Sustainability across the Neotropics: an archaeological perspective from the pre-Columbian Maya lowlands to the Amazon basin

Abstract

Sustainability has become a critical issue in today's world. This enormous challenge is shared by the scientific, political, and public worlds, influencing thought and action from the household to international platforms such as the Paris Agreement. However, across the globe, current attempts to achieve sustainability rarely lead to desired results as organizations and governments experiment with new strategies and policies yet lack deep-time data in the evaluation of their success.

The archaeological and paleoecological disciplines are ideally positioned to resolve this pressing issue at the core of the pursuit of sustainability. Despite this potential, a method to systematically examine deep-time sustainability and inform contemporary engagements is yet to be developed. Whereas archaeological research on this topic is growing exponentially, the vast majority of studies remain limited to incompatible fragmented, descriptive, and anecdotal observations while contemporary engagements with sustainability require rigorous quantitative data. As a result, how sustainability might be achieved, what factors play an important role, and what lessons we can learn from the past all remain largely unanswered.

There is a need for a data-driven approach that can offer more concrete quantitative evidence and that allows systematic examination of sustainability dynamics across time and space, irrespective of geography or culture. To fill this gap, this thesis develops, explores, and demonstrates the potential of a novel methodology for systematic deep-time sustainability assessment, with a focus on the pre- Columbian Neotropics. Building on a multi-proxy approach and integrating archaeological and paleoecological data with contemporary sustainability science, this study attempts to provide a steppingstone towards a more systematic engagement with deep-time sustainability which would ultimately foster the application of archaeological knowledge to address the global sustainability challenges of the 21st century.