The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities

7. Compact Versus Dispersed Settlement in Pre-Hispanic MesoamericaThe Role of Neighborhood Organization and Collective Action

132 chapter seven Compact Versus Dispersed Settlement in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica The Role of Neighborhood Organization and Collective Action Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, many communities, particularly larger population centers, had a compact pattern of settlement in which houses were situated close to neighboring residences and demographic densities exceeded twenty persons per hectare (Drennan 1988: 280–281, 290). More than two decades ago in an influential paper, Drennan (1988) noted the predominance of this compact community pattern, as well as several key pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican exceptions (specifically, more dispersed Classic Maya communities, such as Tikal, and the Late Postclassic nonurban settlement patterns in the highland Basin of Mexico and the Valley of Oaxaca). Drennan went on to argue that the less typical (for pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica) lower density settlement pattern likely was a consequence of more labor-intensive land use practices in which householders independently and continually worked plots of land near their residences, thereby creating more dispersed homesteads/communities (compared to that found in more compact settlements). In making Compact Versus Dispersed Settlement 133 this link between labor-intensive householder land use practices (in which farmers independently worked land immediately adjacent to their residences) and the lower density Mesoamerican communities, Drennan (1988: 281–284) also endeavored to eliminate a number of competing or alternative explanations for these differences in settlement density, including elements of political control, different central-place functions, and defensive considerations. In this chapter, we reconsider the argument that Drennan (1988) advanced to explain dispersed settlements among the Classic Maya and certain Late Postclassic communities across highland Mesoamerica. The discussion here is not intended to contest or reject Drennan’s earlier hypothesis but rather is an effort to amplify and expand it, through the consideration of sociopolitical differences as a basis to understand variation in Mesoamerican community organization. We query the significance and implications of the observation that most pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican settlements were compact. After all, that is the most common residential pattern for this macro-region. Although, as with Drennan’s original analysis, our empirical focus is explicitly comparative across preHispanic Mesoamerica, we rely on empirical findings from the Valley of Oaxaca, contrasting compact Classic period settlements (A.D. 200–900) with the more dispersed residential arrangements that are characteristic of the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1300–1520). In reviewing this issue, a starting tenet is that population and settlement densities have ramifications for intra-community interaction and social cohesion (e.g., Fletcher 1995: chap. 4; see also Zipf 1949). In any settlement, households are interconnected into larger social networks (or neighborhoods) within which specific householders have different degrees of autonomy or social cohesion. These inter-household links can be established through a range of social, economic, and political ties and mechanisms. In general, higher settlement densities (with greater numbers of proximate neighbors) are associated with greater levels of interpersonal interaction (Fletcher 1995; Zipf 1949). At the same time, large, compact communities create the greatest potential stresses or organizational challenges for the maintenance and persistence of settlements (Fletcher 1993: 745, 1995: 81–82; Freeman and Audia 2006: 154; Mc­ Pher­ son et al. 2001: 429–430; see also Blanton and Fargher, chapter 2). Connectivity is not the only measure or determinant of interpersonal solidarity, but it has been shown to be a fundamental component of organizational cohesion and collective action in social groups (Gould 1993: 194; Granovetter 1973; White and Harary 2001: 349), including neighborhoods (Hipp and Perrin 2006, 2009). As a consequence, holistic explanations of variation in community density, organization, and connectivity cannot rely exclusively on differences in the allocation of agrarian 134 neighborhood as a social and spatial unit labor but also must consider the different means and scales of social interconnection through which households are linked (e.g., Chaskin 1997; Smith 1975). Compact/Dispersed Settlements in Mesoamerica In his study, Drennan (1988: 275, 281) compared estimated settlement densities for twenty-four different pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican communities . He found that these estimated densities ranged from dispersed communities of around six to twelve people per hectare at Classic Maya centers, such as Coba, Quirigua, and Tikal, to much higher densities ranging from 50 to 130 people per hectare in highland cities, such as Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan. In his sample, Classic (as well as Late Formative) period Maya settlements had consistently lower densities than other pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican communities. Although Drennan relied on different empirical information sources (e.g., surface artifact densities, numbers of house mounds) for his...