Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T00:10:35.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Low-Density Urban Systems of the Classic Period Maya and Izapa: Insights from Settlement Scaling Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2020

Michael E. Smith Open the ORCID record for Michael E. Smith [Opens in a new window] ,
Scott G. Ortman ,
José Lobo ,
Claire E. Ebert ,
Amy E. Thompson ,
Keith M. Prufer ,
Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo  and
Robert M. Rosenswig
Michael E. Smith*
Affiliation:
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona85287, USA
Scott G. Ortman
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado80309, USA (scott.ortman@colorado.edu)
José Lobo
Affiliation:
School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona85287, USA (jose.lobo@asu.edu)
Claire E. Ebert
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania15238, USA (c.ebert@pitt.edu)
Amy E. Thompson
Affiliation:
Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; and Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, 78712, USA (amy.thompson@austin.utexas.edu)
Keith M. Prufer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico87131, USA (kmp@unm.edu)
Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico (rodrigo@liendo.net)
Robert M. Rosenswig
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York12222, USA (rrosenswig@albany.edu)
*
(mesmith9@asu.edu, corresponding author)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican settlement systems were both similar to and different from contemporary systems. We find that the population-area relationship in these settlements differs greatly from that reported for other agrarian settlement systems, but that more typical patterns emerge when one considers a site epicenter as the relevant social interaction area, and the population administered from a given center as the relevant interacting population. Our results imply that southern Mesoamerican populations mixed socially at a slower temporal rhythm than is typical of contemporary systems. Residential locations reflected the need to balance energetic and transport costs of farming with lower-frequency costs of commuting to central places. Nevertheless, increasing returns in activities such as civic construction were still realized through lower-frequency social mixing. These findings suggest that the primary difference between low-density urbanism and contemporary urban systems lies in the spatial and temporal rhythms of social mixing.

A menudo se afirma que los asentamientos del sur de Mesoamérica representan un tipo de organización espacial distinto al de otros sistemas urbanos contemporáneos. Utilizando el marco analítico “escalado de asentamientos” investigamos las maneras específicas en las que los sistemas de asentamientos de Mesoamérica del Sur se asemejan, o no, a sistemas contemporáneos. Utilizamos la información registrada en sondeos de asentamientos Mayas y encontramos que la relación entre población y área difiere marcadamente de lo reportado para otros sistemas de asentamientos de carácter agrario. Notamos patrones más típicos cuando consideramos el epicentro de una zona arqueológica como el área de principal interacción social. Nuestros resultados implican que las poblaciones del sur de Mesoamérica poseían ritmos de interacción más lentos que la de otros sistemas urbanos contemporáneos. Las unidades familiares ubicaban sus residencias con el fin de equilibrar los costos de transporte ligados a la actividad agrícola y al desplazamiento a lugares centrales. El aumento de los rendimientos en actividades colectivas fueron realizadas a través de mezclas sociales de menor frecuencia. Concluimos que la principal diferencia entre el urbanismo Maya de baja densidad y otras experiencias urbanas contemporáneas tienen su origen en los patrones de movimiento asociados a las interacciónes sociales.

Keywords

citiesurbanismsettlement scalingpopulation densityMayasettlement patternsciudadesurbanismoescalamiento de asentamientosdensidad de poblaciónMayapatrones de asentamiento
Type
Article
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 120 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Arcaute, Elsa, Hatna, Erez, Ferguson, Peter, Youn, Hyejin, Johansson, Anders, and Batty, Michael 2015 Constructing Cities, Deconstructing Scaling Laws. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 12:20140745. DOI:10.1098/rsif.2014.0745.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashmore, Wendy (editor) 1981 Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Bandy, Matthew S., and Fox, Jake R. (editors) 2010 Becoming Villagers: Comparing Early Village Societies. Amerind Studies in Archaeology. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Barthel, Stephan, and Isendahl, Christian 2013 Urban Gardens, Agriculture, and Water Management: Sources of Resilience for Long-Term Food Security in Cities. Ecological Economics 86:224–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bettencourt, Luís M. A. 2013 The Origins of Scaling in Cities. Science 340:1438–1441.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bettencourt, Luís M. A. 2014 Impact of Changing Technology on the Evolution of Complex Informational Networks. Proceedings of the IEEE 102:1878–1891.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bettencourt, Luís M. A., and Lobo, José 2016 Urban Scaling in Europe. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 13:20160005. DOI:10.1098/rsif.2016.0005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, Jennifer (editor) 2013 From Prehistoric Villages to Cities: Settlement Aggregation and Community Transformation. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Canuto, Marcello A., Estrada-Belli, Francisco, Garrison, Thomas G., Houston, Stephen D., Acuña, Mary Jane, Kováč, Milan, Marken, Damien, Nondédéo, Philippe, Auld-Thomas, Luke, Castanet, Cyril, Chatelain, David, Chiriboga, Carlos R., Drápela, Tomáš, Lieskovský, Tibor, Tokovinine, Alexandre, Velasquez, Antolín, Fernández-Díaz, Juan C., and Shrestha, Ramesh 2018 Ancient Lowland Maya Complexity as Revealed by Airborne Laser Scanning of Northern Guatemala. Science 361:eaau0137.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cesaretti, Rudolf, Bettencourt, Luís M. A., Lobo, José, Ortman, Scott, and Smith, Michael E. 2016 Population-Area Relationship in Medieval European Cities. PLoS ONE 11(10):e162678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chase, Adrian S. Z. 2016 Districting and Urban Services at Caracol, Belize: Intra-Site Boundaries in an Evolving Maya Cityscape. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 13:15–28.Google Scholar
Chase, Arlen F., and Chase, Diane Z. 2016 The Ancient Maya City: Anthropogenic Landscapes, Settlement Archaeology, and Caracol, Belize. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 13:3–14.Google Scholar
Chase, Arlen F., Chase, Diane Z., Awe, Jaime J., Weishampel, John F., Iannone, Gyles, Moyes, Holly, Yaeger, Jason, Brown, Kathryn, Shrestha, Ramesh L., Carter, William E., and Diaz, Juan Fernandez 2014 Ancient Maya Regional Settlement and Inter-Site Analysis: The 2013 West-Central Belize LiDAR Survey. Remote Sensing 6:8671–8695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, Diane Z., and Chase, Arlen F. 2017 Caracol, Belize, and Changing Perceptions of Ancient Maya Society. Journal of Archaeological Research 25:185–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coffey, William J. 1979 Allometric Growth in Urban and Regional Social-Economic Systems. Canadian Journal of Regional Science 2:49–62.Google Scholar
Culbert, T. Patrick, and Rice, Don S. (editors) 1990 Precolombian Population History in the Maya Lowlands. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
de Montmollin, Olivier 1989 Settlement Survey in the Rosario Valley, Chiapas, Mexico. Papers No. 57. New World Archaeological Foundation, Provo, Utah.Google Scholar
de Montmollin, Olivier 1995 Settlement and Politics in Three Classic Maya Polities. Monographs in World Archaeology 24. Prehistory Press, Madison, Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Drennan, Robert D. 1988 Household Location and Compact versus Dispersed Settlement in Prehispanic Mesoamerica. In Household and Community in the Mesoamerican Past, edited by Wilk, Richard R. and Ashmore, Wendy, pp. 273–293. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Dunning, Nicholas P., and Beach, Timothy 2010 Farms and Forests: Spatial and Temporal Perspectives on Ancient Maya Landscapes. In Landscapes and Societies: Selected Cases, edited by Peter Martini, I. and Chesworth, Ward, pp. 369–389. Springer, Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, Roland 1995 The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Roland 2012 Low-Density, Agrarian-Based Urbanism: Scale, Power and Ecology. In The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, edited by Smith, Michael E., pp. 285–320. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Glaeser, Edward L. 2011 The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Penguin, New York.Google Scholar
Gyucha, Attila (editor) 2019 Coming Together: Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization. State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Hanson, John W., and Ortman, Scott G. 2017 A Systematic Method for Estimating the Populations of Greek and Roman Settlements. Journal of Roman Archaeology 30:301–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, John W., Ortman, Scott G., Bettencourt, Luís M. B., and Mazur, Liam C. 2019 Urban Form, Infrastructure and Spatial Organization in the Roman Empire. Antiquity 93:702–718CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, John W., Ortman, Scott G., and Lobo, José 2017 Urbanim and the Division of Labour in the Roman Empire. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 14:20170367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoggarth, Julie A., Awe, Jaime J., Jobbová, Evga, and Sims, Christopher 2010 Beyond the Baking Pot Polity: Continuing Settlement Research in the Upper Belize River Valley. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 7:171–182.Google Scholar
Houston, Stephen D. (editor) 1998 Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 7th and 8th October 1994. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Hutson, Scott R. 2016 The Ancient Urban Maya: Neighborhoods, Inequality, and Built Form. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Inomata, Takeshi 2006 Plazas, Performers, and Spectators: Political Theaters of the Classic Maya. Current Anthropology 47:805–842.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isendahl, Christian 2002 Common Knowledge: Lowland Maya Urban Farming at Xuch. Studies in Global Archaeology. University of Uppsala, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala, Sweden.Google Scholar
Johnston, Kevin J. 2004 The “Invisible” Maya: Minimally Mounded Residential Settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala. Latin American Antiquity 15:145–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liendo Stuardo, Rodrigo (editor) 2011 B'aakal: Arqueología de la región de Palenque, Chiapas, México, temporadas 1996–2006. Paris Monographs in American Archaeology Vol. 26. BAR International Series Vol. 2203. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lobo, José, Bettencourt, Luís M. A., Ortman, Scott G., and Smith, Michael E. 2020 Settlement Scaling Theory: Bridging the Study of Ancient and Contemporary Urban Systems Urban Studies 57:731–747.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobo, José, Bettencourt, Luís M. A., Strumsky, Deborah, and West, Geoffrey B. 2013 Urban Scaling and the Production Function for Cities. PLoS ONE 8(3):e58407.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcus, Joyce 1993 Ancient Maya Political Organization. In Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century A.D., edited by Sabloff, Jeremy A. and Henderson, John S., pp. 111–184. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., Cabaniss, Andrew H. F., Sturm, Jennie O., and Bettencourt, Luís M. A. 2014 The Pre-History of Urban Scaling. PLoS ONE 9(2):e87902.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ortman, Scott G., Cabaniss, Andrew H. F., Sturm, Jennie O., and Bettencourt, Luís M. A. 2015 Settlement Scaling and Increasing Returns in an Ancient Society. Science Advances 1(1):e1400066.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., and Coffey, Grant D. 2017 Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies. American Antiquity 82:662–682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., and Coffey, Grant D. 2019 The Network Effects of Public Rituals. In Reframing the Northern Rio Grande Pueblo Economy, edited by Ortman, Scott G., pp. 75–85. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona Vol. 80. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., and Davis, Kaitlyn E. 2019 Economic Growth in the Pueblos? In Reframing the Northern Río Grande Pueblo Economy, edited by Ortman, Scott, pp. 1–16. Anthropological Papers of the University or Arizona Vol. 80. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., Davis, Kaitlyn E., José Lobo, Michael E. Smith, Luís M. A. Bettencourt, and Aaron Trumbo, 2016 Settlement Scaling and Economic Change in the Central Andes. Journal of Archaeological Science 73:94–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortman, Scott G., Smith, Michael E., Lobo, José, and Bettencourt, Luís M. A. 2020 Why Archaeology Is Necessary for a Theory of Urbanization. Journal of Urban Archaeology 1:152–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ossa, Alanna, Smith, Michael E., and Lobo, José 2017 The Size of Plazas in Mesoamerican Cities: A Quantitative Analysis and Social Interpretation. Latin American Antiquity 28:457–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prufer, Keith M., Thompson, Amy E., and Kennett, Douglas J. 2015 Evaluating Airborne LiDAR for Detecting Settlements and Modified Landscapes in Disturbed Tropical Environments at Uxbenká, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 57:1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prufer, Keith M., Thompson, Amy E., Meredith, Clayton R., Culleton, Brendan J., Jordan, Jillian M., Ebert, Claire E., Winterhalder, Bruce, and Kennett, Douglas J. 2017 The Classic Period Maya Transition from an Ideal Free to an Ideal Despotic Settlement System at the Polity of Uxbenká. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 45:53–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, Don S. 2006 Late Classic Maya Population: Characteristics and Implications. In Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches, edited by Storey, Glenn R., pp. 252–276. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Rice, Prudence M. 2009 On Classic Maya Political Economies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28:70–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenswig, Robert M., and López-Torrijos, Ricardo 2018 Lidar Reveals the Entire Kingdom of Izapa during the First Millennium BC. Antiquity 92:1292–1309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenswig, Robert M., López-Torrijos, Ricardo, and Antonelli, Caroline E. 2015 Lidar Data and the Izapa Polity: New Results and Methodological Issues from Tropical Mesoamerica. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 7:487–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenswig, Robert M., López-Torrijos, Ricardo, Antonelli, Caroline E., and Mendelsohn, Rebecca 2013 Lidar Mapping and Surface Survey of the Izapa State in the Tropical Piedmont. Journal of Archaeological Science 40:1493–1507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, William T., and Webster, David 1988 The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition. American Anthropologist 90:521–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, Vernon L., and Burnside, William R. 2010 Complexity and Sustainability: Perspectives from the Ancient Maya and the Modern Balinese. American Antiquity 75:327–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael E. 1989 Cities, Towns, and Urbanism: Comment on Sanders and Webster. American Anthropologist 91:454–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael E. 2019 Energized Crowding and the Generative Role of Settlement Aggregation and Urbanization. In Coming Together: Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization, edited by Gyucha, Attila, pp. 37–58. State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael E. 2020 Definitions and Comparisons in Urban Archaeology. Journal of Urban Archaeology 1:15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Storper, Michael, and Venables, Anthony J. 2004 Buzz: Face-to-Face Contact and the Urban Economy. Journal of Economic Geography 4:351–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Amy E., Meredith, Clayton R., and Prufer, Keith M. 2018 Comparing Geostatistical Analyses for the Identification of Neighborhoods, Districts, and Social Communities in Archaeological Contexts: A Case Study from Two Ancient Maya Centers in Southern Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 97:1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Ellen Sue, Turner, Norman I., and Adams, R. E. W. 1981 Volumetric Assessment, Rank Ordering, and Maya Civic Centers. In Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns, edited by Ashmore, Wendy, pp. 71–88. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Walden, John P., Ebert, Claire E., Hoggarth, Julie A., Montgomery, Shane M., and Awe, Jaime J. 2019 Modeling Variability in Classic Maya Intermediate Elite Political Strategies through Multivariate Analysis of Settlement Patterns. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 55:101074.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, David 2018 The Population of Tikal: Implications for Maya Demography. Archaeopress, Oxford.Google Scholar
Willey, Gordon R. 1982 Maya Archaeology. Science 215:260–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Smith et al. supplementary material

Smith et al. supplementary material 1

Download Smith et al. supplementary material(File)
File 111.5 KB
Supplementary material: File

Smith et al. supplementary material

Smith et al. supplementary material 2

Download Smith et al. supplementary material(File)
File 128.2 KB