MAYA DARK EARTHS
These soils, although sought for cultivation, are not typical ‘Amazonian Dark Earths’ but instead are distinctive to the weathering of carbonate-rich anthropogenic deposits.
Dr. Elizabeth Graham's work on coastal areas of Belize, including the site of Marco Gonzalez (where she is the Principal Investigator), reflects her interest in the environmental impact of human populations in these environments. Graham is passionate about her soil security and dark earth research. She considers this cutting-edge work a critical contribution to the field, as she believes archaeology to be directly applicable to today’s problems of soil (and food) security. Using archaeology to look towards the future, Dr. Graham’s and colleagues’ (2016:97) recent research at Marco Gonzalez "is aimed at assessing the role of anthropogenic deposits in soil formation processes with a view to developing strategies to quantify the long-term environmental impact of human activities today." This research views archaeological objects and deposits as potential soil parent material. As Graham et al. (2016:106) state, “If studies such as ours prove fruitful in terms of connecting the remains of inadvertent human activity to the genesis of soils, then assessments of what makes soils fertile and what makes agriculture possible may warrant re-thinking, as does what we do with our rubbish, our dead, and our waste, and how we manage the detritus of human activity over the long term.”
DARK EARTH PUBLICATIONS
2017 Graham, E., Macphail, R., Turner, S., Crowther, J., Stegemann, J., Arroyo-Kalin, M., Duncan, L., Whittet, R., Rosique, C., Austin, P. The Marco Gonzalez Maya site, Ambergris Caye, Belize: Assessing the impact of human activities by examining diachronic processes at the local scale. Quaternary International 437: 115-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.079 in Part B, ‘Socio-ecology at the small-scale: local manifestations of late Pleistocene/Holocene human and environmental dynamics’, eds. Marco Madella, Steve Markofsky, and Francesc Cecilia, 1-176 (5 May 2017).
2017 Macphail, Richard I., Elizabeth Graham, John Crowther, Simon Turner. Marco Gonzalez, Ambergris Caye, Belize: A geoarchaeological record of ground raising associated with surface soil formation and the presence of a Dark Earth. Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 77 on ‘Geoarchaeology in the Humid Tropics: Practice, Problems, Prospects’, 35-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.06.003
2016 Graham, E., R. Macphail, J. Crowther, S. Turner, J. Stegemann, M. Arroyo-Kalin, L. Duncan, P. Austin, R. Whittet, C. Rosique. Past and Future Earth: Archaeology and Soil Studies on Ambergris Caye, Belize. Archaeology International 19: 97-108, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.1916
2008 Elizabeth Graham, Timothy Beach and Clifford Brown. Building a Neotropical Framework for Dark Earths. In the session ‘Developing International Geoarchaeology’ organized by Manuel Arroyo-Kalin. 6th World Archaeological Congress, University College Dublin, 29thJune to 4th July 2008.
2017 Graham, E., Macphail, R., Turner, S., Crowther, J., Stegemann, J., Arroyo-Kalin, M., Duncan, L., Whittet, R., Rosique, C., Austin, P. The Marco Gonzalez Maya site, Ambergris Caye, Belize: Assessing the impact of human activities by examining diachronic processes at the local scale. Quaternary International 437: 115-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.079 in Part B, ‘Socio-ecology at the small-scale: local manifestations of late Pleistocene/Holocene human and environmental dynamics’, eds. Marco Madella, Steve Markofsky, and Francesc Cecilia, 1-176 (5 May 2017).
2017 Macphail, Richard I., Elizabeth Graham, John Crowther, Simon Turner. Marco Gonzalez, Ambergris Caye, Belize: A geoarchaeological record of ground raising associated with surface soil formation and the presence of a Dark Earth. Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 77 on ‘Geoarchaeology in the Humid Tropics: Practice, Problems, Prospects’, 35-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.06.003
2016 Graham, E., R. Macphail, J. Crowther, S. Turner, J. Stegemann, M. Arroyo-Kalin, L. Duncan, P. Austin, R. Whittet, C. Rosique. Past and Future Earth: Archaeology and Soil Studies on Ambergris Caye, Belize. Archaeology International 19: 97-108, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.1916
2008 Elizabeth Graham, Timothy Beach and Clifford Brown. Building a Neotropical Framework for Dark Earths. In the session ‘Developing International Geoarchaeology’ organized by Manuel Arroyo-Kalin. 6th World Archaeological Congress, University College Dublin, 29thJune to 4th July 2008.