Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala (original) (raw)
Related papers
Taking the high ground: A model for lowland Maya settlement patterns
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2021
Settlement research in the Maya lowlands has struggled to reconcile its goals to model a tropical forest civilization in ecological terms with the logistical constraints imposed by the forest itself. In this paper, we argue that the methodological challenges facing settlement research in this tropical lowland setting limited researchers’ confidence in the representativeness of their data, nudging the discipline toward community-scale analysis and away from quantitative macro-scale settlement pattern research. As a result, many basic facts of human geography have remained unsettled. These challenges can now be overcome thanks to advances in remote sensing. Here, we use lidar derived settlement and topographic data from the Corona-Achiotal region of northwestern Guatemala to develop a settlement suitability model that reveals patterns in the distribution of archaeological remains vis-à-vis landforms. Applying this model to a much larger published settlement dataset, we demonstrate how it is not only widely applicable in the interior Maya Lowlands, but also capable of identifying historical contingencies in the distribution of settlement, namely the crowding of less-suitable areas of the landscape, linked to urban densification.
ScholarWorks, 2023
This thesis presents the findings derived from satellite and high-resolution airborne lidar data of the Upper Usumacinta River basin of Mexico and Guatemala. Multiple environmental and spatial models were made from the remotely sensed data to look at the settlement patterns between the Classic period (250-900 A.D.) kingdoms centered on the sites of La Mar and Lacanja Tzeltal. ArcGIS Pro tools such as Stream Order, Basin, Least Cost Path, Kernel Density Estimation, and Geomorphon Landforms were used to define what factors most impacted the Maya’s preference for living in certain areas. The results establish that both environmental and socio-political factors heavily impacted ancient settlement preference. More broadly, this research emphasizes the strengths of remote sensing and GIS technology within archaeological study of settlement patterns, and it serves as a foundation for future studies to draw further connections between the relationships of landscape, politics, agriculture, the economy, and social organization.
Lowland Maya Lifeways across the Settlement Density Continuum at La Corona
PhD Dissertation, Tulane University, 2024
Fragmentary landscape views previously hindered the comprehensive study of socioeconomic organization in tropical regions, but lidar data has revealed diverse spacing and infrastructure in Lowland Maya settlements. Settlement density, or the number of people per area, can profoundly affect socioeconomic interactions and organization. It influences the degrees and nature of face-to-face interactions, which may result in diverse ways of life. While infrastructure suggests multiple interaction modes, focusing solely on spatial components offers a limited perspective. The primary aim of this study is to define whether location in the settlement density continuum played a relevant role in socioeconomic organization. I apply an interaction-based approach to compare three middle-scale settlement clusters located in the heuristically defined “urban”, “peri-urban” and “rural” density rings at the Classic Maya center of La Corona in northwest Petén. I present a model based on four criteria to characterize and differentiate the three supra-household groups inhabited during the Late Classic period (ca. AD 600-900): 1) spatial clustering and density; 2) means and extent of communal cohesion; 3) roles and identities and 4) internal socioeconomic differentiation. To develop this model and discuss settlement organization through daily interactions, I empirically analyze the function of spaces and architectural materials, specialized production of artifacts, access to local and imported items, and consumption of flora and faunal resources. Architectural, material, and sourcing data enabled me to determine whether variations in socioeconomic organization were influenced by location within the density continuum and/or social factors, and the extent to which each cluster and the broader region were socioeconomically integrated. While comparable organizational forms were identified across the settlement continuum, the datasets highlight the uniqueness of rural lifeways, whereas urban and peri-urban lifeways were more alike. This dissertation offers important insight into the diverse characteristics of middle-scale units and communal dynamics across the landscape. Due to its dispersed nature, La Corona provides critical information on the internal organization of low-density settlements. My study also deepens the understanding of how settlement density impacted livelihoods in the past, which is highly relevant today, as density is a central component of urban planning policies worldwide.
PLOS ONE, 2022
Until recently, an extensive area in the central lowlands of the Yucatán peninsula was completely unexplored archaeologically. In 2013 and 2014, during initial surveys in the northern part of the uninhabited Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in eastern Campeche, Mexico, we located Chactún, Tamchén and Lagunita, three major Maya centers with some unexpected characteristics. Lidar data, acquired in 2016 for a larger area of 240 km2, revealed a thoroughly modified and undisturbed archaeological landscape with a remarkably large number of residential clusters and widespread modifications related to water management and agriculture. Substantial additional information was obtained through field surveys and test excavations in 2017 and 2018. While hydraulic and agricultural features and their potential for solving various archaeologically relevant questions were discussed in a previous publication, here we examine the characteristics of settlement patterns, architectural remains, sculpted monuments, and ceramic evidence. The early Middle Preclassic (early first millennium BCE) material collected in stratigraphic pits at Tamchén and another locale constitutes the earliest evidence of colonization known so far in a broader central lowland area. From then until the Late Classic period, which was followed by a dramatic demographic decline, the area under study witnessed relatively constant population growth and interacted with different parts of the Maya Lowlands. However, a number of specific and previously unknown cultural traits attest to a rather distinctive regional development, providing novel information about the extent of regional variation within the Maya culture. By analyzing settlement pattern characteristics, inscriptional data, the distribution of architectural volumes and some other features of the currently visible archaeological landscape, which largely reflects the Late Classic situation, we reconstruct several aspects of sociopolitical and territorial organization in that period, highlighting similarities with and differences from what has been evidenced in the neighboring Río Bec region and elsewhere in the Maya area.
Verification of a Maya Settlement Model through Remote Sensing
New data from Calakmul, Mexico make three principal contributions to our understanding of the ancient Maya: (1) they support the model of large regional states advocated by Marcus and Folan since the 1970s; (2) they add one more Maya site to the short list of cities linked to other cities (and to their own dependencies) by a well-planned road system; and (3) they show good fit between Central Place models and actual settlement locations. Between 900 BC and AD 900, the ancient Maya flourished in a tropical forest characterized by contrasting wet and dry seasons. Rapid and efficient travel over land during both seasons was fraught with difficulties. This was particularly true in southern Campeche and northern Guatemala, where the traveller is threatened with scarcity of surface water during the dry season, and where during the wet season some areas have such an overabundance of water in large depressions (combined with slippery, grease-like clay) that foot traffic is slowed.
2012
Most settlement pattern research and GIS analysis of the ancient Maya of the Northern Yucatan have focused on water availability in a dry landscape where cenotes are often the only water source. While water is of paramount importance, permanent settlement secondarily requires farmable soil, a resource often as precious as water in many parts of the Yucatan. The dynamics between these resources reveal areas of ideal settlement and more challenging landscapes for which the Maya developed strategies to overcome environmental conditions. A region of the southwest "Cenote Zone", however, appears to have presented the ancient Maya with insurmountably poor environmental conditions despite abundant water resources. The lack of dense population and stone architecture in this area emphasizes the lack of a simple correlation between cenotes and settlement. This thesis uses GIS analysis to identify and explore such problematic settlement areas to better understand the factors and complexities involved in the more successful settlements of neighboring regions.
Dissertation, 2022
Creation of space is complex and multilayered. When societies or groups make or construct space it can represent or reflect a variable host of characteristics of a given culture or people including but not limited to political, symbolic, ritual, social, practical, functional, and traditional aspects. All of these attributes create patterns that are observable across the landscape and in the archaeological record in both the visible and invisible remains. This dissertation examines and compares the aspects of the built and the buried environment that create those settlement and spatial patterns. Where previously discussed, with regard to ancient Maya site comparison, the research focus has been on small, individual sites and their relationships to their respective larger centers. This dissertation employs the novel approach of comparing the smaller sites of Las Abejas, Medicinal Trail, and Tzak Naab in northwest Belize to one another. I also scrutinize the reflection of social organization status disparities, and social traditions as they present in the spatial patterns. In order to do this, I identified and defined the relevant site planning approaches and aspects and then analyzed each site by incorporating new geophysical survey data with years’ worth of existing datasets, and both new and existing survey and mapping data. Evaluation and comparison of the datasets garnered both expected and unexpected information. Each site, while unique, was similar. Comparisons were recognized in terms of layout and organizational characteristics, resource availability and access, structural design, groupings, and shape, visible and invisible signs of social disparity, and visible and invisible indications of shared traditions which were then connected to modern populations through ethnographic correlates. This type of information is available not only from the sites chosen for this research endeavor, but also from a number of sites across the realm of the ancient Maya. The utilization of such datasets shows how minimal investigation and limited information can be used to analyze, contextualize, and compare sites, and allow for comparisons and connections to be made across regions and time periods connecting the past and the present through the identification and analysis of the visible and the invisible patterns.
PLOS ONE, 2022
Until recently, an extensive area in the central lowlands of the Yucatán peninsula was completely unexplored archaeologically. In 2013 and 2014, during initial surveys in the northern part of the uninhabited Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in eastern Campeche, Mexico, we located Chactún, Tamchén and Lagunita, three major Maya centers with some unexpected characteristics. Lidar data, acquired in 2016 for a larger area of 240 km2, revealed a thoroughly modified and undisturbed archaeological landscape with a remarkably large number of residential clusters and widespread modifications related to water management and agriculture. Substantial additional information was obtained through field surveys and test excavations in 2017 and 2018. While hydraulic and agricultural features and their potential for solving various archaeologically relevant questions were discussed in a previous publication, here we examine the characteristics of settlement patterns, architectural remains, sculpted monumen...