Milpa

An agricultural technique whereby forest vegetation is cut down annually and burned in place to prepare fields for crops - slash-and-burn agriculture. Its derivation is from a term referring to the cultivation of maize fields, usually for only a few years, by swidden agriculture. Depictions on Maya frescos and codices coupled with ethnographic evidence of modern-day methods of cultivation in the Maya Lowlands, gave rise to the theory that milpa agriculture was the basis of Maya subsistence. Exhaustion of the land by its indiscriminate practice was long held to be a factor in the Maya collapse.

Maya term meaning literally ‘cornfields’, synonymous in Mesoamerican archaeology with slash-and-burn agriculture. Depictions on Maya frescos and codices coupled with ethnographic evidence of modern-day methods of cultivation in the Maya Lowlands, gave rise to the theory that milpa agriculture was the basis of Maya subsistence. Exhaustion of the land by its indiscriminate practice was long held to be a factor in the Maya collapse. Recent thought, however, has tended to the notion that the milpa system alone could not possibly support the populations estimated for many of the major centres (e.g. Tikal). Increasing archaeological evidence of such practices as canal irrigation, terracing and raised fields suggests that more diverse and more intensive methods were, in fact, being used.