MERIDA.- Archaeologists studying ancient Maya settlements in the Yucatán Peninsula are finding new evidence that everyday households were carefully organized around the natural landscape, using slopes and low-lying areas to manage rainwater and support small-scale agriculture.

The research, led by archaeologist Carlos Matos Llanes of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, focuses on four sites excavated as part of the Maya Train Archaeological Salvage Project. Rather than examining temples, palaces or other monumental structures, the study looks at the spaces surrounding ordinary homes and asks how Maya families used the land in their daily lives.

Researchers have long known that ancient Maya communities altered the central areas of settlements for agricultural purposes. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the domestic landscape—the open spaces, gardens and cultivated plots that may have surrounded groups of houses.

Matos Llanes and his team are trying to determine whether ancient residents deliberately used topographic and hydrological features to improve food production, and how those activities shaped the organization of their communities.

“Investigating how ancient Maya communities understood and transformed their environment allows us to recognize the depth of their knowledge of water, soil and food production,” Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said. She added that the findings help move the story of Maya civilization beyond its great monuments and closer to the routines, organization and knowledge systems that sustained everyday life.

Homes placed with the landscape in mind

The study examines Tepakán, in Yucatán, and the sites known as Bécal I, II and III, located in Calkiní, Campeche. All four are situated in the northern Maya Lowlands along Section 3 of the Maya Train route.

Using digital elevation models created from LiDAR point-cloud data, the researchers are reconstructing the shape of the terrain and tracking how water would have moved through it.

During the excavations, archaeologists identified clusters of roughly 30 to 40 small monuments. Most were modest structures built directly on the natural ground and may have formed domestic groups.





What stood out were the large open areas between them, some measuring approximately 200 meters across.

Those apparently empty spaces may have been anything but unused. Preliminary analysis suggests they were deliberately incorporated into the settlement plan and may have served as productive agricultural zones.

Slope analysis showed that the residential groups were generally positioned on higher ground, with lower areas surrounding them. This arrangement would have allowed residents to use the natural incline of the land to direct and control rainwater.

Additional GIS tools, including stream power index mapping, showed that water would have accumulated in the open spaces between the household groups.

The pattern suggests that homes were built around areas that could support cultivation, rather than being scattered randomly across the landscape.

Looking beyond the house itself

For Matos Llanes, understanding Maya domestic life requires archaeologists to look beyond the surviving foundations of houses.

A residence was not limited to its built structure. It also included the larger household plot, or solar, where cooking, craft production, gardening and other daily activities may have taken place.

Scholars have described these plots as containing several zones: an open area near the home, an intermediate space and a larger garden or orchard. The cultivated section may have occupied most of the property.

This kind of arrangement remains familiar in parts of the Yucatán Peninsula today. Matos Llanes grew up watching his family tend the milpa, or kool, in the Puuc region using the traditional slash-and-burn system known as tumba-roza-quema.

That experience, he said, reflects knowledge that Maya farmers have preserved across generations.

Although not all soils in the peninsula are naturally ideal for farming, experienced milpa farmers know how to improve them and make them productive.

The new study suggests that pre-Hispanic communities possessed similarly detailed knowledge of soil conditions, drainage and seasonal rainfall.

Farming for the household—and possibly for trade

The researchers believe the open areas between residential clusters were probably used to grow food for household consumption. Agricultural surpluses may also have been exchanged with neighboring settlements or larger regional centers.

That possibility remains a hypothesis and will require material evidence, such as artifacts or sedimentary traces, to demonstrate that goods moved between communities.

Archaeologists have already proposed comparable relationships elsewhere in the region, including possible exchange between the site of Chichan Panadero and the larger center of Poxilá in Umán, Yucatán.

The current research forms part of the archaeological salvage work connected with the Maya Train freight railway and is coordinated by archaeologists Manuel Pérez Rivas and Susana Echeverría. The project is expected to provide additional archaeological and sedimentary evidence that will allow the team to test its ideas.

Future work may include the study of more residential units and the use of phosphorus analysis. Elevated phosphorus levels in soils can help identify areas where food preparation, waste disposal, animal keeping or other repeated human activities once took place.

For Matos Llanes, one of the most valuable aspects of the Maya Train salvage project has been its decision to excavate open spaces as well as buildings.

In pre-Hispanic Maya communities, much of daily life unfolded outdoors. By studying those spaces, archaeologists are beginning to see domestic settlements not simply as groups of houses, but as carefully organized environments in which water, soil, farming and family life were closely connected.