How was a Maya urban community structured in space and time? How was the population sustained? Which are the long- and short-term impacts of social aggregation on tropical enviroments? In Common Knowledge: lowland Maya urban farming at Xuch, Christian Isendahl shows how an urban cultural landscape was formed in the Puuc region of the Yucatán Peninsula. The architectural and ceramin data demonstrate that the urban community dates from the c. 7th to the 11th century AD. Novel approaches to field documentation at the site level include archaeological, ecological and geochemical data. Interpretation focuses on the relationship between population, economy and environment, providing new insights into fundamental issues of sustainability and change.