This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and adjacent peoples in the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inka, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. Agricultural systems, technologies, and economic behaviour turn out to have been far more diverse than was expected. These findings and many others challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. The key to understanding early civilizations lies not in their historical connections but in what they can tell us about similarities and differences in human behaviour.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/2002074052.pdf

Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study

http://faculty.wwu.edu/wallin/envr442/pdf_files/chase_etal_2011_lidar_archaeology_Mayan_landscape_Belize_J_Archaeology.pdf

Airborne LiDAR, archaeology, and the ancient Maya landscape at Caracol, Belize

Urban gardens, agriculture, and water management: Sources of resilience for long-term food security in cities

The ninth century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatan peninsular region were the result of complex human–environment interactions. Large-scale Maya landscape alterations and demands placed on resources and ecosystem services generated high-stress environmental conditions that were amplified by increasing climatic aridity. Coincident with this stress, the flow of commerce shifted from land transit across the peninsula to sea-borne transit around it. These changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions generated increasing societal conflicts, diminished control by the Maya elite, and led to decisions to move elsewhere in the peninsular region rather than incur the high costs of maintaining the human–environment systems in place. After abandonment, the environment of the Central Maya Lowlands largely recovered, although altered from its state before Maya occupation; the population never recovered. This history and the spatial and temporal variability in the pattern of collapse and abandonment throughout the Maya lowlands support the case for different conditions, opportunities, and constraints in the prevailing human–environment systems and the decisions to confront them. The Maya case lends insights for the use of paleo- and historical analogs to inform contemporary global environmental change and sustainability.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/35/13908.full.pdf

Classic Period collapse of the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about human–environment relationships for sustainability

Understanding Early Civilizations

Coba: A Classic Maya Metropolis

Quantitative analysis of 3579 trees recorded in the Classic Maya city of Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico, indicates a strong relation between the location and quantity of certain trees producing fruit, fiber, bark, and resin, high-status vaulted architecture, and their distance from the center of the site out toward the fringes. The relationships suggest agreement between the residence pattern of Coba and Diego de Landa's 16th-century class-oriented description of Maya towns during preconquest times.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/204/4394/697.full.pdf

Fruit, fiber, bark, and resin: social organization of a maya urban center.

Coba represents a major Classic period Maya urban center. Archaeological investigations have suggested a complex socioeconomic integration apparent in the heterogeneity of the size, shape, and quality of architecture while demonstrating a clear demarcation between commoner and elite compounds in addition to a complex system of raised roads (sacbeob). Results of the 1974–1976 mapping efforts at Coba revealed a generalized concentric settlement pattern with elite compounds concentrated at the core. In their analysis of the settlement patterns at Tikal, Guatemala, Arnold and Ford challenged this concentric model. Their analysis of labor investment in structures within the 9 km2 core area of Tikal suggested, in contrast to Coba, a scattered rather than a concentric pattern of high-status architecture. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we tested our concentric model hypothesis for Coba by applying Arnold and Ford's work investment parameters. Our results confirmed the presence of a concentric pattern of high-status architecture at Coba closest to the core that differed from Arnold and Ford's findings of a scattered pattern in Tikal. These unique and discrete findings suggest that all major cities in the Maya area may not possess identical settlement patterns. To support our findings indicating urbanism, we also make a detailed analysis of the Coba and Calakmul demographics focusing on the Late Classic period.

Coba, quintana roo, mexico: a recent analysis of the social, economic and political organization of a major maya urban center

Data from Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico indicate strongly that Arnold and Ford's (1980) settlement pattern analysis of Tikal, Guatemala is the result of an insufficient sample combined with their inability to distinguish between vaulted and unvaulted masonry structures. These deficiencies, together with a standard labor investment calculation for shrines and the use of an invalid measuring technique, have produced a distorted homogenized view of Classic Maya urban organization.

An Examination of Settlement Patterns at Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and Tikal, Guatemala: A Reply to Arnold and Ford

The house-lot boundary walls at Coba and the enclosed solares delineate ancient familial compounds, providing data to reconstruct the size and composition of Maya households during the Late Classic, and to allow preliminary calculations of the amount of land available to the residents for possible kitchen gardening activities. It is argued that the solar was the locus of kitchen gardens at Coba. In addition, the presence of house-lot boundary walls in Coba facilitates the testing of Bullard's (1954) hypothesis, based on his survey at Mayapan, that no relationship exists between the size of a house lot (solar) and the social status of the household group. The solar corresponds to the land immediately adjacent to, and surrounding, a household platform group. This space can be delineated by boundary markers, including both nonperishable and perishable walls.

Ellen R. Kintz

Papers

Coba: A Classic Maya Metropolis

Fruit, fiber, bark, and resin: social organization of a maya urban center.

Coba, quintana roo, mexico: a recent analysis of the social, economic and political organization of a major maya urban center

An Examination of Settlement Patterns at Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and Tikal, Guatemala: A Reply to Arnold and Ford

Solares , Kitchen Gardens, and Social Status at Coba