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Maya archaeology has witnessed a paradigm shift in interpretations of the past with regards to the structure and organization of ancient societies as a result of the introduction of lidar to the field a decade ago. Lidar provided control of spatial parameters in a way that had not been previously possible. But, the introduction of this technology has also involved researchers in a series of broader ethical debates. While archaeology has always provided huge data sets for processing, the digital lidar files are even larger and also need appropriate long-term storage and management considerations. It is here that there are differences of opinion worldwide on how to treat lidar data as scientific and open yet national and protected datasets. Some countries do not want fully public access to these files because of the potential danger posed to the looting of their heritage and security or military concerns. Yet, to a large extent, technology is overtaking some of the debate over accessibility, especially as newer satellite technology will surely alter the perceived physical boundaries and challenge the sovereignty of modern nation-states. However, how lidar is used and accessed in the future has become a cross-national issue that is worthy of being addressed in greater detail.

The description and analysis of materials from on-floor deposits that reflect the final activity before site abandonment are key to making a determination as to what happened during the Maya collapse arounda.d.900. On-floor deposits recovered at Caracol, Belize indicate that factors like warfare, the breakdown of the site's market system, and heightened social tensions were in play prior to the abandonment of the site. In an attempt to understand the meaning of these deposits, we first examine why on-floor remains constitute an important data class for archaeology. We next look at the kinds of artifactual materials that are recovered in these deposits and then at the locations and nature of on-floor deposits at Caracol. Finally, we offer our thoughts on what they represent in the broader Maya context.

The economies of the ancient Maya did not exist in vacuums; rather they were interconnected to each other. This chapter details the way in which one of these economies functioned during the Late Classic Period (A.D. 550–900). Archaeological research at Caracol, Belize, has been able to reconstruct how ancient Maya production and exchange systems were functioning within a large metropolitan area that serviced over 100,000 people. The population of Caracol maintained agricultural self-sufficiency on the residential level and produced a wide variety of crafts in their households for trade and exchange. Many quotidian goods were imported into the city for distribution, as were items of higher value. Specific exchange areas, in the form of formal plazas, were established to administer the distribution and exchange of goods. These plaza areas were also likely the locations for other administrative services. These physical locales were managed by local elites who in turn had central oversight. The transactions that occurred in these plazas not only served local inhabitants but also presumably resulted in the collection of taxes on the goods and services being traded, thereby bolstering the local and site center’s elite.

Diane Chase and colleagues discuss one of the largest Classic-period Maya sites that ever existed, Caracol, Belize, in Chapter 6. Using over 30 years of data from the site, the authors examine four components of Caracol’s monumental landscape: the site’s plazuela groups, its causeway system, its reservoir system, and its agricultural terraces. Extensive excavation, mapping, and LiDAR data demonstrate that Caracol’s expansive territory was a heavily modified landscape, with considerable evidence for centralized planning. Mapped onto this planned landscape at Caracol is evidence for economic integration and centrally directed social engineering in the form of “symbolic egalitarianism.” As large and populous as Caracol was, it is not surprising that the city’s rulers extended their influence beyond the kingdom’s immediate territory and onto the larger geopolitical landscape of the Late Classic period. Chase and colleagues broaden the concept of monumentality to consider strategic political nodes on the landscape and inter-polity interactions on a truly regional scale. The authors close their chapter with a consideration of the roles of human decision making and climate change in the final abandonment of the kingdom.

In chapter 16, Arlen Chase and Diane Chase reflect on the topic of monumental landscapes of the ancient Maya. They consider the myriad ways in which the word “monumental” is aptly applied to describe the landscapes of the Maya world. Although the obvious towering temples and palaces of the Classic cities first and foremost come to mind when thinking of monumentality among the ancient Maya, Chase and Chase remind us that much of the monumental character of ancient Maya landscapes is represented by the horizontal transformation of the built environment. Beyond that, other landscape features represent visible reminders that the Maya heavily altered the natural environment to a remarkable degree. Importantly, the authors also remind us that through their worldview, the ancient Maya considered their landscape to be monumental and complex, involving layered worlds with earthly transition points between realms represented by caves and lakes and manmade, symbolic access points represented by temple doorways, the opening into an allegorical mountain or witz. The concluding chapter provides a big-picture, deep-time view of the Maya world, which reaffirms the approaches and conclusions of the individual case studies in this volume—monumentality pervades ancient Maya landscapes, physically, conceptually, and symbolically.

Archaeological research at Caracol, an ancient Maya site that was rediscovered in 1937, has become a major resource in the interpretation and understanding of the ancient Maya. Caracol, in west-central Belize, is situated in a subtropical region once characterized as being unsuitable for the development or maintenance of complex societies, yet it is one of the largest, if not the largest Classic period Maya site in the southern Maya Lowlands, home to over 100,000 people at its height between AD 600 and 700. The investigations at Caracol underscore the utility of long-term archaeological projects incorporating large-scale settlement study that combine excavation with varied research designs and the use of a contextual approach. By employing Maya epigraphic history, traditional archaeology, and modern technology like LiDAR, research at Caracol details the rise, maintenance, and fall of an ancient Maya city, affording a large window into ancient Maya lifeways. Archaeological work provides evidence of sustainable agriculture, a market economy, city planning that included a road system, the impact of warfare on the site’s inhabitants, the sociopolitical status of women, the role that archaeology can play in refining written history, and the significance of commemorating the cyclical passage of time to the ancient Maya. This article summarizes archaeological research efforts at the site by the Caracol Archaeological Project over the last three decades.

Humans consistently modify their environments—both directly and indirectly. However, the linkage between human activity and anthropogenic landscapes intensifies in urban situations. The artificial landscapes and dense concentrations of human populations encountered in urban environments create a centripetal pull for resources that results in continual and distant landscape changes, thus inextricably linking urbanism and anthropogenic landscapes. Examining past and present patterns of urban settlement and environmental impact provides context for this symbiotic relationship. Archaeological data, methodology, and technology offer insight into the similarities and variations in urban anthropogenic landscapes across time and space, suggesting that ancient practices can be compared with contemporary ones and that ancient models may have applicability for future-focused urban planning.

The use of airborne mapping lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), a.k.a airborne laser scanning (ALS), has had a major impact on archaeological research being carried out in Mesoamerica. Since being introduced in 2009, mapping lidar has revolutionized the spatial parameters of Mesoamerican, and especially Maya, archaeology by permitting the recovery of a complete landscape and settlement pattern for further analysis. However, like any new technology, there are learning curves to be overcome, resulting in a feedback relationship between the on-the-ground archaeologists, the virtually grounded computer analysts, and the instrument designers. Archaeologists have been able to identify problems and issues with data production and visualization for the determination of archaeological remains caused by vegetation, special terrain conditions, and modern disturbance. The identification of these concerns helps the technician to develop new techniques, especially when working in conjunction with the field researcher. As seen through the papers in this volume, this symbiotic relationship promises to yield both new breakthroughs in landscape and settlement analysis for Mesoamerican archaeology and enhanced analytic and visualization techniques for lidar with the potential for applicability in other contexts. In many regards, the development of lidar has parallels to the development of radiocarbon dating as a revolutionary technology.

How the ancient Maya used E Groups needs to be derived from the archaeological record. Research undertaken in the southeast Petén of Guatemala has revealed a concentration of over 150 E Groups in the area defined by Ceibal on the west, Caracol on the east, Esquipulas on the south, and the Central Petén lakes on the north. Excavated E Groups from Cenote, Uaxactún, Caracol, and Ixtonton can be used to help organize and understand these archaeological data and to show that the E Group structural assemblage is generally early within this region, dating primarily to the Late Preclassic Period (350 BCE-0 CE) and constituting the founding architecture for an unusual number of small communities in the southeast Petén. The size and structure of the eastern platform in these E Groups also appears to serve as a proxy for broader socio-political organization. Data from Caracol also suggests the importance of these architectural assemblages for temporal ritual associated with the 8th and 9th baktun cycles. Tenth cycle ritual use of these assemblages can also be seen at sites such as Ucanal, Seibal, and possibly Yaxha. Thus, E Groups can be linked to both the rise and denouement of Maya civilization.

As architectural complexes, E Groups served to anchor in place the earliest peoples who lived in the Maya lowlands around 1000 BCE. In retrospect, this architectural complex provided a temporal and cosmological charter for fixed places of emerging significance on an otherwise fluid landscape. The demonstrated duration and ritual importance of E Groups suggests that they were key elements in the formation of a Maya identity. We consider both the durability of E Groups and the tremendous change that occurred in their political and social situatedness.

Remote sensing technologies have helped to revolutionize archaeology. LiDAR (light detection and ranging), a remote sensing technology in which lasers are used as topographic scanners that can penetrate foliage, has particularly influenced researchers in the field of settlement or landscape archaeology. LiDAR provides detailed landscape data for broad spatial areas and permits visualization of these landscapes in ways that were never before possible. These data and visualizations have been widely utilized to gain a better understanding of historical landscapes and their past uses by ancient peoples.

The study of ancient Mesoamerican landscapes and settlement has been significantly impacted in a positive way through the application of LiDAR (light detection and ranging). LiDAR has permitted the recovery of ground data from huge regional areas that are currently under a tropical canopy: the use of traditional methods of survey and mapping could never have resulted in the detailed data that are available through LiDAR. The analyses of LiDAR data are a conjunctive task that involves archaeologists with physicists and computer scientists. This interdisciplinary effort is producing new results and interpretations for all fields, but has also raised issues that need resolution, particularly involving data storage and distribution. LiDAR has already transformed the way in which Mesoamerican settlement survey is done, and future collection of LiDAR data will benefit Mesoamerica through helping to preserve a landscape of the past.

During April and May 2013, a total of 1057 km2 of LiDAR was flown by NCALM for a consortium of archaeologists working in West-central Belize, making this the largest surveyed area within the Mayan lowlands. Encompassing the Belize Valley and the Vaca Plateau, West-central Belize is one of the most actively researched parts of the Maya lowlands; however, until this effort, no comprehensive survey connecting all settlement had been conducted. Archaeological projects have investigated at least 18 different sites within this region. Thus, a large body of archaeological research provides both the temporal and spatial parameters for the varied ancient Maya centers that once occupied this area; importantly, these data can be used to help interpret the collected LiDAR data. The goal of the 2013 LiDAR campaign was to gain information on the distribution of ancient Maya settlement and sites on the landscape and, particularly, to determine how the landscape was used between known centers. The data that were acquired through the 2013 LiDAR campaign have significance for interpreting both the composition and limits of ancient Maya political units. This paper presents the initial results of these new data and suggests a developmental model for ancient Maya polities.

The use of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in western Belize, Central America, has revolutionized our understanding of the spatial dynamics of the ancient Maya. This technology has enabled researchers to successfully demonstrate the large-scale human modifications made to the ancient tropical landscape, providing insight on broader regional settlement. Before the advent of this laser-based technology, heavily forested cover prevented full coverage and documentation of Maya sites. Mayanists could not fully recover or document the extent of ancient occupation and could never be sure how representative their mapped and excavated samples were relative to ancient settlement. Employing LiDAR in tropical and subtropical environments, like that of the Maya, effectively provides ground, as well as forest cover information, leading to a much fuller documentation of the complexities involved in the ancient human-nature interface. Airborne LiDAR was first flown over a 200 km2area of the archaeological site of Caracol, Belize, in April 2009. In April and May 2013 an additional 1,057 km2were flown with LiDAR, permitting the contextualization of the city of Caracol within its broader region and polity. The use of this technology has transformed our understanding of regional archaeology in the Maya area.

Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to modern and future coupled human–environment systems. To better frame variability in ancient lowland Maya development and decline, the area that they once occupied may be subdivided into a series of geographical regions in which the collected archaeological data can be correlated with environmental differences. Although beginning as small agricultural communities occupying a variety of ecological niches in the humid tropics of Mesoamerica, the ancient Maya became an increasingly complex set of societies involved in intensive and extensive resource exploitation. Their development process was not linear, but also involved periods of rapid growth that were punctuated by contractions. Thus, the long-term development and disintegration of Maya geopolitical institutions presents an excellent vantage from which to study resilience, vulnerability, and the consequences of decision-making in ancient complex societies.

Modeling Classic period social and economic systems of the ancient Maya has proven difficult for a number of reasons, including sampling, preservation, and interpretational biases. As more archaeological research has been undertaken, views about the Classic period Maya (a.d.250–900) have become progressively more complex. Because neither Maya art nor hieroglyphic texts contain substantial information on ancient economic systems, some archaeologists have tended to deemphasize the impact of ancient economies in reconstructions of the Classic period Maya civilization. Archaeological research at Caracol, Belize, however, has recovered evidence of the road systems, marketplaces, and production areas that served as the backbone of the site's economic infrastructure. When combined with artifact distributions, these data demonstrate the existence of an economy based on surplus household production with distribution in elite-administered markets. The archaeological data from Caracol not only elucidate how marketplaces were embedded in the Maya landscape, but also how they were used to integrate the site.

Archaeological data can be represented in quantitative models to test theories of societal growth, development, and resilience. This chapter describes the results of simulations employing integrated agent-based, cellular automata, and network models to represent elements of the ancient Maya social-ecological system. The purpose of the model is to better understand the complex dynamics of the Maya civilization and to test quantitative indicators of resilience as predictors of system sustainability or decline. The model examines the relationship between population growth, agricultural production, pressure on ecosystem services, forest succession, value of trade, and the stability of trade networks. These combine to allow agents representing Maya settlements to develop and expand within a landscape that changes under climate variation and responds to anthropogenic pressure. The model is able to reproduce spatial patterns and timelines somewhat analogous to that of the ancient Maya, although this model requires refinement and further archaeological data for calibration.

The application of light detection and ranging (LiDAR), a laser-based remote-sensing technology that is capable of penetrating overlying vegetation and forest canopies, is generating a fundamental shift in Mesoamerican archaeology and has the potential to transform research in forested areas world-wide. Much as radiocarbon dating that half a century ago moved archaeology forward by grounding archaeological remains in time, LiDAR is proving to be a catalyst for an improved spatial understanding of the past. With LiDAR, ancient societies can be contextualized within a fully defined landscape. Interpretations about the scale and organization of densely forested sites no longer are constrained by sample size, as they were when mapping required laborious on-ground survey. The ability to articulate ancient landscapes fully permits a better understanding of the complexity of ancient Mesoamerican urbanism and also aids in modern conservation efforts. The importance of this geospatial innovation is demonstrated with newly acquired LiDAR data from the archaeological sites of Caracol, Cayo, Belize and Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico. These data illustrate the potential of technology to act as a catalytic enabler of rapid transformational change in archaeological research and interpretation and also underscore the value of on-the-ground archaeological investigation in validating and contextualizing results.

Tropical rainforest clearing and degradation significantly reduces carbon sequestration and increases the rate of biodiversity loss. There has been a concerted international effort to develop remote sensing techniques to monitor broad-scale patterns of forest canopy disturbance. In addition to loss of natural resources, recent deforestation in Mesoamerica threatens historic cultural resources that for centuries lay hidden below the protective canopy. Here, we compare satellite-derived measures of canopy disturbance that occurred over a three decade period since 1980 to those derived from a 2009 airborne LiDAR campaign over the Caracol Archaeological Reserve in western Belize. Scaling up fine-resolution canopy height measures to the 30 m resolution of Landsat Thematic Mapper, we found LiDAR revealed a >58% increase in the extent of canopy disturbance where there was an overlap of the remotely sensed data sources. For the entire archaeological reserve, with the addition of LiDAR, there was a 2.5% increase of degraded canopy than estimated with Landsat alone, indicating that 11.3% of the reserve has been subjected to illegal selective logging and deforestation. Incursions into the reserve from the Guatemala border, represented by LiDAR-detected canopy disturbance, extended 1 km deeper (to 3.5 km) into Belize than were derived with Landsat. Thus, while LiDAR enables a synoptic, never-seen-before, below-canopy view of the Maya city of Caracol, it also reveals the degree of canopy disturbance and potential looting of areas yet to be documented by archaeologists on the ground.

Advances in remote sensing and space-based imaging have led to an increased understanding of past settlements and landscape use, but e until now e the images in tropical regions have not been detailed enough to provide datasets that permitted the computation of digital elevation models for heavily forested and hilly terrain. The application of airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing provides a detailed raster image that mimics a 3-D view (technically, it is 2.5-D) of a 200 sq km area covering the settlement of Caracol, a long-term occupied (600 BC-A.D. 250e900) Maya archaeological site in Belize, literally “seeing” though gaps in the rainforest canopy. Penetrating the encompassing jungle, LiDAR-derived images accurately portray not only the topography of the landscape, but also, structures, causeways, and agricultural terraces e even those with relatively low relief of 5e30 cm. These data demonstrate the ability of the ancient Maya to modify, radically, their landscape in order to create a sustainable urban environment. Given the time and intensive effort involved in producing traditional large-scale maps, swath mapping LiDAR is a powerful cost-efficient tool to analyze past settlement and landscape modifications in tropical regions as it covers large study areas in a relatively short time. The use of LiDAR technology, as illustrated here, will ultimately replace traditional settlement mapping in tropical rainforest environments, such as the Maya region, although ground verification will continue to be necessary to test its efficacy.

Locating caves can be difficult, as their entranceways are often obscured below vegetation. Recently, active remote-sensing technologies, in particular laser-based sensor systems (LiDARs), have demonstrated the ability to penetrate dense forest canopies to reveal the underlying ground topography. An airborne LiDAR system was used to generate a 1 m resolution, bare-earth digital elevation model (DEM) from an archaeologically- and speleologically-rich area of western Belize near the ancient Maya site of Caracol. Using a simple index to detect elevation gradients in the DEM, we identified depressions with at least a 10 m change within a circular area of no more than 25 m radius. Across 200 km 2 of the karst landscape, we located 61 depressions. Sixty of these had not been previously documented; the other was a cave opening known from a previous expedition. The morphologies of the depressions were characterized based on the LiDAR-derived DEM parameters, e.g., depth, opening area, and perimeter. We also investigated how the measurements change as a function of spatial resolution. Though there was a range of morphologies, most depressions were clustered around an average maximum depth of 21 m and average opening diameter of 15 m. Five depression sites in the general vicinity of the Caracol epicenter were visited; two of these were massive, with opening diameters of ,50 m, two could not be explored for lack of climbing gear, and one site was a cave opening into several chambers with speleothems and Maya artifacts. Though further investigation is warranted to determine the archaeological and geological significance of the remaining depressions, the general methodology represents an important advancement in cave detection.

Ancient Mesoamerican polities are an important source of data for considerations of state development, despite internal debate over their size and complexity. We review complex political units, usually referred to as “states” and “empires,” in ancient Mesoamerica and reach the following conclusions: these polities tended to be hegemonic, rather than territorial, in composition; they melded ritual and political action; and they utilized the ruler as a symbol of the “body politic.” We also note the apparently larger size of most Maya polities as compared to other Mesoamerican city-states. Besides reviewing the commonalities among ancient Mesoamerican states, we also highlight the variation among these polities and the need to consider historic and archaeological data contextually in making interpretations of political structure.

Textiles formed a major part of any ancient Mesoamerican economy. Based on ethnohistory and iconography, the Maya were great producers of cloth for both internal and external use. However, the archaeological identification of textile production is difficult in any tropical area because of issues of preservation. This paper examines the evidence for the production and distribution of cloth that is found in the pre-Columbian Maya area and then focuses on archaeological data relative to textiles from the ancient Maya city of Caracol, Belize. Archaeology at Caracol has been carried out annually from 1985 to the present and has resulted in the collection of data that permits insight into the economic production and social distribution of cloth at the site. This is accomplished through examining the contexts and distributions of spindle whorls, bone needles, bone pins and hairpins, bone awls, and limestone bars. All of these artifacts can be related to weaving, netting, or cloth in some way. Importantly, perforated ceramic disks are not included in this grouping because of contextual information from the archaeological record that these artifacts likely functioned as backings for ear assemblages. Spindle whorls are the artifacts most clearly associated with textile production and 57 of these have been recovered at Caracol, 38 of them in 20 different burials. Several of these interments are of high-status women placed in the most important architectural constructions at the site. The contextual placement of these burials stresses not only the link between women and weaving, but also the high status associated with such an activity, thus signaling the importance of cloth and spinning in ancient Maya society. The prevalence of female interments in the major ritual buildings at Caracol also reflects the importance of women to Maya social structure during the Classic period (a.d.250–900), pointing to difficulties in hieroglyphically based interpretations of ancient Maya social organization and suggesting that the traditional focus on males in the sociopolitical organization of the Classic Maya is incorrect.

Inferring ancient social and political organization from the archaeological record is a difficult task. Generally, the models used to interpret the Classic-period Maya (a.d. 250‐900) have been borrowed from other societies and other times and thus also reflect etic conceptions of the past. Maya social and political organization has been interpreted as varying in complexity. Those who would model a less complex Classic Maya social structure have tended to employ lineage models and segmentation. Models of a more complex Classic Maya civilization focus on different social levels and on a breakdown of some kinship systems. Other models, such as that of the “noble house,” represent attempts to find a middle ground. Yet archaeological and epigraphic data that have been gathered for the Classic Maya place parameters on any interpretation that is generated. Data collected from Caracol, Belize, over the past 19 years can be used to illustrate the problems that arise in the strict application of “ideal” social models to the Classic Maya situation. These same data also provide parameters for the reconstruction of ancient sociopolitical organization. Inferring ancient social and political systems from the archaeological record is generally a difficult task. This is clearly the case with the ancient Maya. In spite of substantial investigation and hypothesizing, no agreement exists on the nature of Classic period (a.d. 250‐900) Maya social or political organization. Perhaps this is as it should be. Scholars have viewed ancient Maya kinship and descent alternatively as patrilineal, matrilineal, and cognatic (Chase et al. 2002). They have described Maya political organization as both segmentary and centralized (Fox et al. 1996). Generally, the models used to help interpret the archaeological data are borrowed from other societies and other times. Yet archaeological data and epigraphic data gathered for the Classic Maya place constraints and boundaries on any representation. Perhaps some of the differences among interpretations are due to differences in the archaeological database. Differences in the size of sites investigated and in the research designs of projects all potentially affect interpretations of social and political complexity. But it is also likely that variation existed among ancient Maya sites and polities and, thus, that no uniform social or political reconstruction should be expected.