The Guatemala's tropical lowlands are home to many Mayan archaeological sites, currently lost in the Petén rainforest. Archaeo-environmentalists face many questions arise on the adaptation of Mayan societies to such a fragile environment. The management of soils, water and forest resources, or the modification of vegetation in relation to the development of populations and their cities, are two
... [Show full abstract] examples. Particularly, the dynamic of the vegetation landscapes for this area are still poorly understood, and its study is made difficult by the scarcity of the usual fossils (pollen and charcoal).
The Classical Naachtun Mayan site (150 CE – 950 BCE), in the extreme north of the Petén (Guatemala), is bordered to the north by a large karst polje (bajo) which has recorded sediments covering the Mayan settlement period of the city. We conducted paleo-ecological work, using bioindicators, on several sedimentary cores from the Naachtun bajo. I mainly studied the stratigraphic distribution of phytolithic assemblages to understand the local dynamics of vegetation strata (forests, savannah, wetland, palm grove). These data were cross-checked with malacological assemblages and fire signal to obtain information on water availability and on ecological impact of anthropogenic activities.
This study showed that in Naachtun, open vegetation was present instead of the current forest covering the bajo. Malacological data confirmed that some of these savannahs correspond to residual water areas (sival). In relation to the sedimentary data, the sivales have a spatial mobility that can indicate a variation in water availability during the Mayan Settlement. In order to match these data with the Mayan settlement, we used the fire signal data to complete the C-14 dating. This preliminary work will allow us to interpret the phytolithic assemblages within the city of Naachtun, and to address issues such as soil enriching-agent, maintenance of aguada, tree cover and the presence of crops in the urban center. It is also a further step in understanding the socio-environmental dynamics that have played a role in the history of Mayan Petén societies during the Classical period.