Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and Its Hinterlands

11. Population, Intensive Agriculture, Labor Value, and Elite-Commoner Political Power Relations in the Xunantunich Hinterlands

c h a p t e r 1 1 Population, Intensive Agriculture, Labor Value, and Elite-Commoner Political Power Relations in the Xunantunich Hinterlands L. Theodore Neff ester boserup (1965) has argued that the effect of population growth on resources is an important independent factor that creates conditions leading to economic intensification. The basic causal factor in Boserup’s model is that population growth initially creates an imbalance in which consumer needs outstrip productive output. This imbalance is alleviated by economic intensification. In the case of the agrarian residents of the upper Belize River valley during the Classic period, a significant response to population pressure was agricultural intensification in the form of terracing . Residents in the region would also have experienced the effects of what is termed the law of diminishing returns: if inputs to an agricultural system are increased while all other aspects of the system remain fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additional inputs will yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increases in output. As James Woods (1998:106, note 6) notes, “There can be few principles in economics that are more firmly established than the law of diminishing returns.” Boserup’s general processual model has not been without critique. For example, Kathleen Morrison (1994) and Clark Erickson (2006) convincingly point out that two chief drawbacks of Boserup’s model, as originally formulated, are that unilinear stages defined by fallow reduction do not capture important variability in agricultural intensification, and that fallow reduction or evidence of agricultural intensification is difficult to determine archaeologically. In light of this criticism, among the things that researchers can do is to further examine her processual model by Population, Agriculture, Labor, and Political Power 251 looking for ways in which it could be revised and extended. In this chapter, and in the research on which it is based (Neff 2008), I have chosen this method. I follow the lead of Glenn Stone and Christian Downum (1999) and Kevin Johnston (2003), who have critiqued Boserup but have also offered useful insights regarding the applicability of a revised version of her model. Working specifically within the lowland Maya context, Johnston (2003) has articulated a model of tropical agricultural intensification through cultivation lengthening that responds to and moves beyond the unilinear-stages-defined-by-fallow-reduction critique. Anthropologists have long recognized that social relations change under conditions of population growth, agricultural intensification, and diminishing returns. Boserup’s model provides a general explanation for this. But the specific aspects of any one case present important particular details. This paper examines changes in elite-commoner political power relationships under conditions of population growth, agricultural intensification, and diminishing returns. To address this subject, I utilize a model of fluctuating labor and the establishment of state power as applied to the prehispanic Maya proposed by Elliot Abrams (1995). In order to apply the model, I first describe the study area and engage in a diachronic population reconstruction . I then discuss the economic-productivity, labor-value, and political power-relation aspects of the model. A simulation is then undertaken that links the economic-productivity and labor-value tenets of the model to the unique population histories of Xunantunich’s hinterlands. This exercise lays the groundwork for a discussion of changing hinterland political power relations and the ways in which they contributed to the formation of the Xunantunich polity. I augment the discussion by referring to hinterland archaeological research that supports the application of the model. Description of the Study Area The settlement survey that collected the archaeological data on which the reconstruction is based is described elsewhere and will not be repeated here (Yaeger, “Landscapes of the Xunantunich Hinterlands,” this volume; also Ashmore et al. 1994; Neff 2008; Neff et al. 1995; Yaeger and Connell 1993). Here, I would like to present a brief overview of the physical environment of the study area and the system of agricultural terracing that was present during the Classic period. 252 l. theodore neff A good basic accounting of the area’s physical environment can be obtained from descriptions of the soils traversed by the settlement transects (see fig. 11.1) because the characteristics of the soils derive principally from their parent material and topographic position. The soils of the Belize River valley and adjoining areas were mapped to the specificity of the series on 1:50,000 scale maps during studies of the area’s agricultural potential (Jenkin et al...