The Roots of Urbanization: Early Middle Preclassic Transformations to a Sedentary Lifestyle at Ceibal, Guatemala

Summary

Our research at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala, has led to new insights into processes involved in the transition of mobile hunting and horticultural populations to a more sedentary lifestyle and emergent social inequalities. Like in other areas of the world, the first architectural constructions at Ceibal, were public-ritual configurations, built communally by a still mobile population around 950 BC. Sedentism developed gradually and may have first involved people with higher social status and who may have been involved with carrying out public ritual performances. These early ritual constructions, often called an E-Group assemblage, set the stage for the first settlements and the accelerating urbanization of Maya settlements in the Preclassic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20703