A Tale of Two Types of Cities: The Rise and Decline of Low-Density Urbanism in Champotón, Campeche

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over his distinguished career William Folan made a substantive contribution to knowledge of the scale, form, and nature of Maya urbanism. Classic Maya cities are often classified as a low-density agrarian-based urban tradition, a cross-cultural concept characterized by expansive settlement zones, lack of urban/rural zonation, and a tendency for long-term demographic collapse. There has been less attention to variability within Maya urbanism. This paper examines diachronic change in the Río Champotón drainage, where regional occupational continuity from the Formative through colonial eras provides an ideal setting to examine multiple episodes of urbanization. During the Preclassic and Classic periods the region was integrated into political and economic networks centered in the interior Maya Lowlands, with a network of low-density cities extending along the Río Champotón from the Edzná Valley to the Gulf Coast. As inland kingdoms fell into decline and long-term demographic collapse, flourishing communities in Champotón reoriented to the coast and the emergent political, economic, and ecological realities of the Postclassic period. The Classic to Postclassic transition witnessed the decline of low-density cities and the formation of a distinctive nucleated urban tradition. Dynamics in the Champotón region provide important insights into broader transformations taking place across the Maya Lowlands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36161.0