Complexity, Cooperation, and Public Goods: Quality of Place at Nixtun-Ch'ich', Petén, Guatemala

Abstract

Public goods are “non-excludable” and “non-rivalrous” resources, including roads, water management systems, and plazas, as well as “symbolic public goods,” such as religious architecture and social identity. Public goods occur in greater abundance in cities with more cooperative and inclusive forms of organization, which seems to undermine arguments that elites constructed them to augment their power. Such goods are major “pull” factors drawing migration to modern cities, but ancient cities also had public goods that likely attracted immigrants, increasing their population and diversity. We examine these ideas at Middle Preclassic-period (cal 800–300 BC) Nixtun-Ch'ich', in Petén, Guatemala. This city and other Preclassic metropoles in the Maya lowlands seem to have been on the more-cooperative end of a cooperative–competitive spectrum, compared to most cities of the Classic period (AD 200–900). We also speculate about how symbolic public goods were coopted to create a more exclusive social system in the Late Preclassic period (300 BC–AD 200).