"In each age, humanity attempts to understand its past."- Richard Adams. Richard Adams is an archaeologist and educator. He is a Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio. His specialty is Latin American archaeology, particularly, Mayan civilization. Adams excavated many Mayan Lowland sites in Mesoamerica. He has written much about the Mayan culture and how it declined. He also started to use aerial synthetic aperture radar surveys to find sites that are hard to find in the Mayan Lowlands. From this technology new sites have been found as well as new evidence. It was found that the Mayans might have used wetland gardening instead of using only slash and burn techniques.
Adams admits that many scholars are more fascinated by the collapse of the great Maya civilization than by its origin. To study its origin, Adams has been to the Rio Bec region in the central Yucatan peninsula several times from 1969 to 1973. In an excavation from 1969 to 1971, Adams was a Field Director at the site of Becan; in 1972 and 1973, with the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It was there that he formed the Rio Bec Ecological Project. Adams believes that the Rio Bec region is the origin of Maya civilization. He has acted as a Project Director, collecting data on soils, climatic patterns and ancient farming patterns.
From his projects, he established five episodes of the Mayan prehistory: 1. Population growth, slash-and-burn agriculture. 2. Population growth, conflicts, development of elite. Stage 3. Population growth. 4. Intrusion of foreign culture, reorganization of previous form, decrease of elites' power. 5. Absorption of the foreign influences, revival of native culture.
The results of this project were presented in the advanced seminar sponsored and supported by the School of American Research held October 14-18. Adams said these words about this project.
"The reader will have to judge for himself how close we came to our objectives of defining the problem, applying the data, testing theoretical formulations, and attempting to develop a reconciling model that could act both as an explanatory device and as a guide to future research. These were our goals."
This might be Adams's motto as an archaeologist. He knows that people must try to understand the past of cultures other than their own, but he also knows it is not easy to do. But despite this Adams continues to find clues that help us understand the past. Every small amount that we learn helps us to further our knowledge of other cultures.
Adams, Richard E. W. Prehistoric Mesoamerica, revised edition, Norman, 1991
The Origin of Maya Civilization, edition: Albuquerque, 1977
Written By: Anthropology Students at Minnesota State University, MankatoEdited By: Laura Buswell, 2008