New Data on the Urban Grid at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala

Summary

Gridded settlements are rare in the Americas and previously unknown in the Maya world until the Spanish conquest. Recent work has documented a modular orthogonal grid at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén, Guatemala. The grid appears to have been imposed upon much of the site around 400-200 BCE. In other parts of the world, planned orthogonal grids are frequently associated with powerful central authority. If this were the case at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ then then this act of power is correlated with the emergence of states in the area. Hence instead of elite claims to power carved on monuments, we likely have evidence of elite power carved into a city. Early rulers at the site likely used the grid to organize and control the newly urbanized population. Our recent work on the grid corridors has revealed that some of their surfaces were uniquely constructed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Preclassic to Colonial: Current Investigations in the Petén Lakes Region, Guatemala

Keywords

Spatial Coverage