Hostname: page-component-686fd747b7-qtbbk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-13T13:58:30.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agro-urban landscapes: the example of Maya lowland cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christian Isendahl
Christian Isendahl*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, SE-751 26 Uppsala, Sweden (Email: christian.isendahl@arkeologi.uu.se)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The author sets out to explain why Maya cities are so dispersed, with a ceremonial core surrounded by spacious neighbourhoods. Using the case study of Xuch, and the judicious application of phosphate analysis, he shows that these were clusters of farmsteads, growing food. Tackling the apparent confrontation of town and country in the same settlement he urges us to reconsider ‘urbanism’ as being too narrow a term in archaeology. Solutions that combine food production and ritual can be seen as increasingly diverse. The paper provides valuable reflections for archaeologists studying settlement evolution the world over.

Keywords

Mayapre-Hispanicurbanismagricultureagro-urban landscapesgarden citiesphosphate survey
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 334 , December 2012 , pp. 1112 - 1125
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ashmore, W. 1989. Construction and cosmology: politics and ideology in lowland Maya settlement patterns, in Hanks, W.F. & Rice, D.S. (ed.) Word and image in Maya culture: explorations in language, writing, and representation: 272-86. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Beach, T. 1998. Soil constraints on northwest Yucatan: pedoarchaeology and Maya subsistence at Chunchucmil. Geoarchaeology 13: 759-91.Google Scholar
Bray, W. 1972. Land-use, settlement pattern and politics in prehispanic Middle America: a review, in Ucko, P.J., Tringham, R. & Dimbleby, G.W. (ed.) Man, settlement and urbanism: 909-26. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Chase, D.Z. 1990. The invisible Maya: population history and archaeology at Santa Rita Corozal, in Culbert, T.P. & Rice, D.S. (ed.) Precolumbian population history in the Maya lowlands: 199–213. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Chase, A.F. & Chase, D.Z.. 1998. Scale and intensity in Classic period Maya agriculture: terracing and settlement at the “garden city” of Caracol, Belize. Culture and Agriculture 20(2/3): 60–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, A.F., Chase, D.Z., Weishampel, J.F., Drake, J.B., Shrestha, R.L., Slatton, K.C., Awe, J.J. & Carter, W.E.. 2011. Airborne LiDAR, archaeology, and the ancient Maya landscape at Caracol, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 387-98.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G. 1950. The urban revolution. Town Planning Review 21: 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowgill, G.L. 2004. Origins and development of urbanism: archaeological perspectives. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 525-49.Google Scholar
Dahlin, B.H., Beach, T., Luzzadder-Beach, S., Hixson, D., Hutson, S., Magnoni, A., Mansell, E. & Mazeau, D. 2005. Reconstructing agricultural self-sufficiency at Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 16: 229-47.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D. 1988. Household location and compact versus dispersed settlement in prehispanic Mesoamerica, in Wilk, R.R. & Ashmore, W. (ed.) Household and community in the Mesoamerican past: 273-93. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Driessen, P., Deckers, J., Spaargaren, O. & Nachtergaele, F. (ed.). 2001. Lecture notes on the major soils of the world (World Soil Resources Reports 94). Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization.Google Scholar
Dunning, N.P. 1992. Lords of the hills: ancient Maya settlement in the Puuc region, Yucatán, Mexico (Monographs in World Archaeology 15). Madison (WI): Prehistory Press.Google Scholar
Dunning, N.P. 2004. Down on the farm: Classic Maya houselots as farmsteads, in Lohse, J. & Valdez, F. (ed.) Ancient Maya commoners: 96–116. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Dunning, N.P. & Beach, T.. 2011. Farms and forests: spatial and temporal perspectives on ancient Maya landscapes, in Martini, I.P. & Chesworth, W. (ed.) Landscapes and societies: selected cases: 369-89. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Fletcher, R. 2009. Low-density, agrarian-based urbanism: a comparative view. Institute of Advanced Studies Insights 2(4): 2–19.Google Scholar
Ford, A. & Nigh, R.. 2009. Origins of the Maya forest garden: Maya resource management. Journal of Ethnobiology 29: 213-36.Google Scholar
Graham, E. 1999. Stone cities, green cities, in Bacus, E.A. & Lucero, L.J. (ed.) Complex polities in the ancient tropical world (Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 9): 185-94. Arlington (VA): American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Hansen, R.D. 2001. The first cities: the beginnings of urbanization and state formation in the Maya lowlands, in Grube, N. (ed.) Maya: divine kings of the rain forest: 50-65. Cologne: Könemann.Google Scholar
Inomata, T. 2006. Plazas, performers, and spectators: political theaters of the Classic Maya. Current Anthropology 47: 805-42.Google Scholar
Isendahl, C. 2002. Common knowledge: lowland Maya urban farming at Xuch (Studies in Global Archaeology 1). Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Isendahl, C. 2006. The Puuc urban landscape: settlement archaeology at Xuch, Campeche. Mexicon 28: 111-17.Google Scholar
Isendahl, C. 2010. Greening the ancient city: the agro-urban landscapes of the pre-Hispanic Maya, in Sinclair, P.J.J., Nordquist, G., Herschend, F. & Isendahl, C. (ed.) The urban mind: cultural and environmental dynamics (Studies in Global Archaeology 15): 527-52. Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Isendahl, C. 2011. The weight of water: a new look at pre-hispanic Puuc Maya water reservoirs. Ancient Mesoamerica 22: 185-97.Google Scholar
Johnson, K.A. 1994. The “invisible” Maya: Late Classic minimally-platformed residential settlement at Itzán, Petén, Guatemala. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Killion, T.W. 1992. Gardens of prehistory: the archaeology of settlement agriculture in greater Mesoamerica. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, J. 1983. On the nature of the Mesoamerican city, in Vogt, E.Z. & Leventhal, R.M. (ed.) Prehistoric settlement patterns: essays in honor of Gordon R. Willey: 195–242. Cambridge (MA): Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.Google Scholar
McAnany, P.A. 1995. Living with the ancestors: kinship and kingship in ancient Maya society. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Parkins, H.M. 1997. Roman urbanism: beyond the consumer city. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Prem, H.J. 2003. Xkipché I: el asentamiento. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.Google Scholar
Pyburn, K.A. 1990. Settlement patterns at Nohmul: preliminary results of four excavation seasons, in Culbert, T.P. & Rice, D.S. (ed.) Precolumbian population history in the Maya lowlands: 183-97. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Sabloff, J.A. 1990. The new archaeology and the ancient Maya. New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar
Sabloff, J.A. & Tourtellot, G.. 1991. The ancient Maya city of Sayil: the mapping of a Puuc region center (Middle American Research Institute Publication 60). New Orleans (LA): Tulane University.Google Scholar
Sanders, W.T. & Webster, D.. 1988. The Mesoamerican urban tradition. American Anthropologist 90: 521-46.Google Scholar
Scarborough, V.L. & Burnside, W.R.. 2010. Complexity and sustainability: perspectives from the ancient Maya and the modern Balinese. American Antiquity 75(2): 327-63.Google Scholar
Sharer, R.J. & Traxler, L.P.. 2006. The ancient Maya. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. 1989. Cities, towns, and urbanism: comment on Sanders and Webster. American Anthropologist 91: 454-60.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. 2002. The earliest cities, in G. Gmelch & Zenner, W.P. (ed.) Urban life: readings in the anthropology of the city: 3–19. Prospect Heights (IL): Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. 2007. Form and meaning in the earliest cities: a new approach to ancient urban planning. Journal of Planning History 6: 3–47.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. 2009. Editorial-Just how comparative is comparative urban geography? A perspective from archaeology. Urban Geography 30: 113-17.Google Scholar
Weber, M. 1998 [1908]. The agrarian sociology of ancient civilization. Translated by Frank, R.I.. London: Verso.Google Scholar