At https://phys.org/news/2025-06-archaeologists-uncover-massive-year-native.html … LiDAR on a drone has been used to peer through a forest landscape in Michigan’s upper peninsular. It has a cold climate nowadays, especially in the winter – and abuts on the Canadian border. Not the best environment for growing corn [maize]. Yet, they have uncovered evidence of extensive farming activity in the pre-colonial period. A raised agricultural bed system has been explored along the Menominee River, former home of the Menominee people. LiDAR picked out ridges on the forest floor and these are formed by the defunct raised beds. So far, 330 acres have been surveyed – about 40 percent of the earmarked site. It suggests an organised society – and a very large settlement yet to be found. A cluster of archaeologically noted sites are found nearby – including burial mounds and dance rings, as well as buildings yet to be investigated.
The raised beds were constructed around AD1000 – just after the start of the Medieval Warm Period. They are thought to have survived in some shape or form for 600 years – down to the 16th century. This suggests the cooling climate, culminating in the Little Ice Age, was a factor in their abandonment. The archaeology is classified as Late Woodland culture and archaeologists are now wondering if similar raised bed systems may have been endemic elsewhere in the eastern United States. Now lost.
At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/3-ancient-maya-cities-discovered-in-guatemala-1-with-an-astronomical-complex-likely-used-for-predicting-solstices … the remains of 3 Maya cities have been found in the jungle of Guatemala. They are 3 miles apart and arranged in a triangular formation. One of them appears to have been a ceremonial centre during the Middle Classic Period – 1000-400BC, and the Late Preclassic Period, 400BC – AD300. At that time it was abandoned – coinciding with upheavals in the Roman empire in the Old World. That was temporary as it seems to have been reoccupied between AD600 -900 [abandoned also at a period of upheaval, 50 years or so prior to the Medieval Period]. Most notably, it had an astronomical aspect with buildings situated in a way to align with solstices and equinoxes, fixed points in the year. Why were they interested in them, one might wonder. What was it about those dates – or some of those dates. What did they expect? What might they have been frightened of – and did it have anything to do with the two abandonments?