The Desakota as a Model for Understanding Dense Urban-Agrarian Settlement among the Ancient Maya

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Large-scale surveys using lidar and other remote sensing technologies have revealed that Maya urban centers were much larger in both settlement area and number of features than previously thought, while also incorporating various forms of large-scale anthropogenic landscape modification for the purposes of intensive agricultural production. These findings challenge the existing models for understanding Maya urbanism. The concept of the "desakota," used in urban geography to describe densely populated urban/agrarian mixed-use areas in Southeast Asia, is employed here to understand these newly recognized attributes of Maya settlement. Settlement data from the Aguacate region in western Belize is used to demonstrate the applicability of the desakota model to a Maya case. The pattern in this region consists of widely distributed, patchy settlement with numerous small monumental sites and continuity with the outlying settlement of adjoining larger centers. This pattern may be better explained by the desakota model than by descriptors like "peri-urban zones," "hinterland," or "low-density urbanism" that have been applied previously.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32525