Smallholders in the Maya Lowlands: Homage to a Garden Variety Ethnographer

Abstract

Ancient Maya subsistence practices and their relation to the rise and decline of Maya civilization have long been the subject of archaeological debate. Traditionally Mayanists correlate subsistence strategy with political economy, positing that a change in one must correspond to a change in the other. Since smallholders, as defined by Netting, can exist within a variety of political and economic systems, their ubiquity in the Maya Lowlands may explain why household studies often fail to detect political or economic change at a macro level. The absence of smallholders, however, may correlate with the depopulation of many Maya cities at the end of the ninth century.