Inter-site Causeways as Political Infrastructure in the Northern Maya Lowlands

Summary

In the Maya lowlands, several polities oversaw the construction of long causeways that connected regional centers with smaller settlements. As infrastructure, such causeways have been shown to facilitate exchange of basic goods between people at different sites. Archaeologists also view these causeways as political statements that materialize the extent of a polity and emphasize hierarchical relations between settlements on the causeway. Recent research along the 18km long causeway between Uci and Cansahcab, Yucatan, Mexico, suggests that Uci’s leaders attempted to use the causeway as part of strategies for administering rural villages. This research also shows that the causeway did not, however, have much of an effect on regional settlement patterns. The causeway certainly outlasted the Uci polity, and it was re-used in a variety of ways, none of which evince a particular reverence for its original purpose.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Technopolitics of Ancient Infrastructures

Keywords

Spatial Coverage