Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Establishing ancient population histories and determining how the ancient populations were distributed across the landscape over time constitute two of the most pressing problems in archaeology. Mayanists have traditionally established population numbers using a model of individuals per structure or residential group, but without full agreement on methodology about how to consider time, function of constructions, or family size. In other parts of Mesoamerica, such as in Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico, population estimates are done differently. Yet no matter how they are accomplished, without comparably established population histories, it is difficult to talk about levels of complexity and organization, carrying capacity and sustainability, and change over time. Indeed, our very interpretations about how ancient societies were structured are to a large degree predicated on how many people lived within a given center or polity. With the application of lidar helping demographic considerations, the creation of new archaeological data relating to households, and larger site survey samples, it is an appropriate time to reevaluate ancient population history. This session hopes to reengage Mesoamerican scholars in formulating new approaches to gaining information on past populations and the modeling that derives from such an exercise.
Other Keywords
demography •
Survey •
Maya: Classic •
Maya: Preclassic •
Digital Archaeology: GIS •
Dating Techniques •
Urbanism •
Ceramic Analysis •
Highland Mesoamerica: Classic •
Neighborhood dynamics
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Belize (Country) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Quintana Roo (State / Territory) •
Campeche (State / Territory) •
Peten (State / Territory) •
Orange Walk (State / Territory) •
Cayo (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)
- Documents (9)
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Ancient Demography in Northwest Yucatán, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research in northwest Yucatán, Mexico, has played a large role in the development of demographic archaeology in the Maya area, beginning with Edward Thompson’s nineteenth-century investigations of housemounds at Labna and reaching a mid-twentieth-century pinnacle with maps of Mayapan and Dzibilchaltun. In...
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Ancient Population History in the Palenque Region: The Problem of the Selection of Population Proxies (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...
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Basin of Mexico: Prehispanic Population History (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico Survey and the Teotihuacan Mapping Project were landmark projects in the history of archaeology. One goal of both projects was reconstructing prehispanic population history to improve our understanding of cultural evolution in this region. The population histories and estimates...
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Classic Maya Population Densities as Seen from Río Bec, Campeche, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ideally every ancient Maya city should be characterized by its population density and its urban agricultural productivity, closely linked parameters that must be explored before tackling the issue of production/exchange relations with hinterlands. Río Bec can be characterized as a low-density urban...
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Lidar as a Tool to Estimate Late Classic Population in the Central Maya Lowlands (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2016, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative surveyed 2,100 km2 of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Department of Petén, Guatemala. This lidar survey provided an unprecedented scale of settlement data that attest to elevated population levels throughout the southern Maya lowlands, especially for the Late...
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Population Estimation in Ancient Mesoamerica: Retrospective and Prospective (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The determination of accurate population numbers for ancient Mesoamerican societies is key for making interpretations about past levels of complexity. This is not only necessary for understanding how societies changed over time but also for how they were organized over space. The techniques that...
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Population History for Caracol, Belize: Numbers, Complexity, and Urbanism (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Caracol, Belize, is among the largest known ancient Maya cities. Its urban area spans some 200 km2 and is integrated by a series of radial causeways that connect outlying public architecture and plazas to the central hub. The entire landscape is covered by residential settlement and agricultural...
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The Population of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala during the Preclassic Period: New Considerations (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The population estimates from the Preclassic period for the site of Kaminaljuyu located in the Maya Highlands were the result of regional surveys conducted by the Pennsylvania State University research program in the 1970s. Since then, Guatemala City urban sprawl has impacted the site conservation....
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Reconstructing Population Histories in the Gulf Lowlands: Review and Prospect (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past three decades the Gulf Lowlands of Mexico have witnessed an explosion of systematically collected archaeological survey data. The Gulf Lowlands, however, present particular challenges for the collection of data, reconstruction of local population histories, and comparison among datasets...