Chapter 12 Reclaiming the past to respond to climate change: Mayan farmers and ancient agricultural techniques in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico Betty Bernice Faust, Armando Anaya-Hernández, and Helga Geovannini-Acuña This chapter examines how archaeological research into past Mayan land use prac- tices in Campeche, Mexico may contribute to increase farm productivity and food security for the region’s smallholders. The area’s rural communities are threatened by climate change, with the area’s rainfall decreasing and less reliable in recent years. Harvests are diminished in both the traditional Maya practice of shifting cultivation (swidden) and the tractor cultivation introduced in the 1980s. Policies introduced as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement also place increasing economic pressures on local maize growers. Recent archaeological research in this area suggests that Pre-Hispanic, Maya canal systems with raised ields once drained loodwaters for later irrigation and household uses during dry periods. The authors call for collab- orative efforts with local farmers to reconstruct this irrigation system on an experi- mental basis to determine if it can increase food production and complementary cash-cropping that forms part of family livelihoods today. Introduction In 2008, Mayan 8 farmers collaborated in a surface survey of the archaeological site of Cauich in Campeche, Mexico, where Archaeologist Anaya identiied the remains of a 500 m canal with indications of raised ields (Anaya and Faust, 2009). Hydraulic systems of this sort have been found in various sites across the Southern Maya Lowlands since Siemens and Puleston’s irst report of one in 1972. The farmers quickly grasped the explanation of how this system both conserved rainwater and drained ields looded by storms. Now they want to rebuild it, a task which will require detailed information from archaeological excavation, soil analysis, and hydrological engineering. In this chapter we describe why both we and they think it may offer an appropriate response to local climate change that includes increases in both droughts and hurricanes.