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Located off the west coast of the Mexican state of Baja California, Isla Cedros—Island of Fogs—is site to some of the most extensive and remarkable archeological discoveries on the continent. Two sites dated to before 12,000 cal BP have been excavated, as well as portions of two large village sites dated to the last one thousand years. Among the artifacts discovered are the earliest fishhooks found on the continent. Drawing on ten years of his own historical, ethnographic, and archaeological research, Matthew Des Lauriers uses Isla Cedros to form hypotheses regarding the ecological, economic, and social nature of island societies. Des Lauriers uses a comparative framework in order to examine both the development and evolution of social structures among Pacific coast maritime hunter-gatherers as well as to track patterns of change. Because it examines the issue of whether human populations can intensively harvest natural resources without causing ecological collapse, Island of Fogs provides a relevant historical counterpart to modern discussions of ecological change and alternative models for sustainable development.  

Intro -- Island of Fogs -- Contents -- Figures -- Maps -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. A Place in Space and Time -- Chapter 2. Islanders, Fishermen, Pirates, and Corporations -- Chapter 3. The First Isleños -- Chapter 4. Becoming Cedros -- Chapter 5. The World of the Huamalgüeños -- Chapter 6. Insularity and Interaction -- Chapter 7. \"And So We Went...\" -- References Cited -- Index.

The intersection of expanding human development and wildland landscapes—the “wildland–urban interface” or WUI—is one of the most vexing contexts for fire management because it involves complex interacting systems of people and nature. Here, we document the dynamism and stability of an ancient WUI that was apparently sustainable for more than 500 y. We combine ethnography, archaeology, paleoecology, and ecological modeling to infer intensive wood and fire use by Native American ancestors of Jemez Pueblo and the consequences on fire size, fire–climate relationships, and fire intensity. Initial settlement of northern New Mexico by Jemez farmers increased fire activity within an already dynamic landscape that experienced frequent fires. Wood harvesting for domestic fuel and architectural uses and abundant, small, patchy fires created a landscape that burned often but only rarely burned extensively. Depopulation of the forested landscape due to Spanish colonial impacts resulted in a rebound of fuels accompanied by the return of widely spreading, frequent surface fires. The sequence of more than 500 y of perennial small fires and wood collecting followed by frequent “free-range” wildland surface fires made the landscape resistant to extreme fire behavior, even when climate was conducive and surface fires were large. The ancient Jemez WUI offers an alternative model for fire management in modern WUI in the western United States, and possibly other settings where local management of woody fuels through use (domestic wood collecting) coupled with small prescribed fires may make these communities both self-reliant and more resilient to wildfire hazards.

The initial colonization of the Americas remains a highly debated topic 1 , and the exact timing of the first arrivals is unknown. The earliest archaeological record of Mexico—which holds a key geographical position in the Americas—is poorly known and understudied. Historically, the region has remained on the periphery of research focused on the first American populations 2 . However, recent investigations provide reliable evidence of a human presence in the northwest region of Mexico 3 , 4 , the Chiapas Highlands 5 , Central Mexico 6 and the Caribbean coast 7 – 9 during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. Here we present results of recent excavations at Chiquihuite Cave—a high-altitude site in central-northern Mexico—that corroborate previous findings in the Americas 10 – 17 of cultural evidence that dates to the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500–19,000 years ago) 18 , and which push back dates for human dispersal to the region possibly as early as 33,000–31,000 years ago. The site yielded about 1,900 stone artefacts within a 3-m-deep stratified sequence, revealing a previously unknown lithic industry that underwent only minor changes over millennia. More than 50 radiocarbon and luminescence dates provide chronological control, and genetic, palaeoenvironmental and chemical data document the changing environments in which the occupants lived. Our results provide new evidence for the antiquity of humans in the Americas, illustrate the cultural diversity of the earliest dispersal groups (which predate those of the Clovis culture) and open new directions of research. Chiquihuite Cave (Zacatecas, Mexico) provides evidence of human presence in the Americas between about 33,000–31,000 and 14,000–12,000 years ago, and expands the cultural variability known from sites of this date.

Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas others recovered more quickly. We examine the dynamics of growth and decline in several areas in the Maya Lowlands in terms of both environmental and cultural resilience and with a focus on downturns that occurred in the Terminal Preclassic (second century Common Era) and Terminal Classic (9th and 10th centuries CE) periods. This examination of available data indicates that the elevated interior areas of the Yucatán Peninsula were more susceptible to system collapse and less suitable for resilient recovery than adjacent lower-lying areas.

The role of climate change in the development and demise of Classic Maya civilization (300 to 1000 C.E.) remains controversial because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological sequences, We present a precisely dated subannual climate record for the past 2000 years from Yok Balum Cave, Belize. From comparison of this record with historical events compiled from well-dated stone monuments, we propose that anomalously high rainfall favored unprecedented population expansion and the proliferation of political centers between 440 and 660 C.E. This was followed by a drying trend between 660 and 1000 C.E. that triggered the balkanization of polities, increased warfare, and the asynchronous disintegration of polities, followed by population collapse in the context of an extended drought between 1020 and 1100 C.E.

Landscape-oriented approaches in archaeology have moved beyond site-based research to interpret how people have engaged with, modified, and constructed the environment and how the legacies of these activities continue to influence land use. In the Maya Lowlands, landscape archaeology is related to the analysis of settlement patterns, households, agricultural intensification, and water management. The increasing availability of LiDAR data has revolutionized the mapping of archaeological landscapes under vegetation, especially in tropical environments like the Maya Lowlands, but researchers still emphasize site-oriented settlement densities and infrastructure. Furthermore, the accessibility of drone-based LiDAR platforms has the potential to collect data across several seasons or years to facilitate change detection. In this paper, we compare three LiDAR datasets collected from 2018 to 2023, using both occupied and unoccupied airborne systems. The landscape surrounding the archaeological site of El Infiernito, Chiapas, Mexico near the Classic period (AD 250–800) dynastic capital of Piedras Negras, Guatemala was selected to compare these LiDAR datasets in the context of prior, extensive ground-based fieldwork. These data were used to interpret the built environment, land use, hydrology, landscapes of movement, and other infrastructure constructed and modified by several communities beginning in the Late Preclassic period (400 BC–AD 250) to the present. When used alongside systematic survey and ground verification, the combination of several LiDAR platforms to collect data across different seasons at El Infiernito enhanced the understanding of the spatial distribution of archaeological sites and features across the karst landscape.

Pueblo Bonito is the iconic pre- Columbian structure in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a World Heritage Site in northwestern New Mexico, USA. The structure, dating to about 850–1150 Current Era, and built of quarried sandstones, wooden timbers and a mud mortar, has been the subject of archaeological investigations for over a century. The present study is based on the examination of historical photographs of Pueblo Bonito dating from 1887 to the 1920s. It is a retrospective assessment to determine if structural damages, depicted on the photographs, could be attributed to identifiable agents that might have been present at the time of Pueblo Bonito occupancy. A likely causal agent of deterioration at Pueblo Bonito was the inability of Ancestral Puebloan engineers to manage the impacts from the annual precipitation, presently measured at about 220 mm. A resulting time-dependent event was rot to wetted roof and ceiling timbers, lintels, and wall support beams which required decades of incubation by wood decay fungi to reduce wood tensile strength to levels leading to roof and wall collapse. Important time- independent events that could occur any time after construction include water action on the mud mortar which resulted in unstable gravity load paths in stone walls, ponding of water in walls which when frozen would lead to the blowout of wall segments, and the occasional flood that disrupted foundations. Pueblo Bonito may have been an occupation site for centuries but the lifetime of individually constructed rooms may have only been decades, resulting in several build- repair- or abandon cycles being part of the history of that Great House.

The methodical exploitation of arable lands in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica has been recognized since the 16th century, but the Spanish Conquest caused cultivated landscapes to be dramatically modified. Thus, general amazement remains great when remote sensing techniques (RS) like airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) uncover fossilized farmlands. Recent studies demonstrated that agrarian features are widespread among the remains revealed by LiDAR-derived models. Efforts are being made to map these features but few studies have focused directly on the landforms and soils which they modify. Concurrently, while paleopedology has refined the identification of anthropogenic features within soils, spatial approaches correlating soil covers and archaeological sites have received less attention as perspectives often diverge between archaeological mapping, which often focuses on intra-site elements, and soil mapping, which generally encompasses broader areas. Yet, geoscientists have used RS to predict soil parameters and demonstrated that it could increase accuracy in knowledge-based soil maps. Today, while LiDAR-derived data are facilitating archaeological mapping beyond settlement limits, high-resolution RS also offers opportunities for more accurate soil mapping and calls for harmonization of perspectives. We present a method that combines LiDAR-based RS and fieldwork in archaeology and soil science to address pre-Hispanic cultivated landscapes based on a case study in West Mexico. It focuses on the Zacapu area, where long-lasting archaeological and geoecological research offered a solid background. We used LiDAR visualizations, modeling, and satellite images to detect anthropogenic and geopedologic features. The latter was verified through field surveys and test pits. Archaeological material and soil analyses followed. All data were mapped on GIS. As a result, we were able to update and improve significantly both the archaeological and geopedologic maps. The approach further provided an unprecedented reconstruction of landscape appropriation from the 6th to the 15th century AD. It demonstrates that archaeology, geomorphology, and pedology can efficiently complete each other to address more comprehensively pre-Hispanic cultivated landscapes.

InThe Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context,contributors reject the popularized link between societal collapse and drought in Maya civilization, arguing that a series of periodic \"collapses,\" including the infamous Terminal Classic collapse (AD 750-1050), were not caused solely by climate change-related droughts but by a combination of other social, political, and environmental factors. New and senior scholars of archaeology and environmental science explore the timing and intensity of droughts and provide a nuanced understanding of socio-ecological dynamics, with specific reference to what makes communities resilient or vulnerable when faced with environmental change.Contributors recognize the existence of four droughts that correlate with periods of demographic and political decline and identify a variety of concurrent political and social issues. They argue that these primary underlying factors were exacerbated by drought conditions and ultimately led to societal transitions that were by no means uniform across various sites and subregions. They also deconstruct the concept of \"collapse\" itself-although the line of Maya kings ended with the Terminal Classic collapse, the Maya people and their civilization survived. The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Contextoffers new insights into the complicated series of events that impacted the decline of Maya civilization. This significant contribution to our increasingly comprehensive understanding of ancient Maya culture will be of interest to students and scholars of archaeology, anthropology, geography, and environmental studies.