Patricia A. McAnany

Patricia A. McAnany Kenan Eminent Professor Department of Anthropology University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill A Maya archaeologist, I have conducted field research and cultural heritage programs throughout the Maya region. My interests include the intersection of ritual and economy, ancestor veneration, the creation and abandonment of place, and the cross threading of cultural heritage with indigenous identities. I founded a University of North Carolina (UNC) program called InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present (www.inherit.org) and a nonprofit—The Alliance for Heritage Conservation. Both organizations work to generate dialogue about the past and to promote programs of heritage conservation, particularly in the Maya region. Over the years, my publications had included several books, most recently Textile Economies: Power & Value from the Local to the Transnational (2011) co-edited with Walter E. Little; Ancestral Maya Economies in Archaeological Perspective (2010); Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (2010) co-edited with Norman Yoffee; and Dimensions of Ritual Economy (2008) co-edited with E. Christian Wells. My journal articles on heritage and archaeology have appeared in Mesoamérica (2013), Current Anthropology (2012), Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2012, 2007), Latin American Antiquity (2011), Arqueología Mexicana (2010), Archaeological Dialogues (2009), Journal of Anthropological Research (2008), Journal of Field Archaeology (2006, 2001), Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2003), Geoarchaeology (2000), Ancient Mesoamerica (1999), Asian Perspectives (1994), American Antiquity (1989), and Antiquity (1987). I am fortunate to have been granted several research awards from the National Science Foundation and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for the Arts & Humanities (UNC, Chapel Hill), and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The topical and geographical areas in which I have extensive field-research experience include wetland reclamation, the establishment of place, and the vibrancy of Terminal Classic community at K’axob (Belize); Late-Terminal Classic establishment of orchard agriculture and shrine heterodoxy in the Sibun Valley (Belize); and the early Colonial imprint and imposition on Postclassic landscapes near Sací (now Valladolid, Yucatán, México). In the process of preparing the book, Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (2010) co-edited with Norman Yoffee, I realized that resilient and sustainable agricultural technologies can co-exist with (and often are vulnerable to) unsustainable politics. I also realized that the political implosion that occurred at the end of the Classic period frequently is conflated (in the minds of scholars and lay person alike) with the death of Maya society—despite the regionally variable evidence of a vibrant Postclassic population followed by later accounts from Spanish entradas and the presence today of five million plus people who identify ethnolinguistically as Mayan. My interest in orchard farming and the tremendous economic importance of tree crops (cacao, avocado, and papaya, to name just a few) throughout the Maya region led me to be skeptical of claims of massive deforestation at the end of the Classic period and to incline towards the concept of a “managed mosaic” (well-known from Scott Fedick’s book of the same name). That is, species composition within forests was transformed and the overall square kilometers of forested area likely declined but the probability of vast wastelands à la the cinematic Apocalypto is extremely low. I think that deciphering the environmental backdrop of Late-Terminal Classic times

is essential to understanding the processes and strains that led to the severe draw-down of population in the southern cities and landscapes and I am interested in learning more about high-precision and temporally calibrated methods that will yield such insights. I think that we need to be prepared for high variability in the vulnerability of Classic-period landscapes to short-term stresses and we would do well to recognize that although we may seek the wisdom of the ancients, they did not necessarily face the same environmental challenges that we do. Ninth-century Maya society simply did not have the technological “arsenal” to abuse their environments to the extent that is possible today. Because of my long-standing interest in people of the past who did not script hieroglyphic texts, live in stone houses, and ultimately were not entombed with a rich panoply of burial accouterments, I become concerned by the absence of any understanding of the processes by which ordinary Maya people left the great southern cities and farmscapes. Toward this end, I recently teamed up with colleagues and students (Jeremy Sabloff, Gyles Iannone, Maxime Lamoureux St-Hilaire and Hanyao Qi) to develop an agent-based model called “Leaving Classic Maya Cities” using NetLogo. The open architecture of NetLogo allows for emergent and unanticipated phenomenon to occur. While researching the archaeologically documented sequence of “leaving” throughout the southern lowlands, it soon became apparent that royals left first and sustaining populations followed—sometimes rapidly but at other places very slowly. The simulation recapitulates this sequence. When stresses such as land shortage, bad weather cycles (such as drought), or the presence of violent conflict are introduced to the simulation, there is only limited movement away from royal courts but when the court implodes, collapses, or is otherwise abandoned, then population flight ensues. We were surprised by the close interdependence between the royal court and the sustaining population. At this moment, we are creating a plug-in to my UNC website so that this simulation can be run interactively by visitors to the site. For me, understanding the resilience of Late Classic Maya society is not an academic issue but is linked to reconciling archaeological narratives with 500 years of repressive colonialism and nation-building endured by Maya peoples. How we present the past impacts descendant communities who often do not have a voice in creating the past but live the consequences of allegations of environmental abuse and destructive martial conflict aimed at their ancestors. In order for the practice of Maya archaeology to be sustainable, research needs to be collaborative with descendant communities. Changes in “business as usual” would dovetail well with improved methodological precision. References that would be useful for the resilience and sustainability symposium include the following: Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (2010, Cambridge University Press) co-edited with Norman Yoffee; Ancestral Maya Economies in Archaeological Perspective (2010, Cambridge University Press); “Casualties of Heritage Distancing: Children, Ch’orti’ Indigeneity, and the Copán Archaeoscape,” Current Anthropology (2012) co-authored with Shoshanna Parks; and the website www.in-herit.org where our cultural heritage programs in the Maya region are featured. 4