Abstract: During the last 20 years, the examination of several climate proxies by geologists, paleoclimatologists, and archaeologists successfully established that the lowland Maya area experienced several significant droughts of both short- and long-term duration. By cross-referencing climate records with settlement and historic data, it was further established that favorable climatic (wet) conditions between AD 450 – 700 led to population expansion and an increase in the number and size of political centers across the Maya lowlands. Those same climate records, however, also indicate that earlier periods of high rainfall were followed by multi-decadal droughts between AD 750-900, and then between 1000–1100, periods that witnessed the disintegration of Maya polities, and the subsequent abandonment of most cities in the central lowlands. In this presentation, I examine Maya strategies for dealing with long-term droughts, and I discuss how the effectiveness and failures of these strategies impacted ancient Maya civilization.

JAIME AWE (Ph.D. University of London) is Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, Co-Director of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project, Emeritus Director of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, and recipient of several international awards. His research and numerous publications cover topics that span from the Preceramic period to the time of European contact, with particular focus on the rise of cultural complexity, and human environment interaction in western Belize. Awe continues his active program of research and conservation, conducting regional and multi-disciplinary investigations with his colleagues and students at surface and cave sites across Belize.