Environmental History of Mexico

Abstract

The Candelaria River watershed of Campeche, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala, has shaped millennia of Maya, perhaps from their beginnings and generations of archaeologists. This chapter reviews efforts to understand Candelaria historical ecology over the past four decades, mostly in the northern branch, the Candelaria-El Caribe-Tomatillal system, as it relates to the cities of Calakmul and Uxul. Additional investigations stem from the river system farther north, the Champoton-Desempeño watershed, which also approaches Calakmul at its headwaters. Four other projects (Oxpemul, Yaxnohcah, Naachtun, Uxul) have emerged in the southern branches of the Candelaria and Desempeño in recent years, in addition to a long-standing project at El Mirador. Methods utilized range over global-local climate teleconnections, geology, ethnoecology, soil formation and transformation, geochemistry, pollen, and phytolith sampling. Brief but key statements of results for each method are reported as they contribute to a holistic perspective on the evolution and the death of Calakmul. Key interests that guided the research are the commercial location of the city and watershed in the Maya urban system, the way the watershed shaped the human settlement pattern in the west central Maya Lowlands, the socio-ecological adaptations over time, and its utility as a middle-level unit of study in links between human and Earth system changes. Finally, a nutrient flow model unifies the results into a concept that may yield deeper insights into the narrative and simulation modelling of Maya social evolution.

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Acknowledgments

Gratitude by the authors is greatly deserved by the researchers who participated in the research reported in this article. Of special note are the many employees of the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Sociales, who labored tirelessly over many years to collect and prepare the data on which much of this review is based.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Joel D. Gunn

  2. Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, Campeche, Campeche, Mexico

    William J. Folan

  3. Departamento Conservación de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Unidad Chetumal, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico

    Nuria Torrescano-Valle

  4. Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán, Merida, Yucatán, Mexico

    Betty B. Faust

  5. Centre College, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico

    Helga Z. Geovannini-Acuña

  6. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Alfred H. Siemens

Authors
  1. Joel D. Gunn
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  2. William J. Folan
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  3. Nuria Torrescano-Valle
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  4. Betty B. Faust
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  5. Helga Z. Geovannini-Acuña
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  6. Alfred H. Siemens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joel D. Gunn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento Conservación de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Unidad Chetumal, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico

    Nuria Torrescano- Valle

  2. Departamento Conservación de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Unidad Chetumal, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico

    Gerald A. Islebe

  3. Instituto de Geología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoCiudad Universitaria, Mexico City, Mexico

    Priyadarsi D. Roy

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Gunn, J.D., Folan, W.J., Torrescano-Valle, N., Faust, B.B., Geovannini-Acuña, H.Z., Siemens, A.H. (2019). From Calakmul to the Sea: The Historical Ecology of a Classic Maya City That Controlled the Candelaria/Champoton Watersheds. In: Torrescano- Valle, N., Islebe, G., Roy, P. (eds) The Holocene and Anthropocene Environmental History of Mexico. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31719-5_11

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