Settlement Development and Social Landscapes at the Classic Period Maya center Uxbenká

Summary

Using a Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) framework, the social and environmental factors that influenced community development have been modeled at Uxbenká, a Classic period Maya center located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains. This study focuses on settlement decision making dynamics using a chronological assessment of the expansion of settlements based on radiocarbon dating and ceramic typologies in conjunction with statistical analyses to test which factors influenced patch selection of early colonizers of the Uxbenká landscape. We found that over time the social construction of the community shifted from an Ideal Free Distribution, where individuals had free-choice of where they settled, to an Ideal Despotic Distribution, in which despotic elites’ influenced settlement choice of hinterland residents.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying Human Social Dynamics: A Case Study from Southern Belize   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17133