Ancient Maya Commoners

Chapter 6. Intra-Site Settlement Signatures and Implications for Late Classic Maya Commoner Organization at Dos Hombres, Belize

CHAPTER 6 Intra-Site Settlement Signatures and Implications for Late Classic Maya Commoner Organization at Dos Hombres, Belize jon c. lohse Mayanists have come a long way in their assessments of pre-Hispanic food production since Sylvanus Morley (1946) argued for the ubiquity of slash-and-burn agriculture. Today, there is a greater awareness of environmental variability and its effect on both agriculture and settlement systems (Fedick 1996b; Pohl 1985; Sanders 1977). However, although our appreciation of the natural ‘‘mosaic’’ within which the ancient Maya were situated has increased, it could be argued that our sensitivity to potential changes in the way people organized themselves to exploit different resources has not kept pace. The goal of this chapter is to present a model of Late Classic (ca. AD 600–850) community organization for the site of Dos Hombres, located in northwestern Belize.1 This work examines the distribution and organization of the supporting population in what is considered the Dos Hombres suburban area, consisting of the inner 2.5 km of settlement surrounding the site core. The primary assumption underlying this examination is that a large percentage, if not the majority, of those who might have been ‘‘commoners’’ in the Dos Hombres community were engaged either directlyor peripherally in food production.Therefore, this study focuses on the economics of agricultural production by examining how intensification strategies and settlement distribution vary across the different environmental zones in the project area.Taking the arrangement of residential elements and other features such as terraces and field walls as an indication of social unit boundaries, I argue for two concurrent, though alternative , forms of social organization arising from the opportunities and requirements for managing environmental elements such as soil, water, space, and surface geometry (Wilken 1987:3) that constrain agricultural activities. 118 Jon C. Lohse The remainder of this chapter is organized into three parts. First is a brief overview of the intellectual progress in grappling with Maya agricultural production over the past thirty years. Next, I present data collected from a settlement survey around Dos Hombres (Lohse 2001), beginning with a discussion of the project area and its environmental zones. I also describe two distinct settlement patterns, referred to as the ‘‘corporate group’’ and the ‘‘micro-community’’ patterns, taken to reflect different forms of social organization. A reconstruction of how agricultural production was organized and carried out in these areas is inferred in part from landscape modification features such as terraces, ground-level cobble surfaces, and even possible wetland canals. Finally, I offer brief conclusions concerning the role of commoners at Dos Hombres during the Late Classic. These conclusions hold implications for the study of commoners at other sites in the Maya area and in Mesoamerica. Recent Developments Linking Maya Agriculture and Environmental Diversity Beginning in the 1970s, models of Maya agriculture based on laborintensive , rather than land-extensive, production have steadily gained support (e.g., Flannery 1982; Harrison and Turner 1978; Netting 1977). It may have been the recognition of pre-Hispanic exploitation of lowland wetlands (Adams et al. 1981; Pohl 1990a; Siemens and Puleston 1972; Turner and Harrison 1983), in particular, that helped fuel awareness that environmental diversity can serve as either a key component in or obstacle to agricultural intensification.The last three decades of the twentieth century witnessed an increase in studies attempting to tie large-scale settlement systems to regional environmental variability (Ashmore 1981:59; Dunning 1992; Dunning et al. 1997; Fedick 1989, 1995; Ford 1986, 1990; Ford and Fedick 1992; Rice 1976; Rice and Rice 1990; Scarborough 1993; Turner 1974, 1983; also see Dunning, this volume). More recently, several scholars (e.g., Hughbanks 1998; Kepecs and Boucher 1996; Levi 1996; Liendo Stuardo 1999; Scarborough et al. 1995) have turned their attention to variations in soil, vegetation, water, and even topographic conditions at the site level. This shift in focus has allowed researchers to suggest resource management strategies, account for status differences among households, and explain localized diachronic shifts in residential distribution. One thing that has become clear through these studies is that our un- Intra-Site Settlement Signatures 119 derstanding of the pre-Hispanic exploitation of any landscape depends in large part on the spatial scales of our analyses (Fedick 1996a:335–336; seeYaeger and Robin, this volume). Regional-level investigations yield insights into sociopolitical systems that operate at that scale, and site-level analyses can help us to understand...