His work involved pioneering interdisciplinarity methods which remain current to this day and led to a greater emphasis upon ecological and experimental archaeological research in the 80's and 90's.
[2][3] His work is still used to teach the importance of diversity in scientific interest, need for social relevance, and problem solving in archaeology classes due to the broadness of his approach.
[3] Puleston's work ranged from experiments in reconstruction and usefulness testing of chultuns or raised fields, building a traditional dugout canoe and using it to investigate otherwise unreachable areas, or challenging the belief that the Ancient Maya subsisted on a milpa agricultural complex – maize, beans, and squash.
[1] According to puleston.org—a repository for a majority of Puleston's works and photographs from the field, Dennis “lived and worked in such places as the Canadian wilderness, the island of Moorea, Society Islands, and the tropical forests of Central America which he came to love deeply.”[4] Dennis attended high school at Bellport High School, in Brookhaven, New York, and upon graduating embarked on his own adventures.
A great illustration of his adventures and eventual decision to become an archaeologist is found in the following excerpt from Harrison and Messenger's obituary: As a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Dennis met and married Olga Stavrakis.
His brother, Peter and his wife, Olga were partners and contributors to a number of his projects, and his son, Cedric is now in conducting post-doc work in the field.
At the time, archaeological research focused on the central mapped area of Tikal, representing the urban and ceremonial core of the polity.
He then developed a major research program, called the Sustaining Area Project, which mapped four 12 km strips extending out from the center of Tikal.
Using a compass and pace method for the mapping he and his research teams were able to quickly and accurately cover large areas of dense jungle within which they discovered a number of previously unknown small sites, causeways, an enormous earthworks north of Tikal and hundreds of housemounds and residential platforms.
He suggested that the earthworks may have served as a defensive fortifications (the first discovered in the Maya Lowlands at that time) and probably the northern urban border of the site.
Puleston died in 1978, struck by lightning while viewing a thunderstorm from the summit of El Castillo, Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico.
[8] While several of Puleston's contemporaries were concerned with human interactions with nature -- cultural ecology,[9] Dennis's approach was novel in its ability to juxtapose the micro and macro perspectives of these environments into one coherent argument.
[14] Unfortunately, arguments of environmental change since the 8th and 9th century decline of Lowland Maya societies have been convincing and have been used to undermine the experimental approach to archaeology to the point that it is now rarely practiced.
Upon completion, in 1966, Puleston filled the chultun with a diversity of locally produced dietary contributions, like maize, beans, squash, and cassava.
Upon completion of this 11-week experiment, Puleston (1971) noted that, “while the chultun apparently offered valuable protection from vermin, it evidently could not be used for the storage of maize, beans, or squash”.
[17] The following year Puleston tried the experiment once more, but this time he added a nut from a local tree – the Brosium alicastrum (ramon) to the mix.
Not only did the ramon nuts survive the 13-week experiment that once again devastated the comparable crops, after 13 months, ”they were still in excellent condition and completely edible”.
In 2015, British Archaeological Reports published a collection of Puleston's field work, edited and revised by Olga Stavrakis-Puleston.