Laser Technology Reveals the Complexity of Maya Society
The laser technology known as “LiDAR” and recent excavations reveal urban expansion around ancient Maya city centers, such as Tikal in Guatemala. These cities extended across valleys and hills tops. At its peak, Caracol spanned an area of 240 square kilometers, about the size of Milwaukee, before it was abandoned and swallowed by the jungle.
The accumulated archaeological evidence convinced Chase that shared social practices, such as placing pottery and other ritual items in special shrines, connected groups of farming families across dozens of distinct neighborhoods within the urban landscape of Caracol.
Archaeological Evidence Points to Ancient Maya Power Districts
Pottery vessels decorated with face shapes are one of the indicators. The overlay of the shapes and varying distances of the sculpted eyes and other facial features formed distinctive ceramic styles in shrines associated with different neighborhoods. These vessels were just one item in a diverse array of ritual offerings – including three-legged plates, slender-necked jars, small medicine bottles, and paint pots – that neighborhoods appear to have congregated in distinctive ways.
There are also the teeth. Individuals buried in some vital shrines either had carved jade pieces embedded in their teeth or their teeth wrapped in one of two styles. No similar dental decorations appeared among the dead buried in other shrines. The pottery patterns and dental modifications coalesced into specific neighborhood identities. Chase says, “There’s a community aspect to these discoveries that reflects cohesive neighborhoods.”
Maya Society and Political Organization
Chase suspects that the citizens of Caracol, including those who lived far from the temples and pyramids in the city center, were not simple farmers growing crops for the king. Groups comprising several hundred people formed agricultural neighborhoods that built local ritual structures and followed distinctive ritual practices, apparently through their collective efforts.
The neighborhoods, in turn, belonged to administrative zones connected to the nobility and other political figures in the city center. The stone complexes scattered throughout the city – each with ritual centers and plazas likely hosting markets and ritual events attended by crowds from neighboring neighborhoods – represented the bureaucratic service centers for the administrative areas.
The neighborhoods and the zones formed tiers within a political system where central rulers sometimes gained authority and enacted laws. At other times, the royal ruling families collapsed, and the lower tiers in the political hierarchy took over basic control. A stone pyramid rises from the jungle at the ancient Maya site of Caracol. Karagroobis / iStock / Getty Images Plus
LiDAR Discoveries and Their Impact on Views of Maya Society
Chase’s findings at Caracol contributed to a shifting perspective on ancient Maya societies that have intensified over the past decade. These communities, which emerged as early as 3000 years ago, are known for their massive stone pyramids, vast plazas, and elite ball courts uncovered in jungle sites across Mesoamerica, a cultural area extending from central Mexico to much of Central America before Spanish contact in the 16th century. These structures long indicated that the Maya rulers exercised absolute power. The hieroglyphic inscriptions carved on stone tablets described the kings’ achievements.
However, extensive archaeological research and ongoing translations of Maya writings, coupled with the rise of aerial LiDAR technology, which sees through forests, reveal vast urban expansion around the Maya’s main ritual sites. Recently, large-scale low-density settlements have been discovered in other tropical areas worldwide previously known only for their massive ritual structures, such as Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia.
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the changing conditions led to a shift in the balance of power among the Maya rulers. For example, an increase in rural populations might enhance the elite’s power at the neighborhood level. Military defeats of a royal lineage may shift authority to officials at the neighborhood level.
Lidar Technology Reveals Maya Neighborhoods
In 2021 and 2022, Gilabert-Sansalvador, now at Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, joined Estrada-Billy and three other researchers to review the measurements in her database along with other measurements of 251 vaulted structures collected by other excavation teams. These buildings come from across the Maya lands, from southern Mexico and Central America to northern Yucatan Peninsula.
When examining the complete sample of collapsed vaulted buildings, the researchers found that the collapsed vaulted buildings had a larger volume of rubble and formed higher mounds with steeper sides than buildings of the same size made from perishable materials, like thatched-roof huts.
To verify that these mound dimensions highlight only the collapsed vaulted buildings, the team examined previously identified stone structures in earth excavations and surveys at the classic Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala. Overall, the method used was able to distinguish between the remains of vaulted and non-vaulted buildings, such as ball courts surrounded by stone walls, ceremonial buildings, and inscribed stone monuments, up to 97 percent of the time.
After confirming the method, the team analyzed 11 lidar datasets covering Tikal and seven other classic Maya urban centers, along with several rural regions. The lidar analyses covered approximately 60,000 square kilometers, nearly the size of West Virginia. About 111,000 previously known structures were analyzed to detect signs of being built with vaulted roofs.
An image of clusters of vaulted stone buildings emerged, characteristic of the elite residences in the major centers. But they were in agricultural communities up to five kilometers away from the nearest urban core. As the lidar images of rural stone complexes accumulated, Estrada-Billy felt increasing amazement: “We have checked our tests multiple times and concluded that this result is indeed accurate.”
Small clusters of huts, which might be inhabited by extended families of farmers and other settlers, surround shared plazas. The neighborhoods consist of groups of huts clustered around the stone structures, which may have hosted lower-level nobles or other elites, researchers reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science in September.
Estrada-Billy said, “We now have quantitative measures for ancient Maya neighborhoods, which have been difficult to identify or define.”
Reexamining Classic Maya Power
New ways of deciphering Maya writing and ongoing excavations signal that mid-level authorities exerted significant power in rural settlements parallel to urban centers like Tikal, according to archaeology anthropologist John Walden from Harvard University. Neighborhood-level elites managed public rituals and feasts, hosted markets, and maintained diplomatic relations with their counterparts in neighboring communities, Walden concluded in the spring 2023 issue of The Mayanist.
There remains an open question of whether some vaulted buildings served as homes for local family heads or clans prioritizing their interests over those of city kings and prominent figures, according to Walden.
But the new lidar findings underscore a central point, according to Scherer. “Power was dispersed somewhat across the landscape and was not concentrated in the Maya urban centers.”
Rebuilding Caracol Politics
In Caracol, one of the largest classic Maya cities, power takes on multiple turns, according to Chase. “Caracol shifted between more collective and more authoritarian systems of governance over its 1,500-year existence. The city experienced significant transformations and changes as it grew.”
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Chase is reconstructing the emotional historical journey of Caracol using a variety of evidence accumulated over the past four decades, including hieroglyphic records carved on stone tablets, archaeological discoveries, and LiDAR images. His conclusions are presented in the 2023 Belize Archaeological Research Reports and in a chapter of an upcoming book he edited, Ancient Mesoamerican Population History. For example, the carved hieroglyphs include the dates of specific rulers’ ascents to power and their victories or defeats in battles against rival city kings. LiDAR maps have guided ongoing excavations of agricultural sites outside the city core of Caracol.
Chase’s personal connection to Caracol began before he could speak. His parents, anthropological archaeologists Diane Chase and Arlen Chase, both at the University of Houston, took him there every year, starting from childhood, after the launch of the Caracol excavation project in 1985.
As a high school student specializing in archaeology, Chase helped manage an excavation at Caracol. Now he oversees multiple excavations and laboratory investigations at the site to uncover the artifacts discovered.
Caracol started small as well. Around 600 B.C., three villages built reservoirs and roads and ritual sites. The village inhabitants formed one site ruled without centralized rulers for about 700 years. A royal lineage took power in 331. Successful wars against the cities of Tikal and Naranjo between 553 and 680 sparked a population resurgence. At least 100,000 people lived in Caracol at its peak.
Urban and rural areas coalesced in the “Garden City,” according to Chase. He mapped 373 neighborhoods, each linked to a nearby public space that hosted markets and ritual events. In each neighborhood, residents carved agricultural terraces from the surrounding hills and built small reservoirs. Groups of neighborhoods formed 25 areas, each containing a massive center with reservoirs and ball courts or other large buildings providing public services, researchers reported in June.
Expansion in Maya Lands
The findings suggest that Maya rulers did not only live in principal palaces but also in connected rural communities. Estrada-Belli states, “We can now talk about a shared model for organizing cities in the classic Maya period that includes the less densely populated countryside.” The political elite managed the construction of stone complexes in prominent locations of the connected neighborhoods and administrative regions. This highlights the importance of central rulers in shaping and operating these complex political systems, Estrada-Belli suspects.
However, some researchers question whether multi-layered political systems always revolved around the king or the elite political power brokers, as Estrada-Belli suggested. Some ancient Maya cities were characterized by communal works from local communities, while others emphasized royal orders, say these investigators. The same community could radically change its political system as conditions and circumstances changed.
The political disparities among sites correspond with the archaeological and LiDAR discoveries made over the past two decades that challenge the common idea that the classic Maya cities collapsed rapidly around 900, over a span of 50 to 100 years. A group of 15 Maya researchers referenced these recent discoveries on July 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Classic Maya urban centers typically found ways, whether through local or central decision-making, to survive periods of drought and military defeats that were previously thought to threaten the community, current research suggests. The major sites experienced population loss over 100 to 200 years before they were abandoned.
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At that time, the Maya people who developed a taste for social and political flexibility established smaller towns and cities elsewhere. Maya culture persisted after the appeal of the cities in the classic period diminished.
The reasons for the transformation of urban centers into ghost towns over hundreds of years are not well understood. This raises questions about who lived in the newly identified Maya stone buildings and what they were doing.
Who lived in the vaulted buildings?
Excavations in these stone structures, based on lidar discoveries, will help clarify who lived there.
Some residents of the rural vaulted buildings may have belonged to noble lineages that served the king’s interests, according to ancient DNA evidence suggesting that rulers of the 2000-year-old Namadges empire in Asia followed a similar strategy by sending members of royal lineages to oversee distant lands.
However, the rural Maya elite may have gained wealth and power in local communities without being appointed by a higher ruler, Scherer warns. If so, it’s not clear who pulled the strings and the neighborhood and district officials.
New excavations guided by lidar discoveries and lidar analysis based on the dimensions of preserved buildings may clarify the classic Maya power structures in sites throughout the Yucatan Peninsula.
Layers of authority and their impact on ancient Maya urban areas are slowly revealing themselves through the jungle.
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-maya-politics-power-neighborhoods-lidar
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