Milpa System Research Articles

Milpas and Milperos: Implications for Prehistoric Times1

It has been stated that shifting agriculture among the Maya of the Classic Period could have been expected to produce an adequate supply of maize to support their complex civilization, and that its collapse could not have been due to the inadequacies of the method of production. This article presents a study of the contemporary milpa system among descendants of the Itzá of Petén, Guatemala: first, a description of the basic Maya approach to the elements of nature; second, their sociological accommodations; third, economic factors; and fourth, the conclusions and implications for Maya cultural history. If the case at hand is relevant, food shortages were involved in the economic and social collapse of many independent religious centers of the Southern Lowland Maya. I do not question the potentials of the environment for greater or more constant food supply. My emphasis is rather on the sociocultural response to the environment, which continues to direct their agricultural activities.

A Study of the Milpa System of La Venta Island and Its Archaeological Implications

Previous articleNext article No AccessA Study of the Milpa System of La Venta Island and Its Archaeological ImplicationsPhilip Drucker and Robert F. HeizerPhilip Drucker Search for more articles by this author and Robert F. Heizer Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 16, Number 1Spring, 1960 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/soutjanth.16.1.3629053 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 15Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1945-1972), which is continued by the Journal of Anthropological Research (1973-present). PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Juan Rogelio Aguirre‐Rivera, Joel Zavala‐Cruz, Gustavo Ortiz‐Ceballos, Antonio Andrade‐Torres, Sergio Salgado‐Garcia, Angel Isauro Ortiz‐Ceballos Wet Agriculture in the Lowlands: Maize Marceña, Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment 2, no.11 (Feb 2019): 1–6.https://doi.org/10.2134/age2018.10.0055Luis Pacheco-Cobos, Mark N. Grote, Douglas J. Kennett, Bruce Winterhalder Population and Environmental Correlates of Maize Yields in Mesoamerica: a Test of Boserup’s Hypothesis in the Milpa, Human Ecology 43, no.44 (Aug 2015): 559–576.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-015-9771-zThomas W. Killion Nonagricultural Cultivation and Social Complexity: The Olmec, Their Ancestors, and Mexico’s Southern Gulf Coast Lowlands, Current Anthropology 54, no.55 (Jul 2015): 569–606.https://doi.org/10.1086/673140John E. Clark, Arlene Colman 2 Olmec Things and Identity: A Reassessment of Offerings and Burials at La Venta, Tabasco, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 23, no.11 (Apr 2014): 14–37.https://doi.org/10.1111/apaa.12013Robert A. Dull, Richard J. Nevle, William I. Woods, Dennis K. Bird, Shiri Avnery, William M. Denevan The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100, no.44 (Aug 2010): 755–771.https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2010.502432Richard J. Nevle, Dennis K. Bird Effects of syn-pandemic fire reduction and reforestation in the tropical Americas on atmospheric CO2 during European conquest, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 264, no.1-21-2 (Jul 2008): 25–38.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2008.03.008L. Mark Raab, Matthew A. Boxt, Katherine Bradford, Brian A. Stokes, Rebecca B. González Lauck Testing at Isla Alor in the La Venta Olmec Hinterland, Journal of Field Archaeology 27, no.33 (Jul 2013): 257–270.https://doi.org/10.1179/jfa.2000.27.3.257James Stuart Maize Use By Rural Mesoamerican Households, Human Organization 49, no.22 (Jun 1990): 135–139.https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.49.2.9435mp317r212348Alfred H. Siemens Reducing the Risk: Some Indications Regarding Pre-Hispanic Wetland Agricultural Intensification from Contemporary Use of a Wetland/Terra Firma Boundary Zone in Central Veracruz, (Jan 1990): 233–250.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3252-0_15William F. Rust, Robert J. Sharer Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico, Science 242, no.48754875 (Oct 1988): 102–104.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.242.4875.102MARGARET LANTIS PHILIP DRUCKER 1911-1983, American Anthropologist 85, no.44 (Oct 2009): 897–902.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1983.85.4.02a00120 Philip Drucker , and John W. Fox Swidden Didn' Make All That Midden: The Search for Ancient Mayan Agronomies, Journal of Anthropological Research 38, no.22 (Sep 2015): 179–193.https://doi.org/10.1086/jar.38.2.3629596THOMAS H. CHARLTON Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Ethnology: Interpretive Interfaces, (Jan 1981): 129–176.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-003104-7.50008-9 Gordon R. Willey The Harvey Lecture Series. The Concept of the "Disembedded Capital" in Comparative Perspective, Journal of Anthropological Research 35, no.22 (Sep 2015): 123–137.https://doi.org/10.1086/jar.35.2.3629970 References, (Jan 1976): 312–354.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-017867-7.50016-8

A Preliminary Survey of the Milpa System of Maize Culture as Practiced by the Maya Indians of the Northern Part of the Yucatan Peninsula

In January and February of 1935, Professor R. A. Emerson, of Cornell University, and Mr. J. H. Kempton, then of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, studied maize farming among the Maya Indians at the request of the Carnegie Institution. The following report, circulated in mimeographed form under Dr. Emerson's name, is one of the tangible results of this preliminary survey. Though it has been cited in at least two bibliographies its very existence has been unsuspected by many students of maize. We are indebted to Mrs. Ida K. Langman, of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, for supplying us with a copy, and to Dr. H. E. D. Pollock, of the Department of Archaeology of the Carnegie Institution, for granting permission to reprint the document. Up until the time of his death Dr. Emerson was the heart and center of research in maize genetics. He was not only the outstanding authority; most of the other workers had either been trained under him or had been closely associated with the work of his laboratory. Mr. Kempton, on his part, has been identified with much of the research on maize which was carried on in the U. S. Department of Agriculture and had taken the lead in studying maize and its relatives in Latin America. During the last decade, Mexico, in general, and Mexico's pattern of growing maize, in particular, have changed at an ever-accelerating rate. Dr. Emerson's report, though preliminary and informal, gives us an over-all picture of maize in an out-of-the-way part of Mexico fifteen years ago as seen through the eyes of the greatest maize scholar of his time.-EDGAR ANDERSON.

The Maize Survey

THE Maize Survey has been established by the Institution in co-operation with the United States Department of Agriculture, officers from the Department being seconded for the purpose. The object of the survey is to investigate the origin of maize and to make a study of the maize agronomy of the Maya area. Although maize is the cereal which made possible the rise of pre-Columbian American civilization, its ancestry is problematical and it is not known certainly where and when it was brought under cultivation a question having an intimate bearing on the beginnings of higher New World culture, including that of the Maya. In reporting on the results of a preliminary survey, which lasted for about a month in the field, Messrs. R. A. Emerson and J. K. Kempton offer certain tentative conclusions, which will serve to throw some light on the density of the ancient population and the relative proportions of the urban and agricultural population. The cultivation of maize, as at present practised, is on the milpa system; that is, a plot, after being burned off, is cultivated for two years, when it is allowed to revert to forest conditions, taking about eight to ten years to become completely re-established and ready for burning off again. Consumption is at an average rate of 1 -6 Ib. per head per day, which gives an annual consumption by a family of two adults and three children requiring from three to four acres under cultivation. This is about the amount which the Indians now claim to cultivate. The milpa system is the only system possible in Yucatan, even with modern tools and transport, and may, therefore, be presumed to be that followed by the ancient Maya. There is no evidence that it might not be followed indefinitely. The region, as thus cultivated, is capable of supporting a population of fifty persons per square mile, with ten persons as non-agricultural urban inhabitants. Maize cultivation has now completely supplanted the cotton grown by the ancient Maya, and only a small quantity of tobacco is grown.