The Classic Period Maya transition from an ideal free to an ideal despotic settlement system at the polity of Uxbenká

Abstract

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 45 (2017) 53–68 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa The Classic Period Maya transition from an ideal free to an ideal despotic settlement system at the polity of Uxbenka Keith M. Prufer a, ⇑ , Amy E. Thompson a , Clayton R. Meredith a , Brendan J. Culleton b , Jillian M. Jordan a , Claire E. Ebert b , Bruce Winterhalder c , Douglas J. Kennett b a b c Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, United States Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, United States Department of Anthropology, University of California-Davis, United States 1. Introduction More than eleven hundred years of settlement history at Uxbenka, a Classic Period Maya polity (ca. 300 BC to AD 900) located in southern Belize (Fig. 1), conform to a patterned shift from an ideal free to a despotic distribution, coincident with a change toward habitat suitability increasingly dependent on anthropogenic features of the landscape. To demonstrate this claim, we document the development and geospatial organization of the settlement systems at Uxbenka using differential GPS and LiDAR data associated with extensive survey and excavations (Prufer et al., 2015). We also chronicle the development of the built landscape; a major trade corridor, neighborhoods, districts, and the ceremonial center being the prime features under consideration. Finally, we assess the relationships between the spatial patterns as populations in-fill to political developments within the frame- work of two population ecology models: the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) and Ideal Despotic Distribution (IDD). 1.1. Setting, objectives and questions Uxbenka (Fig. 1) was a moderately sized Maya center during the Classic Period (AD 250–900), comparable to nearby sites such as Pusilha and Lubaantun but small when compared to the major cen- ters of Tikal and Caracol to the northwest. Since 2005 the Uxbenka Archaeological Project (UAP) has conducted extensive survey and excavations in the settlement zone surrounding Uxbenka, with a focus on building a precise absolute chronology for the develop- ment of the community and its environmental context (Culleton et al., 2012; Prufer et al., 2011, 2015; Prufer and Thompson, 2016). Cultural ecological studies conducted in parallel are docu- menting the agro-ecology of contemporary subsistence tactics in the nearby community of Santa Cruz (Baines, 2015; Culleton, 2012). We draw on both sources of information in our analysis. In agrarian communities, residential settlements are the pri- mary social unit and location of human interactions that articulate with broader economic and political processes (Ashmore, 1981; ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: kmp@unm.edu (K.M. Prufer). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2016.11.003 0278-4165/Published by Elsevier Inc. Willey, 1968). Despite their importance they remain understudied and poorly dated in the Maya area (See Supplement S-1). For instance, little research has examined the precise chronological histories of settlements surrounding Classic Period Maya centers. This leaves us unable to answer basic anthropological questions: Why were people more successful in some locations compared to others on a landscape? How did population growth, the natural environment, and the built environment influence status dispari- ties of settlements through time? What are the relationships between settlements, which generate agricultural and other resources, and the consolidation and differential control of those resources by emerging political elites? We explore fundamental questions in the development of set- tlement systems in the Maya Lowlands and beyond: What organiz- ing principles and socio-environmental factors guide residential settlement decisions in agricultural societies when the environ- ment is an open access frontier? How do these initial choices change with the growth and development of low-density urban environments? And, what are the long-term consequences of these initially open but increasingly constrained settlement options? We identify and assess the relative importance of social and environ- mental variables that may have been important to human decision-making in a bounded, community-centered landscape. Furthermore, we examine how those decisions were reflected in the relative success of residential compounds over centuries of growth. In pursuit of answers to these and related questions, we (a) pre- sent a high precision AMS 14 C chronology for the development of the Uxbenka settlement system; (b) identify and describe neigh- borhoods (loci of daily household interactions) and districts (local seats of power and authority) as organizing principles for the dis- tribution of households and local economic and political control across the landscape; (c) develop population estimates and a model of demographic growth; (d) analyze factors affecting deci- sions about household location; and (e) offer an evolutionary anthropology model, drawing on behavioral ecology, to help explain why some households and neighborhoods were larger, longer-occupied, and apparently more successful over the 1150 year occupation of the polity. Our evidence and interpreta- tion together document an increasingly stratified relationship