Infrastructures of moving water at the Maya site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala

Abstract

It is increasingly common to conceptualize infrastructure not just as a built feature in the landscape, but as a shifting and entangled system that includes humans, different institutions and social groups, spiritual forces, and ecologies. These different aspects of infrastructure, however, are best identified at different temporal scales of analysis. Recent research at the Maya site of Ucanal in Petén, Guatemala, documents centrally managed water management features, such as canals and inverted causeways, that drain water away from the urban site core and into a nearby river, the Río Mopan. Their construction and use during the Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 830–1000), a period often associated with increasing aridity and drought, highlight the need to consider shorter temporal spans in which droughts were interspersed with hurricanes and periods of high precipitation. Furthermore, the consideration of even smaller temporal frames, on the order of annual dry-wet season cycles and daily practices, highlight the often overlooked aspects of ancient Maya water infrastructure systems: the labor necessary to maintain and repair canals and roads, deities or supernatural forces responsible for life-giving and life-taking rains, and the labor of common peoples who hauled water on a daily basis.