Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism
492 pages, 6 x 9
122
Hardcover
Release Date:23 Jul 2023
ISBN:9781646424085
Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism
Planning and Flexibility in the American Tropics
Edited by Damien B. Marken and M. Charlotte Arnauld
University Press of Colorado
Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism tears down entrenched misconceptions of Maya cities to build a new archaeology of Maya urbanism by highlighting the residential dynamics that underwrote one of the most famous and debated civilizations of the ancient Americas. Exploring the diverse yet interrelated agents and processes that modified Maya urban landscapes over time, this volume highlights the adaptive flexibility of urbanization in the tropical Maya lowlands.
Integrating recent lidar survey data with more traditional excavation and artifact-based archaeological practices, chapters in this volume offer broadened perspectives on the patterns of Maya urban design and planning by viewing bottom-up and self-organizing processes as integral to the form, development, and dissolution of Classic lowland cities alongside potentially centralized civic designs. Full of innovative examples of how to build an archaeology of urbanism that can be applied not just to the lowland Maya and across the region, Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism simultaneously improves interpretations of lowland Maya culture history and contributes to empirical and comparative discussions of tropical, non-Western cities worldwide.
Contributors: Divina Perla Barrera, Arianna Campiani, Cyril Castanet, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Lydie Dussol, Sara Dzul Góngora, Keith Eppich, Thomas Garrison, María Rocio González de la Mata, Timothy Hare, Julien Hiquet, Takeshi Inomata, Eva Lemonnier, José Francisco Osorio León, Marilyn Masson, Elsa Damaris Menéndez, Timothy Murtha, Philippe Nondédéo, Keith M. Prufer, Louise Purdue, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, Julien Sion, Travis Stanton, Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo, Karl A. Taube, Marc Testé, Amy E. Thompson, Daniela Triadan
Integrating recent lidar survey data with more traditional excavation and artifact-based archaeological practices, chapters in this volume offer broadened perspectives on the patterns of Maya urban design and planning by viewing bottom-up and self-organizing processes as integral to the form, development, and dissolution of Classic lowland cities alongside potentially centralized civic designs. Full of innovative examples of how to build an archaeology of urbanism that can be applied not just to the lowland Maya and across the region, Building an Archaeology of Maya Urbanism simultaneously improves interpretations of lowland Maya culture history and contributes to empirical and comparative discussions of tropical, non-Western cities worldwide.
Contributors: Divina Perla Barrera, Arianna Campiani, Cyril Castanet, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Lydie Dussol, Sara Dzul Góngora, Keith Eppich, Thomas Garrison, María Rocio González de la Mata, Timothy Hare, Julien Hiquet, Takeshi Inomata, Eva Lemonnier, José Francisco Osorio León, Marilyn Masson, Elsa Damaris Menéndez, Timothy Murtha, Philippe Nondédéo, Keith M. Prufer, Louise Purdue, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, Julien Sion, Travis Stanton, Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo, Karl A. Taube, Marc Testé, Amy E. Thompson, Daniela Triadan
‘A dynamic multi-scalar view of Maya cities showing them to be long-lived, complex, ever-changing landscapes that included not only architecture but the larger agricultural landscape that helped sustain them—they were garden cities in a neotropical landscape.’
—Claudia García-Des Lauriers, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Damien B. Marken is assistant professor of anthropology at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania–Bloomsburg and codirector of the Waka’ Archaeological Project in Guatemala. He is the editor of Palenque: Recent Investigations at the Classic Maya Center and coeditor of Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands.M. Charlotte Arnauld is an archaeologist and research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in France. She has directed or codirected five long-term projects in highland Verapaz and northwest lowland La Joyanca in Petén, Guatemala; Balamku and Río Bec in Campeche, Mexico; and Zacapu in western Mexico. Her publications include several authored and coedited books on the archaeology of Michoacán and the Maya lowlands including Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities and papers in numerous journals.
