Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture

The ancient lowland Maya have been traditionally portrayed as swidden (shifting cultivation) agriculturalists (1). The persistence of the swidden concept has inhibited field inquiry of past modes of lowland subsistence, often preserving what may be an unfounded bias concerning the cultivation techniques employed by the Maya. Moreover, the absence of adequate subsistence research has, in effect, supported traditional views regarding such issues as prehistoric population size (2) and the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization (3). The last few years have witnessed increased opposition to the swidden concept (4). Antagonists have been stimulated by the discovery of ancient forms of intensive cultivation (5) in various parts of the New World tropics which have hitherto been considered sparsely utilized (6) and by the introduction of revamped theories of the development of agriculture (7, 8). Boserup's (7) contention that the growth of agriculture from extensive swidden to intensive multicrop cultivation is a direct response to population pressures has been particularly significant, encouraging reexamination of Mayan subsistence (9). The theories of agricultural development set forth by Boserup and modified by Brookfield (8) are especially important to the question of Mayan subsistence in light of lowland demographic evidence. Studies by Willey et al. (10, p. 576), Bullard (11), Haviland (12), and others suggest that specific Mayan regions once supported