Research interests
Environmental anthropological archaeology; community-engaged archaeology; environmental humanities; food and agriculture; traditional ecological knowledge; Maya of Yucatán; Colonialism and the environment; industrialization of food and agriculture
Environmental anthropological archaeology; community-engaged archaeology; environmental humanities; food and agriculture; traditional ecological knowledge; Maya of Yucatán; Colonialism and the environment; industrialization of food and agriculture
Journal articles
Fisher, Chelsea
2020. Archaeology for sustainable agriculture. Journal of Archaeological Research 28:393-441.
How will archaeology contribute to agricultural sustainability? To address that question, this overview reflects on the diverse and complementary ways that archaeology has advanced our understanding of sustainable agriculture. Here, I assess recent archaeological research through the lens of the five principles of sustainable agriculture used by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. These principles—efficiency, conservation, rural livelihoods, resilience, and governance—highlight the social and environmental dimensions of agricultural sustainability. By drawing on case studies from around the world, I show how archaeology is uniquely situated to examine the interactions of these social and environmental dimensions over long periods of time. Archaeology’s strongest conceptual contributions to sustainable agriculture are (1) its capacity to demonstrate that sustainability is historically contingent and (2) its attention to outcomes. If transformed into meaningful action, these contributions have the potential to advance modern agricultural sustainability and environmental justice initiatives. This overview is an invitation to clarify a plan for future research and outreach. It is an invitation to imagine what an archaeology for sustainable agriculture will look like and what it will accomplish.
Fisher, Chelsea and Traci Ardren
2020. Partaking in culinary heritage at Yaxunah, Yucatán during the 2017 Noma Mexico pop-up. Maya Anthropological Archaeology, special issue of Heritage, edited by Chelsea Fisher and Arlen Chase 3(2):474-492.
In spring of 2017, celebrity chef René Redzepi opened a pop-up of his famed restaurant, Noma, on the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. During its run, Noma Mexico worked closely with the town of Yaxunah, a Yucatec-Mayan speaking community in the peninsula’s interior, hiring women to make tortillas and acquiring local ingredients for the restaurant. For us—two archaeologists interested in past and present Maya food and agriculture who have worked in the Yaxunah community for years—this made the 2017 field season a compelling time to engage in culinary heritage. We share on-the-ground perspectives from our work with Yaxunah community members during a decisive spring for rural Yucatán’s globalizing food system. These perspectives offer a candid contribution to this special issue’s archive of community-based and heritage-engaged archaeological work in the Maya area.
Fisher, Chelsea
2020. Maize politics and Maya farmers’ traditional ecological knowledge in Yucatán, 1450-1600. Human Ecology 48(1): 33-45.
Historical and political context is essential for evaluating the long-term sustainability of any agroecosystem. Over the past several centuries in Yucatán, Mexico, Maya farmers have practiced milpa (i.e., slash-and-burn) agriculture in ways that are arguably both sustainable and unsustainable depending on whether political leaders created institutional support for farmers to implement a full range of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). To investigate this relationship between political authority and TEK, I trace changes in maize tribute collection before and after contact between Spaniards and Maya. I argue that late pre-contact milpa agriculture was sustainable in part because political leaders supported institutions that allowed farmers to integrate a wider range of TEK. Colonial authorities, however, dismantled these institutions and thereby undermined the sustainability of milpa agriculture. Confronting these lasting Colonial legacies is a critical part of a larger interdisciplinary effort to expand sustainability discourse and promote environmentally just food systems.
Fisher, Chelsea
2018. Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: Insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. Agriculture and Human Values 35: 791-807.
Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.
Fisher, Chelsea
2014. The role of infield agriculture in Maya cities. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 36: 196-210.
Archaeologists investigating urban settlement in the Maya area have attributed the dispersed nature of Maya cities to intra-settlement infield agriculture – but we have not yet addressed how to determine sources of variability in these agro-urban landscapes. In this paper I propose that one specific kind of infield agriculture – multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based subsistence systems – affected settlement patterns in three northern Maya lowland cities: Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil. By comparing variation in the number of associated domestic structures (an approximation of multigenerational coresidence) and the amount of vacant houselot area enclosed within property walls (an approximation of land preserved for gardens and arboriculture), it is possible to assess relative differences in investment in this particular strategy. Ultimately different kinds of infield agriculture will lead to different kinds of low-density cities. This approach can be modified for multiple scales of investigation and should stimulate further discussion of the relationship between subsistence and urbanism.
Edited compilations
Fisher, Chelsea and Arlen Chase, eds.
2020. Maya Anthropological Archaeology, special issue of Heritage 3(2).
Fisher, Chelsea
2020. Archaeology for sustainable agriculture. Journal of Archaeological Research 28:393-441.
How will archaeology contribute to agricultural sustainability? To address that question, this overview reflects on the diverse and complementary ways that archaeology has advanced our understanding of sustainable agriculture. Here, I assess recent archaeological research through the lens of the five principles of sustainable agriculture used by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. These principles—efficiency, conservation, rural livelihoods, resilience, and governance—highlight the social and environmental dimensions of agricultural sustainability. By drawing on case studies from around the world, I show how archaeology is uniquely situated to examine the interactions of these social and environmental dimensions over long periods of time. Archaeology’s strongest conceptual contributions to sustainable agriculture are (1) its capacity to demonstrate that sustainability is historically contingent and (2) its attention to outcomes. If transformed into meaningful action, these contributions have the potential to advance modern agricultural sustainability and environmental justice initiatives. This overview is an invitation to clarify a plan for future research and outreach. It is an invitation to imagine what an archaeology for sustainable agriculture will look like and what it will accomplish.
Fisher, Chelsea and Traci Ardren
2020. Partaking in culinary heritage at Yaxunah, Yucatán during the 2017 Noma Mexico pop-up. Maya Anthropological Archaeology, special issue of Heritage, edited by Chelsea Fisher and Arlen Chase 3(2):474-492.
In spring of 2017, celebrity chef René Redzepi opened a pop-up of his famed restaurant, Noma, on the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. During its run, Noma Mexico worked closely with the town of Yaxunah, a Yucatec-Mayan speaking community in the peninsula’s interior, hiring women to make tortillas and acquiring local ingredients for the restaurant. For us—two archaeologists interested in past and present Maya food and agriculture who have worked in the Yaxunah community for years—this made the 2017 field season a compelling time to engage in culinary heritage. We share on-the-ground perspectives from our work with Yaxunah community members during a decisive spring for rural Yucatán’s globalizing food system. These perspectives offer a candid contribution to this special issue’s archive of community-based and heritage-engaged archaeological work in the Maya area.
Fisher, Chelsea
2020. Maize politics and Maya farmers’ traditional ecological knowledge in Yucatán, 1450-1600. Human Ecology 48(1): 33-45.
Historical and political context is essential for evaluating the long-term sustainability of any agroecosystem. Over the past several centuries in Yucatán, Mexico, Maya farmers have practiced milpa (i.e., slash-and-burn) agriculture in ways that are arguably both sustainable and unsustainable depending on whether political leaders created institutional support for farmers to implement a full range of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). To investigate this relationship between political authority and TEK, I trace changes in maize tribute collection before and after contact between Spaniards and Maya. I argue that late pre-contact milpa agriculture was sustainable in part because political leaders supported institutions that allowed farmers to integrate a wider range of TEK. Colonial authorities, however, dismantled these institutions and thereby undermined the sustainability of milpa agriculture. Confronting these lasting Colonial legacies is a critical part of a larger interdisciplinary effort to expand sustainability discourse and promote environmentally just food systems.
Fisher, Chelsea
2018. Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: Insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. Agriculture and Human Values 35: 791-807.
Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.
Fisher, Chelsea
2014. The role of infield agriculture in Maya cities. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 36: 196-210.
Archaeologists investigating urban settlement in the Maya area have attributed the dispersed nature of Maya cities to intra-settlement infield agriculture – but we have not yet addressed how to determine sources of variability in these agro-urban landscapes. In this paper I propose that one specific kind of infield agriculture – multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based subsistence systems – affected settlement patterns in three northern Maya lowland cities: Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil. By comparing variation in the number of associated domestic structures (an approximation of multigenerational coresidence) and the amount of vacant houselot area enclosed within property walls (an approximation of land preserved for gardens and arboriculture), it is possible to assess relative differences in investment in this particular strategy. Ultimately different kinds of infield agriculture will lead to different kinds of low-density cities. This approach can be modified for multiple scales of investigation and should stimulate further discussion of the relationship between subsistence and urbanism.
Edited compilations
Fisher, Chelsea and Arlen Chase, eds.
2020. Maya Anthropological Archaeology, special issue of Heritage 3(2).
