Landed Legacies: Longevity and Land Tenure in the Garden City of Caracol, Belize

Maya peoples built and occupied the city of Caracol, Belize for over 1,500 years. In that time, they integrated the needs of their natural and built environments to create sustainable communities across their neighborhoods, districts, and the city as a whole. Initial residents modified the Vaca Plateau through large-scale transformations of the landscape to create a resilient system of agricultural terraces. The impact of these terraces cannot be understated, especially since they still increase the health and height of the modern jungle vegetation over a 1,000 years later. However, the emergence and development of this resilient field system is not fully understood. It depended on multi-generational labor investments leading to settlement history, community legacies, and land tenure. The construction, maintenance, and sustainability of the agricultural terracing in the garden city of Caracol entailed the creation of a fully anthropogenic landscape – an environment that successfully integrated natural and human elements and for over half a millennium. The longevity and long-term sustainability of this agricultural system suggest that Caracol’s communities actively engaged with and managed their environment. The archaeological remnants of this terrace system, when contextualized with the associated residential groups, provide insights into ancient Maya land tenure.