Roadwork: Long-Distance Causeways at Uci, Yucatan, Mexico

Abstract

A multiyear field project focused on long-distance causeways between Uci and Cansahcab in Yucatan, Mexico, supports their use for processions and pilgrimages, their role in the creation of multisite polities, and their involvement in the constitution of local authority. Yet details of the causeways’ construction suggest that people contested this authority. Work was central to these dynamics and comes in the form of labor as practice, investments in the maintenance of relations with other-than-human beings, and the ways that causeways produced embodied experiences that were ideal for their use in pilgrimages.

Rural Social Differentiation in Early Classic Chunhuayum, Yucatan, Mexico

“…The Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project (UCRIP) was initiated in 2008 to investigate the processes of integration, materialized by the construction of the causeway system, that took place in this microregion at the end of the Late Preclassic. The project has conducted extensive survey, mapping, and excavation at various centers and smaller settlements both on and along the Uci-Cansahcab causeway (Hutson 2012a, 2021; Hutson and Davies 2015; Hutson and Welch 2014; 2021; Hutson et al 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020; Kidder 2019; Vallejo-Caliz et al 2018).…”

“…Ucanha and Kancab, however, retained some degree of political and ritual autonomy (Hutson and Welch 2014; Kidder et al 2019; Kidder 2019; Welch 2016). Within this political alliance, these various ceremonial centers likely continued to compete for pilgrims who could also supply labor and resources (Hutson and Welch 2021). In tandem with this process of political centralization, ceramics appear to have been distributed through incipient market exchanges (Hutson 2021; Kidder 2019).…”

Airborne Lidar Survey, Density-Based Clustering, and Ancient Maya Settlement in the Upper Usumacinta River Region of Mexico and Guatemala

“…Importantly, lidar data show that periurban settlements surrounding Piedras Negras lacked public architecture of their own, and there are no evident nodes of settlement around which other households clustered. Such patterns contrast markedly with urban and peri-urban landscapes at urban centers like Caracol in Belize and elsewhere in the Maya lowlands, where causeways connect the royal core to outlying political and economic settlement nodes [8,69,71,76,77]. Residents of the peri-urban fringe surrounding Piedras Negras would have sought many political, economic, and religious functions in the urban center or at smaller sub-urban settlements like Esmeralda and Fajardo provided with ball courts or public plazas but which lack one or more of the full suite of architectural accoutrements found at capital centers.…”

The Cultural Landscapes of Maya Roads: The Material Evidence and a GIS Study from the Maya Lowlands of Chiapas and Tabasco, Mexico

“…Road networks are studied to understand how they relate to the ceremonial and political nodes of chiefdoms and smaller statelets (Earle 1991:13). For the Maya region, these networks have been interpreted as political boundary markers (Chase and Chase 2001; Kurjack and Andrews 1976), physical manifestations of social and political links (Benavides Castillo 1981; Kurjack 1977; Villa Rojas 1934), indices of administrative and economic integration (Chase and Chase 1996), ritual or ceremonial pathways (Eberl 2000; Hutson and Welch 2021; Sheets et al 2015; Villa Rojas 1934), architectural features and astronomical sight lines (Chase 2016; Folan 1991), linkages to markets and exchange (Hutson 2014; Hutson and Dahlin 2017; Hutson et al 2021), and as a combination of these categories (Bustillos Carrillo 1974; Eberl 2000; Gómez 1996; Keller 2010). Recent lidar research in the Maya region has enabled the study of movement infrastructure at a scale not seen before (Chase et al 2012; Inomata 2021; Inomata et al 2021; Murtha et al 2019; Schroder et al 2020, 2021).…”

“…2012; Lee 1978; Navarrete 1973). Roads enable social cohesion (Hutson and Welch 2021) and economic networks (Carballo and Pluckhahn 2007; Clark and Lee 1984; Hirth and Pillsbury 2012); they serve as evidence of long-term connections and regional relationships (Benavides Castillo 1975; Kurjack 1977; Stanton et al 2020; Villa Rojas 1934). The study of roads advances our understanding of city planning, access to spaces, religious and economic activities, and public areas of ancient settlements (Alcock et al 2012; Mendoza and Jordan 1997) while complementing regional studies by highlighting the diversity of relationships within and between rural communities and urban centers (Dalakoglou and Harvey 2012; Morriss 2005; Snead and Darling 2009; Solinis-Casparius 2022).…”