Landscape management and polyculture in the ancient gardens and fields at Joya de Cerén, El Salvador

Abstract

The Late Classic Maya village of Joya de Cerén’s extraordinary preservation by the Loma Caldera eruption circa 660 CE allows for a unique opportunity to study ancient Mesoamerican landscape management and agricultural practices. Various fruit trees, annual and root crops, fiber producers and other useful plants were cultivated within the village center, creating productive house-lot gardens. Extensive agricultural outfields of maize, manioc, squash, common beans, and numerous weedy species also have been documented through intensive paleoethnobotanical recovery methods and demonstrate the practice of multi-cropped or polyculture farming during Prehispanic times. The assorted array of economically useful species reveals the diversity of foodstuffs readily accessible to the inhabitants on a daily basis that were not simply the annual crops planted within the outfields. The long history of paleoethnobotanical research at this exceptionally preserved site provides the opportunity to not only understand what plant species the ancient inhabitants of this village utilized in their daily lives but also how the villagers perceived, managed, and manipulated their landscape in order to ensure a diverse and nutritional diet.