The Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project: Summary

In summary, the Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project has surpassed its goals of collecting a large, diverse database on the settlement, artifact assemblages, and ecofacts of this primary Postclassic Maya city for the purposes of reconstructing its domestic and political economies. When the technical monograph and the Kukulkan’s book project are completed this coming year (2006), major information will become available to our colleagues and the interested public about the organization of Postclassic Maya economy and social organization. This analysis of a core political Maya capital will serve as an index for future comparisons through time and space among Mesoamerican cities and their supporting settlements. Our holistic approach in simultaneously analyzing 100% of the materials and features recovered will, we anticipate, stand as a lasting contribution – for several classes of material, no typology has ever been published. Our results will be valuable on both the descriptive/typological level as well as for the application of these studies to the analysis of socio-spatial units of Mayapan’s society and the implications for the organization of political and economic power at the site.

Some of our preliminary results have been surprising; Mayapán in some important respects has distributional patterns of long distance materials that resemble those of Classic Maya cities. We have suggested that the pronounced political hierarchy at this complex city was manifested in differential access to distant trade goods – this finding was not anticipated in light of widely published evidence for the role of amplified market exchange during the Postclassic period, which generally makes distant trade goods more available to members of the lower class. Documentary sources indicate that Mayapán’s nobility engaged directly in long distance exchange with distant polities – this pattern is likely responsible for top-down distributions of distant trade goods (luxury and utilitarian) at the site. Mayapán is unlike smaller Postclassic sites in the eastern lowlands for which analogous distributional information is available; these latter sites have much more equitable distributions of distant materials such as obsidian. We have argued that social class hierarchies were more pronounced and rigid at this complex, densely populated political capital than at smaller polities in the hinterland. Further comparisons of commoner versus elite domestic assemblages will provide a full assessment of these patterns.

Another preliminary result of our investigations is the observation that ritual paraphernalia was largely controlled by members of the upper class. This fact contradicts earlier assumptions about Postclassic society, which argued that religious artifacts were commonly used at the household level by all members of society. In this respect, Mayapán also continues a tradition of guarded access to ritual knowledge and resources from the Classic period. Similar patterns are observed for eastern sites in the hinterland.

The city’s nobility and commoner classes were comprised of a range of households with different occupational specializations and degrees of affluence. Upper status houses vary from elaborate palaces near the site center to finely constructed multi-room dwellings located in distant neighborhoods. Some commoner houses have assemblages that are modest and reveal little craft industry, while the residents of others seem to have focused on a particular craft such as shell or lithic tool manufacture. Residents outside the wall were likely farmers due to their proximity to outfield agricultural features. Evidence is also seen for infield garden plots in the form of walled field space between the city’s houselots. Raising game was an important economic activity at Mayapán; unlike other Postclassic sites, residents of the city regularly raised deer in captivity. Faunal age at death profiles indicate a high proportion of juvenile deer (and dog) in the sample, and small animal pens are common features within the city’s houselots. At least one ethnohistoric source reveals that Mayapán traded game (and fruit) to coastal cities in exchange for marine products (salt and fish). When our comparisons of domestic assemblages are complete, we will be able to fully reconstruct the range of occupations associated with different social classes.

Despite its position as a core city for the Maya area during a period known for widespread exchange throughout Mesoamerica, there is considerable evidence that Mayapán made an effort to provide for much of its own basic needs. In addition to raising game and farming, most of the chert and chalcedony tools used in Mayapán houses were likely made at city workshops. Mayapán was dependent on other settlements within northern Yucatan for certain raw materials (salt, fish, and chert/chalcedony), but converted these resources to commodities that were heavily consumed at a local level. While trade was probably an important activity in the utmost tier of the economic system, Mayapán’s residents were able to provide for many of their own basic needs. We have observed important parallels to the Classic Period Maya city of Tikal in terms of this strategy. Tikal also had lithic workshops where raw materials obtained elsewhere were made into tools used by the city. These observations are summarized in Masson et al. (In Press).

The city’s population was highly diverse, and our preliminary analyses indicate that social group identity can be differentiated within neighborhoods by the proportions of rare and common pottery types and house style. At least two focal points for house group orientation existed within the city – the site center and the Itzmal Ch’en group.

Our study of the Mayapán map leads us to believe we have identified at least one major marketplace within the city in Square K (to the immediate west of Structure groups K-52, K-92, and K-98); this large quadrangular area (250X150m) is devoid of albarrada residential space divisions and house structures and has numerous modified platforms and alignments resembling the marketplace identified for Chich’en Itzá (Ruppert 1943). This marketplace is located between the site center and the major north Gate D; along this route numerous examples of ritual architecture and an alignment of elaborate elite residences can be found – pedestrians continuing south from this area could have entered the site center via its only portal gate (Structure Q-127).

Despite its characterization as one of the most politically centralized centers of the Postclassic Maya world, Mayapán’s regimes suffered episodes of violent conflict. Our recovery of a new deposit of massacred human remains at Itzmal Ch’en adds to information from the site center, and our radiocarbon dates of these features indicate that this violence occurred before the historically documented abandonment of the city in the mid-15th century.

This summary touches upon a few highlights of our investigations. Although our primary avenues of inquiry lie in the analysis of economic systems and socio-spatial dynamics of urban organization, the past five years of research have revealed many other interesting patterns. We look forward to fully publishing the results of this research within the forthcoming year.

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Updated February 7, 2006