Maya cuisine

Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through a host of strategies, such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication focused on several core foods, the most important of which was maize.

Much of the Maya food supply was grown in agricultural fields and forest gardens, known as pet kot. The system takes its name from the low wall of stones (pet meaning "circular" and kot "wall of loose stones") that characteristically surrounds the gardens.

The Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that, if necessary, allowed for the clear-cutting of land and re-infused the soil with nutrients. Among these was slash-and-burn, or swidden, agriculture, a technique that cleared and temporarily fertilized the area. For example, the introduction of ash into the soil raises the soil's pH, which in turn raises the content of a variety of nutrients, especially phosphorus, for a short period of time of around two years. However, the soil will not remain suitable for planting for as many as ten years. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practiced today in the Maya region. Complementing swidden techniques were crop rotation and farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase the variety of crops.

To completely understand how and in what quantities food resources were relied upon by the Ancient Maya, stable isotopic analysis has been utilized. This method allows for the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes to be chemically extracted from animal and human skeletal remains. These elements are then run through a mass spectrometer and the values display the enrichment of maize and the extent of aquatic resources in an individual's diet.

Paleoethnobotanical studies consist of the examination of micro and macro plant remains found within measured units of soil taken from an archaeological context. Macro-remains are separated from the soil through a flotation process while microremains are chemically extracted from the flotation samples. The earliest archaeological plant remains within the Maya region are from Cuello, Belize, and predate Preclassic sites. The majority of plant remains fall within the Preclassic-Postclassic and allow for researchers to discuss subsistence patterns that revolve around domesticated and wild/partially cultivated plants. Information for the Classic period, the most widely studied period for the Maya, come from the sites of Cobá, Cerén, Dos Pilas, Wild Cane Cay, Copán, Tikal, and Río Azul. This range of sites also allows for insight into regional differences based on the environment and access to local resources, such as aquatic and marine life.

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