ABSTRACT
The late archaeologist Dennis E. Puleston was one of the pioneers of the "new ecological awareness" in the Maya Lowlands. Tikal Project, he experimented with food storage in chultuns, mapped settlement patterns around the ceremonial center, and became fascinated with the apparent correlation between ramon trees and housemounds. Puleston also made extensive herbarium collections of the modern vegetation of Albion Island, as well as of the native plants that grew on his experimental field. Data from San Antonio Rio Hondo excavations point to alternative scenarios for the development of wetland agriculture. U. Cowgill, Orozco-Segovia and Gliessman, and R. Wilk have all proposed that the wetland fields in the Maya Lowlands had their roots in this system of dry-season or marceno cropping. The recovery of carbonized maize stems associated with marsh plants hints at the beginnings of seasonal cultivation in wetlands.
