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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 120-137 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Latin American Antiquity |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2021 |
Keywords
- Maya
- cities
- population density
- settlement patterns
- settlement scaling
- urbanism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Archaeology
- History
- Archaeology