Your host and Anabel Ford in her office

Archeologist who discovered the “forest gardens” of the Maya!

Today on the show we have ethnographer and author Anabel Ford, who spends her time between UCSB and El Pilar, and archeological site on the Belize-Guatamala border. El Pilar is an ancient Maya city, and in 1983 Anabel was the first archeologist to map it. The part that interested me was what she discovered later, and that is this: What we see as jungle was actually very complicated forest gardens.

Now, Anabel has written several books on this, and the most recent is The Maya Forest Garden, that came out last year from Routledge Press. We talk about her discovery, what a forest garden is, her book, how it’s under threat from logging, lessons we can learn from the Maya, and plenty more topics. I know this is kind of a bit outside the “Funk Zone” but I think you’re gonna dig it.

Anabel Ford is head of UCSB’s Meso American Research Center and if you want to read more on her, check out her page here where you can see photos of the area we’re talking about.

Also mentioned in this podcast:
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson
Exploring Solutions Past (Anabel Ford is president of this non-profit).

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