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Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale.

ABSTRACT: Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a fundamental part of cities and are defined by their spatial, architectural, and material elements. Neighborhoods existed in ancient centers of various scales, and multiple methods have been employed to identify ancient neighborhoods in archaeological contexts. However, the use of different methods for neighborhood identification within the same spatiotemporal setting results in challenges for comparisons within and between ancient societies. Here, we focus on using a single method-combining Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN) and Kernel Density (KD) analyses of household groups-to identify potential neighborhoods based on clusters of households at 23 ancient centers across the Maya Lowlands. While a one-size-fits all model does not work for neighborhood identification everywhere, the ANN/KD method provides quantifiable data on the clustering of ancient households, which can be linked to environmental zones and urban scale. We found that centers in river valleys exhibited greater household clustering compared to centers in upland and escarpment environments. Settlement patterns on flat plains were more dispersed, with little discrete spatial clustering of households. Furthermore, we categorized the ancient Maya centers into discrete urban scales, finding that larger centers had greater variation in household spacing compared to medium-sized and smaller centers. Many larger political centers possess heterogeneity in household clustering between their civic-ceremonial cores, immediate hinterlands, and far peripheries. Smaller centers exhibit greater household clustering compared to larger ones. This paper quantitatively assesses household clustering among nearly two dozen centers across the Maya Lowlands, linking environment and urban scale to settlement patterns. The findings are applicable to ancient societies and modern cities alike; understanding how humans form multi-scalar social groupings, such as neighborhoods, is fundamental to human experience and social organization.

SUBMITTER: Thompson AE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9629605 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale.

Thompson Amy E AE Walden John P JP Chase Adrian S Z ASZ Hutson Scott R SR Marken Damien B DB Cap Bernadette B Fries Eric C EC Guzman Piedrasanta M Rodrigo MR Hare Timothy S TS Horn Sherman W SW Micheletti George J GJ Montgomery Shane M SM Munson Jessica J Richards-Rissetto Heather H Shaw-Müller Kyle K Ardren Traci T Awe Jaime J JJ Brown M Kathryn MK Callaghan Michael M Ebert Claire E CE Ford Anabel A Guerra Rafael A RA Hoggarth Julie A JA Kovacevich Brigitte B Morris John M JM Moyes Holley H Powis Terry G TG Yaeger Jason J Houk Brett A BA Prufer Keith M KM Chase Arlen F AF Chase Diane Z DZ

PloS one 20221102 11

Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a fundamental part of cities and are defined by their spatial, architectural, and material elements. Neighborhoods existed in ancient centers of various scales, and multiple methods have been employed to identify ancient neighborhoods in archaeological contexts. However, the use of different methods for neighborhood ident ...[more]

PMID: 36322539

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Project description:In the 1920s, during the first archaeological excavations at Uaxactún, Petén, Guatemala, an architectural complex named Group E was interpreted as an ancient Maya astronomical observatory, intended specifically for sighting the equinoctial and solstitial sunrises. In the following decades, a large number of architectural compounds with the same configuration have been found, most of them in the central lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula. The multiple hypotheses that have been proposed about the astronomical function of these complexes, commonly designated as E Groups, range from those attributing them a paramount role in astronomical observations to those that consider them merely allegorical or commemorative allusions to celestial cycles, without any observational use. This study, based on quantitative analyses of a reasonably large sample of alignment data, as well as on contextual evidence, shows that many of the previous hypotheses cannot be sustained. I argue that E Groups, although built primarily for ritual purposes, were astronomically functional, but also that they had no specific or particularly prominent role in astronomical observations. Their orientations belong to widespread alignment groups, mostly materialized in buildings of other types and explicable in terms of some fundamental concerns of the agriculturally-based Maya societies. I present the evidence demonstrating that the astronomical orientations initially embedded in E Groups, which represent the earliest standardized form of Maya monumental architecture and whose occurrence in practically all early cities in the central Yucatan peninsula attests to their socio-political significance, were later transferred to buildings and compounds of other types. Therefore, it is precisely the importance of the astronomically and cosmologically significant directions, first incorporated in E Groups, that allows us to understand some prominent aspects of ancient Maya architecture and urbanism.

Dataset Information

Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale.

Publications

Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale.

Similar Datasets

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