“In the days of my life.” Elite activity and interactions in the Maya lowlands from Classic to Early Postclassic times (the long ninth century, AD 760-920)

Arnauld, Marie-Charlotte; Andrieu, Chloé; Forné, Mélanie

doi:10.4000/jsa.15362

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 78 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In the Rı ´o Bec zone, spatial associations of monumental and simpler structures, the differing internal characteristics of particular buildings, and residential clusters of different complexity reflect status distinctions both within and between social groups [72]. To judge by the characteristics of the built environment, such an organization, comparable to the historically documented Late Postclassic situation in the northern Yucata ´n peninsula [75,76], is likely to have been prevalent also in the Late to Terminal Classic CHRP area, although some differences must be pointed out. In the Rı ´o Bec region, Lemonnier and Vannière [77] were able to determine agricultural production units, each with a household unit and surrounded by terraces, ridges and rockpiles, but they also observed a common association of these features with elite residences.…”

Section: Late Classic Sociopolitical Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Epigraphic evidence from different parts of the Maya Lowlands suggests that, during the Late Classic period, new political strategies were adopted, which incorporated greater numbers of non-royal nobles and high-ranking commoners into the affairs of state and included the creation of new offices and titles, granting subordinates the right to commission their own monuments [76,87,89,90]. Likewise, the evidence presented above indicates a complex sociopolitical organization in the CHRP area, with several levels of decision-making and the presence of lower or intermediate elites with differential access to wealth and power.…”

Section: Late Classic Sociopolitical Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Archaeological landscape, settlement dynamics, and sociopolitical organization in the Chactún area of the central Maya Lowlands

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Late Classic Sociopolitical Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Late Classic Sociopolitical Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeological landscape, settlement dynamics, and sociopolitical organization in the Chactún area of the central Maya Lowlands

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Those societies had indeed experienced earlier drought crises and were prepared to adapt (Aimers and Hodell 2011; Iannone 2014). A better knowledge of subsistence-related techniques and practices, along with their sustainability in relation to demography and urbanism, will help differentiate intricated political processes from socioeconomic processes developed during the relatively long transition from Classic to Postclassic times (800–1100 CE) (Arnauld et al 2017; Demarest et al 2004; Okoshi et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fields and People at Río Bec (Mexico): A Study in Progress (2019-2022) of Settlement Agriculture in the Classic Maya Lowlands

Lemonnier

Arnauld

2022

Journal of Ethnobiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the ongoing debate about the role of agriculture in the development and decline of Classic (250–950 CE) Maya lowland societies, the archaeological site of Río Bec has a special place. It is one of the few settlements in which, years before the use of LiDAR to survey the Yucatán peninsula, a multi-scalar geoarchaeological study (Río Bec Project 1, 2002–2010) allowed us to define a field system—that is, landed domains of distinct fields organized around their local networks of household units. The dimensions of the fields, their correlation to the size of their corresponding households, and their long period of use (200 years, 700–900 CE), during Río Bec's apogee, raise questions about the fundamental issues of land use practices (intensification, diversification, and specialization) and their sustainability over what was a relatively long period. Those issues are at the heart of a new research program at Río Bec, which we began in 2019, combining an archaeobotanical approach with land use and settlement pattern modeling, ultimately aimed at correlating local agricultural production with demography (Río Bec Project 2, 2019–2022). Based on the knowledge of field and settlement systems in their environment that we accumulated during our past research, the paper starts with a description of the field system in one sector of the Río Bec site, then focuses on the diversity of its plots on the household scale and proceeds to discuss the preliminary correlation that can be established between agricultural intensification and demography at Río Bec at the neighborhood scale and the settlement scale.

show abstract

Household Inequality, Community Formation, and Land Tenure in Classic Period Lowland Maya Society

Thompson

Prufer

2021

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“In the days of my life.” Elite activity and interactions in the Maya lowlands from Classic to Early Postclassic times (the long ninth century, AD 760-920)

Cited by 6 publications

References 78 publications

Archaeological landscape, settlement dynamics, and sociopolitical organization in the Chactún area of the central Maya Lowlands

Archaeological landscape, settlement dynamics, and sociopolitical organization in the Chactún area of the central Maya Lowlands

Fields and People at Río Bec (Mexico): A Study in Progress (2019-2022) of Settlement Agriculture in the Classic Maya Lowlands

Household Inequality, Community Formation, and Land Tenure in Classic Period Lowland Maya Society

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About