Soil and slaughter: a geoarchaeological record of the ancient Maya from Cancuén, Guatemala

Excavation of a small valley-fill sequence at the East Port of the ancient Maya site of Cancuén, Guatemala has revealed a sedimentary record spanning the last c. 1300 years of the Common Era (CE). Our study location within the centre of a pre-Columbian Maya city has allowed tandem records of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental history to be preserved in the sediments, offering the opportunity to reconstruct how the Maya and their environment co-evolved during the Late Classic period (600-c. 800 CE). The sedimentary record from Cancuén's East Port has preserved clear evidence of the city's rise and abandonment; we have used these chronostratigraphic markers to estimate rates of aggradation and erosion over the two centuries of human occupation. Evidence of fire and major social upheaval features prominently in the sedimentary archive as thick deposits of charcoal, artefacts, and a human mass-burial that date from the final years of Cancuén. After Cancuén was rapidly abandoned at the start of the 9th century CE, changes in the East Port sequence (mainly variations in sediment provenance and accumulation rate) record the sharp decline in aggradation, and also evidence of substantial hydroclimatic variability. This research provides a new dataset capable of testing and refining archaeological theories from Cancuén, while also offering new insights into the impact of the ancient Maya on their environment in the lowland region of Central America in recent millennia.