Agriculture and Forest Management at the Ancient Maya City of Tikal

This paper focuses on the agricultural and forestry practices of the Precolumbian Maya of Tikal.  The main points of discussion will be: 1) the potential of the landscape to supply the needed food, fuel and structural material for the polity at the height of its population; and 2) the impact of Terminal Classic drying trends, which may have been anthropogenically  influenced, on cultural developments in the region. Our results show that the Tikal Maya relied on a complex agricultural system involving orchards, house gardens, terraces, irrigation and extensive fields planted with annual crops and root crops. Forests were managed as fixed plot woodlots, similar to päk’-al or sacred groves. This study is significant because it advances our understanding of the fundamental resource base that allowed the Tikal Maya to support a large population and complex social order during their zenith in the Late Classic period.  Moreover, it leads to a more complete understanding of the basic economic underpinnings of one of the major Maya polities and how its support system may have been overwhelmed by demographic, political and climatic trends in the late 9^th century A.D.