Mesoamerican Plazas: Arenas of Community and Power

12. Ancient Plazas: Spaces of Inquiry in Mesoamerica and Beyond

213 ChaPter tweLVe ancient Plazas Spaces of Inquiry in Mesoamerica and Beyond jerry d. moore The city where i live—Long Beach, california—was incorporated in the late nineteenth century, when an orthogonal grid was surveyed and superimposed on the beachside bluffs and low hills, the floodplains and wetlands of this portion of southern california. This region’s prehistory dates to before circa 9000 BP, and at contact the area was occupied by the Garbrileño-Tongva who had established dozens of villages across the coastal plain. Founded in the late eighteenth century, spanish missions flanked the area, to the north at san Gabriel (established aD 1771) and to the south at san Juan capistrano (1776). The south-facing, wave-protected coast at the mouth of the Los angeles river became the major port for the Pueblo de los angeles, established in 1781 about 40 km to the north, which in turn was the western terminus of the santa Fe Trail. under spanish rule the well-watered grasslands between the Pueblo de Los angeles and its port were divided into land grants of large ranchos with vast herds of livestock, a process that continued in the mexican period and resulting in a landscape vividly described in richard henry Dana’s (1840) Two Years Before the Mast, as “a fine plane country, filled with herds of cattle.” after california’s statehood in 1850, these ranchos increasingly were held by anglo-american landowners and development companies, who began to establish new towns and cities. after several less-than-successful efforts at city-building, the city of Long Beach was established in 1897.1 and when the city was laid out, a plaza was at its core. The founders of Long Beach were uninspired urban planners. apparently unaware and certainly uninfluenced by the innovations of Fredrick Law olmstead and calvert Vaux, who planned new York’s central Park and the intriguingly linear “Emerald necklace,” which linked Boston’s various open spaces jerry d. moore 214 into a sinuous chain of parks. Long Beach’s founding fathers simply plotted an open city block at the corner of Pacific avenue and Broadway street and named it Pacific Park. Bounded by major thoroughfares, the plaza’s perimeter has remained stable, although its names, uses, and meanings have not. in 1915, the local chapter of the Veterans of the civil War installed a cannon and a statue of abraham Lincoln to commemorate the end of america’s bloodiest conflict, and the plaza was renamed Lincoln Park. a carnegie Library opened in 1909, was destroyed by fire in 1970, and was demolished in 1973. The core of the park was landscaped with palms, flower beds, sidewalks, and benches, a tranquil center in a normally tranquil city. in march 1933 a massive earthquake of magnitude 6.5 hit Long Beach and adjacent regions, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in southern california. Lincoln Park and all of the other parks in the city were converted into emergency centers where makeshift kitchens fed the survivors and homeless residents were sheltered under large military tents. Today, decades later, Lincoln Park is again occupied by the homeless, but by permanent street people not temporary refugees. Lincoln Park was the center of public protests in 2011, as the occupy movement established an encampment, inevitably leading to arrests and controversy. in 2012, as i write this, the homeless rest on the Figure 12.1. Lincoln Park, Long Beach, california, postcard circa 1930–37. Photograph by author. Ancient Plazas 215 green in the mild winter sun, dogs and their owners scamper in the dog park (built in 2009), and Long Beach citizens debate renovations of the plaza. When Long Beach was first laid out and Pacific Park was planted in the heart of this urban space, no one could have imagined the variations in forms, functions, and human activities that would occur in this open space. Yet, these are exactly the classes of variations we attempt to understand when we presume to explore the archaeology of plazas. * * * as inomata and Tsukamoto state in the opening lines of the introduction to this volume, “Plazas are focal points of mesoamerican public life. Throughout mesoamerican history, plazas have been essential components of the site layouts of cities, towns, and even small villages.” more broadly, plazas and other constructed open spaces are among the most commonly encountered elements in the built environment in the ancient world and...