Marcello Canuto

Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala

Lidar (a type of airborne laser scanning) provides a powerful technique for three-dimensional mapping of topographic features. It is proving to be a valuable tool in archaeology, particularly where the remains of structures may be hidden beneath forest canopies. Canuto et al. present lidar data covering more than 2000 square kilometers of lowland Guatemala, which encompasses ancient settlements of the Classic Maya civilization (see the Perspective by Ford and Horn). The data yielded population estimates, measures of agricultural intensification, and evidence of investment in landscape-transforming infrastructure. The findings indicate that this Lowland Maya society was a regionally interconnected network of densely populated and defended cities, which were sustained by an array of agricultural practices that optimized land productivity and the interactions between rural and urban communities.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6409/eaau0137

Impacts of Climate Change on the Collapse of Lowland Maya Civilization

2016

Paleoclimatologists have discovered abundant evidence that droughts coincided with collapse of the Lowland Classic Maya civilization, and some argue that climate change contributed to societal disintegration. Many archaeologists, however, maintain that drought cannot explain the timing or complex nature of societal changes at the end of the Classic Period, between the eighth and eleventh centuries ce. This review presents a compilation of climate proxy data indicating that droughts in the ninth to eleventh century were the most severe and frequent in Maya prehistory. Comparison with recent archaeological evidence, however, indicates an earlier beginning for complex economic and political processes that led to the disintegration of states in the southern region of the Maya lowlands that precedes major droughts. Nonetheless, drought clearly contributed to the unusual severity of the Classic Maya collapse, and helped to inhibit the type of recovery seen in earlier periods of Maya prehistory. In the drier northern Maya Lowlands, a later political collapse at ca. 1000 ce appears to be related to ongoing extreme drought. Future interdisciplinary research should use more refined climatological and archaeological data to examine the relationship between climate and social processes throughout the entirety of Maya prehistory.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-earth-060115-0125…

Continuities and Changes in Maya Archaeology

2014
As early as 1904, Franz Boas succinctly described Anglo-American anthropology’s innate dualism: “We find in anthropology two distinct methods of research…the historical method which endeavors to reconstruct the actual history of mankind, [and] the generalizing method which attempts to establish the laws of its development” (Boas 1974[1904]:24; our italics). Insofar as Maya archaeology has belonged to this intellectual tradition, it too has engaged in a century-long struggle between historical and generalizing tendencies. The study of Classic

Maya sociopolitical integration has long been riven by this polemic, as research has tended to produce either unitary models based on the history of polity centers or segmentary models generalized from settlement analysis. This struggle of Boasian proportions has fostered the proliferation of other dichotomies as well, such as political versus domestic economy, monumental versus residential architecture, political center versus rural hinterland, that have inhibited a holistic study of mechanisms of sociopolitical integration in Classic Maya society.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781135946074/chapters/10.4324%2F…

Let no space go to waste: comparing the uses of space between two Late Classic centers in the El Paraíso valley, Copan, Honduras

2010

Phosphorus analysis of earthen and plaster floors has been used in Mesoamerica to locate and identify activities at ancient sites. This study uses phosphorus analysis to discern if the inhabitants of two Late Classic coeval and proximal sites located in the El Paraíso Valley of Honduras were different culturally from each other. The buried earthen and plaster surfaces of both sites were systematically sampled and analyzed for phosphorus remains. The patterns of elevated phosphorus from these open spaces were subsequently compared to determine if differences in the habitual use and treatment of open spaces could be discerned. These differences are evaluated as a function of behavioral norms, functional responses, and cultural dispositions in order to evaluate the extent to which these two populations were indeed different from each other.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440309002891

Bracketing the Copan Dynasty: Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic Settlements at Copan, Honduras

2009

Archaeological research within the Classic Maya center of Copan and in its surrounding rural regions has generated new data relating to the periods both preceding and following the center’s Classic period dynasty. Recent excavations at both Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic settlements have revealed more similarities between the inhabitants of these two “non-Classic” time periods than to the inhabitants of the intervening and better known Classic period. We explore this striking set of similarities in terms of settlement pattern, spatial organization, architecture, material culture, and ritual deposits and spaces. We suggest that the similarities between the Copan region’s Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic populations and their mutual differences with intervening Classic period peoples reflecta cultural connection between these two populations.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-antiquity/articl…

Early Classic Architecture Beneath the Copan Acropolis: A Research Update

1999

Excavations beneath the Copan Acropolis provide the most complete record known for the origins and development of an Early Classic Maya royal complex (ca. a.d. 420–650). Beginning at the time of the historically identified dynastic founder, the earliest levels include the first royal compound, centered on a small talud-tablero platform, a vaulted tomb that may be that of the founder, and an adjacent tomb that may be that of the founder's wife and dynastic matriarch. The timing and development of architecture provide evidence of the founding and growth of Copan as the capital of a Classic-period polity during the reigns of the first seven kings (a.d. 426–544). By the reigns of Rulers 8–11 (a.d. 544–628), the Early Classic Acropolis covered about the same area as its final version in the Late Classic. Documentation of specific Acropolis buildings provides evidence of the external connections that reinforced the authority of Copan's Early Classic kings. Building sequences reflect the perpetuation of political power by using important locations as symbolic links to the sacred past. The Early Classic Acropolis also provides new evidence for the beginnings of palace architecture that have important implications for the origins of Maya state-level organizations. Overall, the findings from the Early Classic Copan Acropolis promise to significantly advance our understanding of the origins and development of Maya state systems.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/article/ear…