In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use

Chapter 15: Caves, Karst, and Settlement at Mayap

CHAPTER 15 Caves, Karst, and Settlement at Mayapán, Yucatán clifford t. brown Introduction Mayapán was the capital of most of northern Yucatán during much of the Late Postclassic Period. The city was the seat of a ‘‘joint government’’ (mul tepal), or political confederacy, that ruled a regional state for about two hundred years (ca. ad 1250–1450) before the Spanish conquest of Yucatán in 1542. According to native and Spaniard alike, the founding, governance, and collapse of the city formed the most dramatic and singular topic in Maya history at the time of the Spanish conquest; in the chronicles, the rise and fall of Mayapán overshadowed all other preconquest historical events. Archaeologically, it is easy to see that Mayapán was a primate center in the regional settlement pattern: no other contemporary site in the Maya Lowlands approaches it in size. Because of its political and economic status, Mayapán probably dominated all aspects of art and literature as well (Love 1994:8–13). The ruins of the city lie some 40 kilometers south-southeast of Mérida,Yucat án (Figure 15.1). The archaeological site measures 4.2 square kilometers inside its 9-kilometer-long defensive wall, within which over four thousand ancient structures are densely packed. The spatial organization of those structures, and especially how they relate to the natural landscape, is the theme of this chapter. Mayapán lies on a great limestone plain that has developed a distinctive karstic topography and hydrology. Certainly no greater natural influence on ancient Maya settlement patterns ever existed. The structure of the karst determined where water was available in an arid environment. The character of the karst also controlled where suitable land was available for residence. Throughout their history, the Maya had a preference for building their houses on high ground, where good drainage and a cool breezewere to be found.The karst landscape , therefore, governed the pattern of habitable land and the placement of Figure 15.1. Yucatán, with location of Mayapán and other archaeological sites. Drawn by Lynn Berg. Caves, Karst, and Settlement at Mayapán, Yucatán 375 water sources; consequently, it controlled the underlying pattern of settlement within and among communities. Because the character of the karst varies across the peninsula for a number of reasons, including climatic variation and structural geology, so too did the natural strictures on ancient Maya settlement. Since the sociological, economic, and political facts of Maya society varied across the peninsula for equally complicated reasons, the result is an endlessly complex interplay of nature and culture, of theme and variation. In this chapter, I explore one example of this patterned variation: how the Maya adapted the social, aesthetic, and religious aspects of their settlement at Mayapán to the karstic landscape. The results of the inquiry are of interest not only because Mayapán was one of the great historical capitals of Maya civilization , but also because some patterns found at Mayapán occur at other Maya cities. Residential Settlement and Karst Geomorphology Despite the extensive literature on Lowland Maya settlement patterns and architecture , relatively little progress has been made in describing the distribution of settlement across the landscape. A glance at almost any archaeological site map demonstrates that the Maya preferred to build on high ground, an observation also made by the early Spanish colonists (de la Garza et al. 1983:218). Beyond that, and beyond the obvious fact that residential architecture occurred in various types of groups or clusters, the spatial characteristics of intrasite settlement have not been specified successfully in any detail. Although excellent maps of a few Maya sites exist, no one has created an accurate formal model of settlement within a site. Some scholars think that the settlement pattern was partly random (A. Smith 1962:205); that belief is at least partly false. At Mayapán, a multitude of small artificial terraces take advantage of the contours of the land to expand the flat living space of the hills and ridges. These constructions are not random, because they relate systematically to the landscape . Accordingly, the morphology of the karst terrain played a role in determining the distribution of the residential architecture. To understand the settlement patterns, therefore, one must describe and understand the underlying topography. The distribution of water sources at the site played an equally important role in the organization settlement at the site. In...