ABOUT THIS BOOK

Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism tears down entrenched misconceptions of Maya cities to build a new archaeology of Maya urbanism by highlighting the residential dynamics that underwrote one of the most famous and debated civilizations of the ancient Americas. Exploring the diverse yet interrelated agents and processes that modified Maya urban landscapes over time, this volume highlights the adaptive flexibility of urbanization in the tropical Maya lowlands.

Integrating recent lidar survey data with more traditional excavation and artifact-based archaeological practices, chapters in this volume offer broadened perspectives on the patterns of Maya urban design and planning by viewing bottom-up and self-organizing processes as integral to the form, development, and dissolution of Classic lowland cities alongside potentially centralized civic designs. Full of innovative examples of how to build an archaeology of urbanism that can be applied not just to the lowland Maya and across the region, Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism simultaneously improves interpretations of lowland Maya culture history and contributes to empirical and comparative discussions of tropical, non-Western cities worldwide.

Contributors: Divina Perla Barrera, Arianna Campiani, Cyril Castanet, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Lydie Dussol, Sara Dzul Góngora, Keith Eppich, Thomas Garrison, María Rocio González de la Mata, Timothy Hare, Julien Hiquet, Takeshi Inomata, Eva Lemonnier, José Francisco Osorio León, Marilyn Masson, Elsa Damaris Menéndez, Timothy Murtha, Philippe Nondédéo, Keith M. Prufer, Louise Purdue, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, Julien Sion, Travis Stanton, Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo, Karl A. Taube, Marc Testé, Amy E. Thompson, Daniela Triadan

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Damien B. Marken is assistant professor of anthropology at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania–Bloomsburg and codirector of the Waka’ Archaeological Project in Guatemala. He is the editor of Palenque: Recent Investigations at the Classic Maya Center and coeditor of Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands.M. Charlotte Arnauld is an archaeologist and research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in France. She has directed or codirected five long-term projects in highland Verapaz and northwest lowland La Joyanca in Petén, Guatemala; Balamku and Río Bec in Campeche, Mexico; and Zacapu in western Mexico. Her publications include several authored and coedited books on the archaeology of Michoacán and the Maya lowlands including Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities and papers in numerous journals.

REVIEWS

“A dynamic multi-scalar view of Maya cities showing them to be long-lived, complex, ever-changing landscapes that included not only architecture but the larger agricultural landscape that helped sustain them—they were garden cities in a neotropical landscape.”
—Claudia García-Des Lauriers, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Introduction

1. Building an Archaeology of Lowland Maya Urbanism | Damien B. Marken and M. Charlotte Arnauld

Part I: Community Formation

2. The Roots of Urbanization: Early Middle Preclassic Transformations to a Sedentary Lifestyle at Ceibal, Guatemala | Daniela Triadan and Takeshi Inomata

3. Kaj and Kingdom: Conurbation, Memory, and Landscapes of Mobile Maya Authority | Thomas G. Garrison

4. A City in Flux: The Dynamic Urban Form and Function of El Perú-Waka’ | Keith Eppich, Damien B. Marken, and Elsa Damaris Menéndez

5. Urbanizing Paradise: The Implications of Pervasive Images of Flower World across Chichen Itza | Travis W. Stanton, Karl A. Taube, José Francisco Osorio León, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, and María Rocio González de la Mata, Nelda I. Marengo Camacho, and Jerem

Part II: Household Decisions, Mobility, and Connectivity

6. Spatial and Social Contraction in Late-Terminal Classic Río Bec Neighborhoods | M. Charlotte Arnauld and Sara Dzul Góngora

7. Classic Maya Neighborhoods: Diversity and Inequality in Southern Belize | Amy E. Thompson and Keith M. Prufer

8. Households, Growth, Contraction, and Mobility at the Classic Maya Center of Naachtun | Julien Hiquet, Julien Sion, and Divina Perla-Barrera

9. Walking through the Urban Maze of Mayapán | Timothy Hare and Marilyn Masson

Part III: City-Scale Resource Use and Management

10. The Living Landscape: Livelihoods and Opportunities in the City and Region of Ancient Tikal | Timothy Murtha

11. Urban Planning at Caracol, Belize: Governance, Residential Autonomy, and Heterarchical Management through Time | Adrian S. Z. Chase

12. Urban Planning through the Prism of Infrastructure at Palenque, Chiapas: An Assessment of City Function and Local Decision-Making during the Late Classic | Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo and Arianna Campiani

13. Shaping an Agrarian Maya Town: Settlement Pattern and Land-Use Dynamics at Naachtun | Philippe Nondédéo, Eva Lemonnier, Julien Hiquet, Louise Purdue, Cyril Castanet, Lydie Dussol, and Marc Testé

Part IV: Agrarian Urbanism in the American Tropics

14. The Death and Life of Agricultural Cities | John H. Walker

Index

List of Contributors

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