Quantitative analyses of wealth inequality at Classic period El Pilar: The Gini index and labor investment

Abstract

Survey teams at the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna have mapped 70 percent of its 20 km2 area and revealed the extent of settlement around the city center. Large-scale civic architecture, and the distribution of smaller ceremonial groups and minor centers, reflect the wealth and power of Maya rulers presiding over the largest Classic period city in the upper Belize River area. Previous analyses suggest disparities in wealth at El Pilar were more nuanced than the elite/commoner dichotomy commonly invoked for Classic Maya society. This article works to understand wealth inequality at ancient El Pilar by computing Gini coefficients from areal and volumetric calculations of primary residential units—the class of settlement remains most likely to represent ancient households. Presentation of Gini coefficients and their potential interpretations follows a discussion of settlement classification and residential group labor investment. We conclude by contextualizing these results within prior settlement pattern analyses to explore how disparities in wealth may have been distributed across the physical and social landscape.

Understanding and calculating household size, wealth, and inequality in the Maya Lowlands

“…From these, the algorithm calculates volume using a natural neighbor interpolation (see Sibson 1981), using elevation values under the nodes (vertices) of the shapefile to construct a non-flat surface under the input polygons based on local topography. This allows digitized structures to exclude the volume of the platform beneath them, but may also include hilltop volume when platforms are measured (see Horn III et al 2023). The difference between the raster cells in this newly interpolated surface and the DEM below each shapefile are then summed to provide volume per unique feature ID in a separate Excel file.…”

Gini coefficient at La Corona: The impacts of variation in analytical unit and aggregation scale

“…In our typology, the smallest unit (Type I) is the isolated mound; it represents a significant portion (∼30 percent) of all settlement. Single buildings have long been regarded by some Mayanists as non-permanent or secondary residences, drawing on the ethnographic analog of "field houses," used by Maya farmers to be close to their outfields during busy agricultural seasons (Ford 1986;Horn III et al 2023;Sanders 1981). We do not dispute this argument; in fact, our own excavations support the idea that some isolated buildings in our region were not permanent homes.…”