A Comment on Lowland Maya Subsistence

Abstract

archaeological and ethnohistoric data (summarized in Adams 1969:23-27) than is Lange's statement. We should suggest that it was at this time, during the Late Preclassic-Early Classic transition, that a diverse resource exploitative system replaced the heavily agricultural and marine reliant patterns of the Preclassic lowland Maya. Small seaside villages must have persisted through the Classic, reliant for their subsistence both upon the adjacent marine riches and upon trade with the inlanders to whom they supplied salt as well as marine shell jewelry and artifacts (Dzibilchaltun produced 182 worked-artifact and unworked-cache shells from Late Classic contexts as contrasted with only 139 from the Preclassic). A slight, temporary increase in the number of littoral settlements during the Early Postclassic most probably reflects the appearance of seagoing "Itza" traders in the peninsula's salt fields-a class of commercial coastal exploitation only indirectly related to subsistence activities. Following the Early Postclassic, the situation again reverted to one similar to that of the Classic: some villages present on the coast, their subsistence based on the proximal sea and trade with the interior.