Economic Interactions and the Rise of Sociopolitical Complexity in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

The development of economic systems in Mesoamerica has been a crucial link in the understanding of social, economic, and political structure of later polities. The evolution of Preclassic Maya states from the perspective of the Mirador-Calakmul Basin in Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico has been under scrutiny with large scale, multi-disciplinary excavations and mapping in 51 sites of varying sizes. The addition of LiDAR technology has confirmed the extraordinary settlement structure, which, when combined with chronological data, allows diachronic and synchronic evaluations of economic and political structure. The geographic and economic similarities in organization with respect to dendritic spatial formations originally proposed by Santley for Aztec Tenochtitlan compare favourably to the Mirador Basin sites, suggesting that dendritic economic, social, and political systems in Mesoamerica have great antiquity.

LiDAR analyses in the contiguous Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin, Guatemala: an introduction to new perspectives on regional early Maya socioeconomic and political organization

“…300 B.C. ), indicating fluctuating fortunes of various centers through time (Hansen et al 2020;Reese-Taylor et al 2016). By the late Middle Preclassic and early Late Preclassic periods, El Mirador became the dominant site, with monumental platforms, pyramids, agricultural terraces, water collection mechanisms, raised fields, E-Group and triadic architectural constructions, massive causeways, and a high demographic density as part of a network of allied sites with a nucleated power structure throughout the geographical confines of the MCKB (see Hansen and Guenter 2005).…”

“…Estimates for the construction of Danta are between 6 and 10 million person-days of labor, depending on the volume that might be affected by an undulating bedrock surface (Hansen et al 2018a:185). The quantity and density of contemporaneous constructions in the MCKB allow an understanding of the labor, ideological consistency, and uniformity of construction materials invested in, and on, the monumental architecture (E. Hansen et al 1995Hansen et al , 1996Hansen et al , 1997Hansen et al 2020;Schreiner 2001Schreiner , 2002Schreiner , 2009Schreiner , 2021.…”

“…In this article, we have preferred to define site sizes as “tiers” with specific spatial qualities, numbers of monumental structures, and volumetrics of contemporary buildings and/or platforms. Larger sites, most of which are contemporaneous based on test excavations, are linked by an extensive causeway network that establishes a premise for early sophistication of socio-economic processes that gave rise to cultural complexity (Hansen 2016a, 2016b, 2017; Hansen et al 2020; Hernández-Salazar 2021; Hernández et al 2013, 2016; Morales-Aguilar and Castanet 2017). All the causeways previously detected with surface exploration mapping, testing and trenching excavations, and, later, with LiDAR were plotted in different bare-earth models to better understand how the Maya built their causeway system to consolidate a powerful state-level society during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods (see Causeways, below).…”

“…300 b.c. ), indicating fluctuating fortunes of various centers through time (Hansen et al 2020; Morales-Aguilar 2021; Reese-Taylor et al 2016).…”

“…One of the crowning achievements of the Middle and Late Preclassic Maya was the construction of a dendritic system of causeways throughout the entirety of the MCKB (Hansen et al 2020; Hernández 2008; Hernández-Salazar 2021; Hernández and Schreiner 2006; Hernández et al 2007, 2013, 2016, 2019; and Figures 17 and 18). While causeways were known to have existed throughout the Maya area (e.g., Benavides-Castillo 1981; Bennett 1930; Chase and Chase 2001; Cobos and Winemiller 2001; Folan 1991; Gómez 1996; Hutson and Welch 2021; Kurjack 1977; Maldonado-Cárdenas 1979; Shaw 2001, 2008; Villa 1934) and the MCKB (e.g., Graham 1967:41–47), the scope and scale of the features are now fully evident with the airborne LiDAR, supported by satellite imagery and GIS software.…”