Few regions can boast of the interdisciplinary efforts to investigate the recursive nature between the rise of intensive agriculture and complex society as the lowland Maya area of Northern Belize and southern Quintana Roo, Mexico. Ancient Maya Wetland Agriculture continues this multidisciplinary tradition, with 15 chapters detailing the deposits and fluvial geomorphology, biology and biostratigraphy, and archaeology of the Rio Hondo ditched fields in Northern Belize. This text augments previous glimpses of Maya intensive agriculture on Albion Island (Pohl, 1985).
Pohl's introduction discusses the history of the Rio Hondo Research Project from its 1973 inception by Siemens and Puleston emphasizing cultural ecology to her own research in the 1980s on political ecology. She then provides a cursory site description of Albion Island, introduces the remainder of the volume, and briefly summarizes the history of Maya agricultural research. In Chapter 2, Kent Mathewson interweaves a discussion of Puleston's contributions to Maya Archaeology with a history of research on prehistoric New World intensive agriculture, the nature of archaeological investigation, and the importance of the Albion Island excavations, using the metaphor of Maya calendrical cycles. He connects these themes with some thought-provoking digressions such as von Humboldt being the mythical father of landscape archaeology. Mathewson has vividly captured Puleston's fertile imagination and "activist-advocate style," figuratively closing the short and long cycles of Puleston's thoughts.
Julie Stein and the late Gerald Olson investigate Albion Island deposits and geomorphology. Olson classifies soils, describes prominent pedologic features, and briefly discusses fertility via organic matter and acid extractable P and K. Stein's chapter details the deposit stratigraphy and fluvial geomorphology of Albion Island. There are three major depositional episodes: gleyed clays from undetermined river processes forming the basal unit; an organic-rich (peat) unit; and overlying carbonate clays indicative of