Early agriculture and early Postclassic Maya occupation in western Honduras

Abstract

Evidence of the origins, intensification and end of cultivation can be obtained from pollen profiles indicating forest clearance. Independent archaeological data1,2 (the first occurrences of ceramics and village settlement) have yielded a date of ∼3,000 yr BP for the onset of agriculture in western Honduras. Recent research on early Postclassic Maya demography3,4 has identified much regional variation in settlement densities, contrary to an earlier view, based on limited data, of immediate pan-southern Maya abandonment or depopulation after ∼1,050 yr BP (ref. 5). Here I present pollen profiles which provide evidence of early slash-and-burn maize agriculture at Lake Yojoa, probably part of an Archaic hunting and gathering strategy, from ∼4,500 yr BP or earlier. Slash-and-burn agriculture intensified at ∼3,000 yr BP at Lake Yojoa, and stabilized thereafter. At Petapilla Swamp, 5 km north-east of the major Maya centre of Copan, the pollen sequence began at ∼1,000 yr BP and suggests terminal Classic–early Postclassic (AD 950–1200) agricultural activity. The present pollen evidence of occupation until ∼AD 1200 and subsequent abandonment of the Copan region reinforces recent archaeological settlement data6.