Old Urbanites as New Urbanists? Mixing at an Ancient Maya City

Abstract

New Urbanists advocate for, among other things, spaces in cities where people of various backgrounds can interact. Yet not all interactions lead to the strong social bonds that make diverse communities more durable. The archaeological record provides rich examples of diverse communities that flourished. This article examines an ancient Maya city—Chunchucmil—where preservation of stone walls and pathways provides an unusual opportunity to reconstruct urban design in great detail. Analysis of neighborhood circulation patterns shows that people of very different wealth levels shared space on a daily basis. We present evidence that Chunchucmil’s diverse neighborhoods were also cohesive, and we identify a number of circumstances—worshipping together, working together, and maintaining local control over neighborhood affairs—that help interactions between different kinds of people develop into strong bonds. These circumstances are germane to contemporary contexts.

Assessing Classic Maya multi-scalar household inequality in southern Belize

“…Maya polities have low-density settlement systems that conform to similar patterning associated with more autocratic forms of governance [ 77 ]. Neighborhoods and districts composed of households of varying size are documented across the Maya region including Chunchucmil [ 30 ] to Caracol [ 99 ] to Copan [ 100 ]. Even densely settled Maya cities, like Chunchucmil, have more dispersed settlements than most of their northern Mesoamerican counterparts, i.e.…”

“…Similar findings have been reported at Chunchucmil. There, Gini coefficients calculated for two of the settlement’s neighborhoods paralleled that for the polity as a whole [ 30 ]. Thus, in two peripheral domains in the Classic Maya world, northern Yucatán and southern Belize, high degrees of wealth inequality were maintained outside the Central Petén heartland.…”

“…To assess wealth inequality we examine house size, a frequently employed measure of wealth in archaeological contexts [ 3 , 5 , 30 , 32 – 39 ]. Although we recognize that some may prefer a multidimensional approach that includes the analysis of artifact assemblages or storage space [ 29 , 40 , 41 ], such considerations either were not possible in our study context or would have required a marked diminishment in the size of our analytical sample.…”

“…House size has been used to assess wealth inequality in archaeological contexts in the Maya region [ 4 , 30 , 34 , 35 , 37 , 42 , 43 ], other areas of prehispanic Mesoamerica [ 3 , 39 ], and more geographically dispersed regions including the NW Coast of North America [ 32 , 41 ], the US SW [ 31 , 44 – 48 ], the Mississippian heartland [ 49 ], Colombia [ 40 ], Europe [ 5 , 50 ], and Eurasia [ 33 , 50 , 51 ]. No other measure allows for regional and global cross-cultural comparisons of wealth inequality using a consistent metric: house size.…”

SHIFTING SOCIAL RELATIONS DURING THE TERMINAL CLASSIC PERIOD (ca. a.d. 810–950/1000): CERAMICS FROM THE LOWLAND MAYA SITE OF UCANAL

“…Furthermore, relationships of dependence, alliances, and tribute obligations were constantly negotiated through practices of affiliation, conflict, and resistance. Archaeologists have used various proxies to try to understand these relationships, including the access to imported goods and prestige items, feasting and ceremonial ritual, distance of residence from the ceremonial center, assessments of agricultural landholdings, diet and health, building elaboration (e.g., vaulted versus non-vaulted structures; qualities of plaster applications), and the size of residential groups, among others (Chase and Chase 2005;Foias et al 2012;Gonlin 2004;Hayden 1998;Helmke 2001;Hendon 1991;Hutson and Welch 2019;Joyce 2004;LeCount 1999;LeCount et al 2019;O'Rourke 2002). With the case of the site of Ucanal, we examine below architectural group volumes as an independent variable from which we compare changing patterns in the access and use of decorated and imported ceramics.…”