B. L. Turner - Böcker

Among Mesoamericanists, the agricultural basis of the ancient Maya civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula has been an important topic of research-and controversy. Interest in the agricultural system of the Maya greatly increased as new discoveries showed that the lowland Maya were not limited to slash-and-burn technology, as had been previously believed, but used a variety of more sophisticated agricultural techniques and practices, including terracing, raised fields, and, perhaps, irrigation. Because of the nature of the data and because this form of agricultural technology had been key to explanations of state formation elsewhere in Mesoamerica, raised-field agriculture became a particular focus of investigation. Pulltrouser Swamp conclusively demonstrates the existence of hydraulic, raised-field agriculture in the Maya lowlands between 150 B.C. and A.D. 850. It presents the findings of the University of Oklahoma's Pulltrouser SwampProject, an NSF-supported interdisciplinary study that combined the talents of archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, paleobotanists, biologists, and zoologists to investigate the remains of the Maya agricultural system in the swampy region of northern Belize. By examining soils, fossil pollen and other plant remains, gastropods, relic settlements, ceramics, lithics, and other important evidence, the Pulltrouser Swamp team has clearly demonstrated that the features under investigation are relics of Maya-made raised and channelized fields and associated canals. Other data suggest the nature of the swamps in which the fields were constructed, the tools used for construction and cultivation, the possible crops cultivated, and at least one type of settlement near the fields, with its chronology. This verification of raised fields provides dramatic evidence of a large and probably organized workforce engaged in sophisticated and complex agricultural technology. As record of this evidence, Pulltrouser Swamp is a work of seminal importance for all students and scholars of New World prehistory.

Legumes have taken an important place as a commercial crop in Texas. Their soil-building qualities have long been recognized, and the production of legume seed became a growing business. In addition, considerable interest arose as to the possibility of breeding and selection of native legumes for the development of suitable types to occupy the thousands of miles of rangeland in the southwestern United States. While much experimental work went into the production of exotic cultivated crops such as clover, alfalfa, and vetch, when this book was published in 1959, practically nothing was known about the potential value and volume of crop for native Texas legumes. This is a scientific book—a book of interest primarily to professional workers in the field of taxonomy and agronomy—but its use as a guide to potential crop and rangeland legumes should prove of importance to many people who have no primary interest in systematics. It includes a treatment of both native and introduced Texas legumes, with keys to species, ecological notes, flowering dates, common names, and synonymy. Distribution of taxa is shown by dot maps and, when appropriate, extra-limital observations are added. Chromosome numbers are given for those species for which counts were available. This information includes unpublished data for approximately 50 taxa; in addition, comments as to the agronomic potential of certain native legumes are presented. The introduction includes an original account of the major floristic provinces of the state based on correlated distributions of the legume species. Altogether the text treats 391 legume taxa, 347 of which are native.