CHAPTER 1 

 OVERVIEW 



This dissertation proposes to examine the interrelation between gardens, wildlife densities, and 

 subsistence hunting in a Maya Indian community in southeastern Mexico. The Maya are a rural people 

 and have practiced shifting cultivation for several thousand years. In many regards, they subsist today 

 as they have done for thousands of years by hunting, caring for wild and domestic animals, and by 

 planting crops in their gardens. The Maya, however, have undergone rapid cultural change due to 

 tourism and economic development in the Cancun area and slowly are being incorporated into Mexican 

 political and economic activities. 



Subsistence hunting as practiced today by the Maya is unusual when compared with hunting by 

 other indigenous groups in two regards: One, due to the availability of domestic livestock and canned 

 meat, hunters are not dependent upon the game they harvest as a source of food. Two, the Maya have 

 been able to live in permanent settlements and exploit the local wildlife populations apparently without 

 exhausting local wildlife populations, while many other indigenous groups have depleted local wildlife 

 populations and consequently have had to move their settlements repeatedly or undergo seasonal treks 

 (Stearman, 1990; Vickers, 1988, 1991; Werner, 1983). An understanding of how the Maya have been 

 able to continue subsistence hunting for so long, while indigenous peoples in other areas have not been 

 able to do so, will provide important information to biological and social scientists seeking to balance 

 the issues of conservation and economic development. 



The research described here was designed to examine the hypothesis that subsistence hunting 

 by Maya Indians may be more than a simple game harvest activity. Rather, Maya subsistence hunting 

 may be part of a complex game-procurement system composed of gardens, wildlife, and hunters. 

 "Garden hunting," desaibed by Linares (1976) for a prehistoric indigenous people in Panama, may 

 actually be the model whereby the Maya have been able to hunt and practice shifting cultivation in the 



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