Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 36 (2014) 196–210
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The role of infield agriculture in Maya cities Chelsea Fisher ⇑ Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, United States
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 April 2014 Revision received 2 September 2014
Keywords: Agriculture Urbanism Household archaeology Maya archaeology
a b s t r a c t Archaeologists investigating urban settlement in the Maya area have attributed the dispersed nature of Maya cities to intra-settlement infield agriculture – but we have not yet addressed how to determine sources of variability in these agro-urban landscapes. In this paper I propose that one specific kind of infield agriculture – multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based subsistence systems – affected settlement patterns in three northern Maya lowland cities: Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil. By comparing variation in the number of associated domestic structures (an approximation of multigenerational coresidence) and the amount of vacant houselot area enclosed within property walls (an approximation of land preserved for gardens and arboriculture), it is possible to assess relative differences in investment in this particular strategy. Ultimately different kinds of infield agriculture will lead to different kinds of low-density cities. This approach can be modified for multiple scales of investigation and should stimulate further discussion of the relationship between subsistence and urbanism. Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Recent research on urbanism in the Maya area has shown that many Maya settlements can be considered low-density cities: their residential and institutional components are relatively dispersed across the landscape (Fletcher, 2009; Smith, 2011; Isendahl, 2012; Smith and Novic, 2012; Isendahl and Smith, 2013). Why did the Maya maintain open spaces in their cities? Infield agriculture has been credited as the primary reason (Isendahl, 2012). According to this view, space within the urban sector was kept open for intensive cultivation of crops and other economically useful plants. This explanation fits well with current views of Maya agriculture, which have transformed over the past five decades from simplistic models of swidden farming to much more sophisticated models of diverse subsistence strategies and technologies (e.g. Puleston, 1968; Harrison and Turner, 1978; Flannery, 1982; Turner and Harrison, 1983; Fedick, 1996; Sheets et al., 2011; Dahlin et al., 2005; Robin, 2012). Even though low-density urbanism should be embraced as an analytical tool for understanding the nature of Maya cities, it should not be applied uniformly across the Maya area. Agro-urbanism is the basic template, but understanding the specific variations
⇑ Address: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, Ruthven Museums Building, 1109 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States. E-mail address:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.10.001 0278-4165/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
of it adopted by communities is key to how we model past processes of settlement, land use, economy, and political interaction. We require a more nuanced approach. Thus while we can use infield agriculture as a starting point, citing its presence alone is not enough to explain intersite variability in low-density cities. This paper proposes one cause for some of the settlement diversity seen across some Maya cities: multigenerational, householdbased stewardship of infield agricultural systems. Using comparative archaeological data on houselot size and number of structures per houselot at three cities in the northern Maya lowlands – Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil (see Fig. 1) – I show that the differing degree to which households maintained long-term ownership over open land around the house helps to explain patterns of urban variation. As I said, this is only one cause – we should expect many more. This discussion is not presented to be conclusive as much as it is to call attention to the need for more complex models of Maya urbanism and pre-modern urbanism more generally. 2. Household and house, infield and outfield Before going further, a few terms need to be defined. A household is a corporate social entity or activity group categorized by its various functions, which include production, consumption, resource distribution, coresidence, transmission, and reproduction (Wilk, 1983; Ashmore and Wilk, 1988; Netting et al., 1984; Alexander, 1998). Houses are the physical structures where households live, though more than one household can reside together in
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a single structure, just as a single household can live in multiple structures (Goody, 1972; Wilk, 1983). Two or more structures occupied by a single household can be called a house cluster. A houselot is the area directly adjacent to and surrounding a house (or houses). Houselots have considerable time depth in tropical lowland Mesoamerica, where they serve as the household’s primary living area, its organizational center, and the site for a wide range of domestic activities and tasks (Killion, 1990). Killion’s houselot model breaks down the entire houselot (often called the solar) into discrete areas with different attributes or functions, including primary dwelling structures, multipurpose clear spaces for domestic activities, refuse areas, and garden areas (Killion, 1990). At some ancient Maya sites the boundaries of houselots were marked off, as property lines, with stone walls still visible on the ground today. Extant boundary walls and houses permit observations about how houselot space was claimed and maintained by households over time. Infield agriculture is one side of infield-outfield agricultural production, a phenomenon originally formalized to describe European agriculture but with similar versions practiced in the tropics (Killion, 1990). Infield-outfield agriculture ‘‘is distinguished by the presence of two distinct cropping zones, one of which is located within easy walking distance of the settlement (the infield). One or more parcels (the outfield) generally are located at more distant locations requiring a greater investment in travel to field locations and often necessitating a temporary residential shift to field huts away from the primary residence’’ (Killion, 1990: 197). Another locus of production is the houselot garden, an intensively tended small plot of land located near the residence where a polycultural mix of food crops and other useful economic plants are grown (e.g. Killion, 1992; Netting, 1993; Alexander, 1998). Killion differentiates the houselot garden as conceptually and physically apart from infields and outfields (Killion, 1990, 1992). This separation is perhaps amplified by contemporary ethnographies’ dismissal of houselot gardens’ contribution as negligible to overall food production (e.g. Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934; Steggerda, 1941). However Killion himself, in a chapter with Sanders, notes that in densely populated areas in 20th century Mexico, maize grown in houselot gardens often provided up to a third of the family’s total food requirement (Sanders and Killion, 1992: 18). Though land-management features are occasionally visible in ancient houselots (i.e. Lohse and Findlay, 2000), others have noted that the archaeological
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signatures for agricultural intensification are often ambiguous (Dahlin et al., 2005; Hutson et al., 2007). This increases the risk of underestimating how much food was produced in houselots. For these and other reasons I will address in detail later, it seems likely that ancient houselot gardens played a more critical role in subsistence than we might suspect from ethnographic data alone. Thus, keeping in mind (1) that the original model of infield-outfield agriculture was tailored to temperate Europe and (2) that ancient Maya cities were more densely populated and employed different subsistence regimes than their ethnographic analogs, I follow previous studies in my preference of a more flexible application of the infield-outfield model (Netting, 1993; Alexander, 1998). I suggest that for ancient low-density cities, investment in houselot gardening should be considered one strategy in a larger suite of intensive, intra-settlement subsistence strategies that, taken together, we can call infield agriculture. 3. Infield agriculture on a multigenerational scale A discussion of multigenerational infield agriculture in the Maya area starts with two components that arise repeatedly in ethnographic and ethnohistoric literature: extended family households and houselot subsistence systems. After introducing each, I reframe the Maya example within the context of Robert Netting’s smallholder model to underline some broader patterns that accompany multigenerational household-managed, houselotbased infield agriculture. Then I conclude this section with a case for vacant houselot area and number of structures per houselot as viable archaeological correlates of this specific kind of infield agriculture. 3.1. Evidence of extended family households in the Maya area Extended family or multigenerational Maya households are well documented in Spanish records that date to the 16th century (see Table 1 for a list of the average number of inhabitants per house in Colonial-era censuses). One way households grew was as a result of post-marital residence customs. The 16th-century friar Diego de Landa (in Tozzer, 1941: 41) observed that households consisted of more than one nuclear family and more than one residential structure. Newlyweds built houses opposite the
Fig. 1. Map of the northern Maya lowlands, in the northern part of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Locations of the major sites described in the text are indicated.
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Table 1 Number of houses and average number of inhabitants per house in Colonial censuses (Table 2, Roys et al., 1959: 205). Town
Number of houses
Average number of inhabitants per house
Pencuyut Tizimin-Boxchen Dzonotchuil Tecay Tixcacauche Cozumel Island
81 56 76 37 59 39
8.42 9.89 8.66 7.48 8.32 11.43
house of either the husband’s or wife’s father and lived there during the first year of marriage. Different villages seem to have had their ‘‘ideal’’ post-marital residence pattern, but more likely those decisions were based on a variety of factors, namely the availability of residential space and personal relationships (Restall, 1988). Another way households might have grown was by incorporating distant kin or non-kin subordinates. This inference is based on the occasional occurrence of residents affiliated with a household who cannot be linked patronymically to the rest of the household (Restall, 1988). Wauchope (1938) noted a similar pattern of indentured residents or servants in a Cakchiquel town in the 20th century. Spanish officials resolutely tried to stop the custom of multifamily households and encourage single-family residences. The Ordinance of Tomás López Medel, issued in 1552, ordered each vecino to construct a separate house. However, the pattern was not easily quelled as suggested by its resurfacing in records more than a century later; for example, the governor of Oxcutzcab issued an order saying, ‘‘Each family shall live separately in its own house and not with others, however closely related they may be’’ (Roys et al., 1959). Late 16th-century census records from Cozumel and Pencuyut (Roys et al., 1940) similarly suggest that, despite Spanish efforts, settlement consisted of multiple family households with members living in a cluster of associated buildings. The imposition of street grids, formalized property rights, and the reduction of houselot size all contributed to the shrinking number of people constituting a Maya household (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 31). By the early 20th century, the average number of household members in northern Maya households had diminished considerably (see Table 2 for a list of the average number of inhabitants per house as recorded in 1941). However, multiple family households persisted in some places, as observed by Redfield and Villa Rojas at the village of Chan Kom. Redfield and Villa Rojas suggested that the extended domestic family was once more common but was becoming less so due to lasting effects of Spanish land reorganization and more recent technological and economic shifts. In the 1940s, Redfield and Villa Rojas found that 2/3 of households at Chan Kom consisted of a married couple, their children, and some unmarried relatives of one spouse or the other. The other 1/3 of households (n = 10) contained more than one family. Of those multiplefamily households, the two with the most people were headed by Chan Kom’s two most esteemed and prosperous older men.
As described by Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934: 90), the life cycle of one of these multi-family households had been as follows (the numbers correspond with structures diagrammed in Fig. 2): In 1906 the household patriarch arrived in Chan Kom and constructed a pole and thatch house (Structure 1) which functioned as both a sleeping room and a kitchen. When the village street grid was later laid out, he built another thatched house (Structure 2) facing the street and a separate building for cooking (Structure 3). Some of his children slept in this separate cookhouse. By 1928 he had a total of nine children, two of whom were already married. To accommodate everyone, the patriarch built a masonry house (Structure 4) in the corner of the parcel and a better kitchen (Structure 5), but being accustomed to sleeping in thatch houses, the family continued to sleep in Structures 2 and 5. Structure 3, the first cookhouse, was abandoned at this point. An addition (Structure 6) was added to the updated kitchen (Structure 5) to house a newly acquired grinding apparatus. At the time of Redfield’s fieldwork, the older couple and their unmarried children were sleeping in Structure 2. Another masonry room (Structure 7) was under construction. The two oldest married sons and their wives were sleeping in Structure 4 and the youngest household members were sleeping in the kitchen (Structure 5). Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934: 91) suggest, ‘‘It is probable that the extended domestic family was once more common and is now yielding to the small parental family in response to technological and economic changes’’. While one well-documented 20th century case is not enough to prove a pre-contact pattern, when combined with earlier census data and archaeological settlement pattern studies, it seems reasonable to say that extended, multigenerational family households have considerable time depth in the Maya area and in some places were the preferred mode of living. How, then, do we make the inferential jump from house clusters to multigenerational households? Archaeologists obviously lack the kind of information obtained by Redfield’s and Villa Rojas’ interviews in Chan Kom. We are left with the precaution that a household may occupy numerous houses and/or ancillary structures, each with different functions that sometimes overlap and sometimes coincide. A structure’s function would likely have changed over time as the household’s needs changed. Therefore it may be difficult to assess the number of nuclear families living in a given house cluster, particularly without excavation, since the ratio of structures to families is seldom 1:1. Wauchope’s (1938: 128) study of modern Maya houses and their archaeological significance found that ‘‘almost every family in (Yucatán and Campeche) has, in addition to its dwelling, other property which lies usually back of the main house or to one side of it’’. Some of that property took the form of structures, such as separate kitchens, storage buildings, beehive shelters, chicken houses, granaries, shrines, and sweatbath huts (though Wauchope
6 5
1 3
Table 2 Number of houses and average number of inhabitants per house in early 20th century Yucatán towns (Steggerda, 1941). Town
Number of houses
Average number of inhabitants per house
Piste Xocenpich Chan Kom Pencuyut Average
94 64 40 110 77.0
4.22 4.84 5.80 4.52 4.66
4
7
2
Fig. 2. Walled houselot and associated house cluster of an extended domestic family in Chan Kom, Yucatán recorded in the 20th century. The numbered structures correspond to the sequence and description given in the text. Redrawn from Fig. 10 in Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934: 90).
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observed no sweatbaths in Yucatán). Non-architectural features in a houselot could include vegetable gardens, orchards, wells, ovens, sascab piles (loose marl kept around for a ready supply of building material), equipment for processing animal hides, in-ground wash bowls, and sheltered wash troughs. Archaeologically, extensive horizontal excavation would be necessary to determine the functions of structures, particularly since they may appear identical in shape and size. For instance, Wauchope (1938) notes that kitchens in Yucatán are generally located behind the main house and they are usually identical in construction and size. However, the number of structures in a house cluster does seem to be positively correlated with the number of people living together, which suggests extended family residence, which in turn suggests multigenerational households. More dwellings and ancillary structures would be required to meet the sleeping and eating needs of a growing household. At the site of Seibal, Tourtellot (1983: 637) found that dwellings (houses) were associated with several types of outbuildings. He argued that the most reasonable explanation for increases in the number of dwellings in each parcel is ‘‘domestic expansion consequent on the growth of generationally extended families’’ (Tourtellot, 1983: 932). Whether or not the number of outbuildings increased at a ratio constant with the increase in dwellings, the end result is still a positive correlation between the number of structures in a house cluster and the number of people residing there. Previous discussions of Maya houselots have focused primarily on the ratio of unbuilt (vacant) area to built (covered by architecture) area per houselot (e.g. Smith, 1962; Folan et al., 1983; Magnoni et al., 2012). While I agree that considering architecture as a continuous variable can be a useful measure for some research questions, in this paper I redirect attention to the number of structures grouped together within walled houselots. Measuring structures as a discrete variable permits a generational-scale approach to household development, and from there, urban settlement patterns. While there is likely a correlation between the area covered by architecture and number of structures, ethnographic data suggest that decisions concerning family growth tend to result in the construction, refurbishment, or abandonment of structures. Decisions are made in terms of buildings, not area covered by architecture. The Chan Kom extended family residence serves as an example. So does Richard Wilk’s (1983) ethnographic work on postmarital residence patterns of modern Kekchi Maya in Belize. Though dealing with shorter-term occupations than the archaeological case studies, the dynamics of Kekchi Maya household decision-making are particularly useful for archaeologists. Wilk says that the families he talked to had ‘‘proverbs about problems resulting when too many nuclear families live under a single roof of any size. . . (which are) cited in support of the norm that couples should build themselves a new house (and move out of their parents’ or in-laws’ house) within a year after their first child is born’’ (Wilk, 1983: 105). He notes that a new couple might choose to build a house next to one of their parents’ houses, sometimes leading to clusters of up to five houses occupied by five related nuclear families. Alternatively a new couple might choose to build a house in a different village altogether. Each option carried certain advantages and disadvantages, and so decisions were made based, at least in part, on factors like population pressure on land resources. Whatever the choice or the motivation behind it, the preferred outcome was almost always the construction of a separate house for the fledgling nuclear family. In fact, the mean size of houses occupied by extended families was not significantly greater than that of houses occupied by single nuclear families (Wilk, 1983: 107). The number of structures is a more appropriate measure than architectural area for evaluating the presence of multigenerational households.
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3.2. Evidence of houselot subsistence systems in the Maya area Households maintain houselots as extramural space for a wide range of domestic activities. In the northern Maya lowlands, the region from which the three archaeological case studies below are drawn, houselot boundaries are often marked with stone walls (albarradas). This is true of modern houselots and also true for ancient houselots, whose stone walls are still visible on the ground surface, thanks to the Yucatán Peninsula’s exceptionally thin soils (e.g. Beach, 1998; Sweetwood et al., 2009). These extant walls allow us to collect data on the enclosed houselot and structures as collective units. That the pattern of marking houselot limits with stone walls was so prevalent in the northern Maya lowlands indicates that maintaining a certain amount of vacant (that is, unbuilt) land was imperative, an idea that fits with the characterization of Maya cities as low-density. Ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological data strongly suggest that this land was preserved because it provided the space and raw material for gardens and other kinds of household-organized food production.1 These houselot-based subsistence strategies can be characterized as one of numerous infield agricultural systems developed by the Maya. Chief among houselot agricultural strategies in the Maya area was the cultivation of edible plants in gardens and orchards. Situating these investments close to the house allowed for regular care and convenient collection of fruit and vegetables. At Chan Kom, Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934: 38) noted that raised gardens, whether in hollow logs or in beds elevated on wooden poles, were regularly supplemented with black soil collected from outside the yard. Raising the gardens off the ground not only allowed for cultivation in richer soils, but also protected the vegetables from livestock and even from leaf cutter ants (Steggerda, 1941). Fruit trees were the subject of much attention at Chan Kom in the 1930s as they provided both food and shade (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 47). Every household in Chan Kom grew papayas, and it was not uncommon to see many New World as well as Old World-introduced fruit trees in most houselot orchards. Fruit was consumed locally (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 54). A survey of daily diet among the Maya (Benedict and Steggerda, 1936) confirms the importance of these fruits and vegetables as nutritious supplements to the staples of maize, beans, and squash. A typical arrangement of structures and economically useful plants recorded for one Chan Kom houselot is shown in Fig. 3. In addition to areas set aside for growing fruits and vegetables, 20th century ethnographic accounts indicate that space in the walled houselot was allocated for poultry and honeybees. Chickens and, to a lesser degree, turkeys were raised in Chan Kom, the latter considered difficult to keep but important as a festival food (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 47; see locations of chicken houses in Fig. 3). Almost all men of the village kept bees as a source of honey (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 48). Hives were made from hollowed logs, wood, and dried mud. They were typically placed in a corner of the houselot farthest from the dwelling area. Other Old World animals were also raised in contemporary Maya houselots, but since they are not native to the area, they will not be discussed here. Certain elements of these infield food production strategies show continuity with historic accounts of houselot gardens and orchards of the 16th and 17th centuries. Fruit trees in particular 1 More recent studies of contemporary infield agriculture in the Maya area (e.g. Rico-Gray et al., 1990; De Clerck and Negreros-Castillo, 2000; de la Cerda and Guerra Mukul, 2008; Flores-Delgadillo et al., 2011) have addressed the role of modern homegardens and their potential contribution to sustainable food production. However, as a result of globalization and other forces, connections between these modern cases and the archaeological record are more tenuous than those between earlier ethnographic data, ethnohistory and the archaeological record, and as such will not be emphasized here.
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Fig. 3. Plan of a 20th century walled houselot from Chan Kom, Yucatán showing the spatial arrangement of structures and economically useful plants. Redrawn from Fig. 47(b) in Wauchope (1938: 129).
captured the attention of Spanish chroniclers. One of Montejo’s early letters to the crown includes his assertion that ‘‘every town is an orchard of fruit trees’’ (Documentos inéditos del Archivo de las Indias, 1898–1900: 87). Gaspar Antonio Chi’s 1582 Relación describes privately owned hollows and caves where fruit and cacao trees were grown (Chi in Tozzer, 1941: 230). Several kinds of fruit trees are described by encomenderos in the Relaciones de Yucatán (Asensio et al., 1898). Roys’ compilation of fruit trees said to be cultivated in the 16th century lists various annonas, hog plums, guava, guayo, kanizte, nancen, bec, kopte, cow okra, kunche, and cocoyol or tuk (Roys, 1972: 40). Presumably much of this fruit was produced on land belonging to or at least associated with specific households, though it should be noted that Colonial wills indicate that fruit tree ownership was not necessarily contingent on whose land the trees were planted on (Restall, 1988). In such cases trees, rather than land, could be owned. Raising turkeys and honeybees in the houselot also turns out to have considerable time depth. A narrative of one of the first Spanish entradas into Yucatán says, ‘‘On inspecting the town and entering the houses our men found in all and each one of them a great quantity of turkeys all prepared and dressed for eating by those Indians’’ (in Benedict and Steggerda, 1936). As noted in more recent times, most families kept beehives made from hollow tree trunks and sealed with wood or stone (Roys, 1972). The prevalence of turkeys and honeybees is further visible in the Tax List of 1549 (Paso y Troncoso, 1939). Of the 176 communities in Yucatán included in the document, more than 97% paid some taxes in turkeys (either of the native or Castilian type), >90% paid some tax in honey, and >94% paid some tax in beeswax. When comparing the amount of each item taxed to the population of each community, it seems likely that every household was contributing to the overall quota of turkeys, wax, and honey. While the Tax List alone does not tell us where those items are produced, the amounts taxed are consistent enough with population to suggest household production. Thus a convincing case can be made that some food production strategies were concentrated near the house and created an incentive for preserving unbuilt or vacant land within the walled houselot. By physically marking the limits of its property, a household not only made a visible, relatively permanent claim to that land but also increased the land’s value by protecting its valuable resources.
What resulted was a complex agricultural system that maximized both vertical and horizontal space (Wilken, 1987: 250– 251). Keeping the entire system contained and close to the home offered incentives like shade, convenience, and the possibility of much more frequent monitoring and upkeep than if it were a long walk away. Before concluding this section I want to predict and address a few potential critiques. First, readers familiar with the ethnographic data I have cited may recall that 20th century houselot gardens were dismissed as making only negligible (though reliable and convenient) contributions to overall food supplies (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 54). However, using that viewpoint to undermine the potential contribution of ancient houselot-based subsistence ignores the fact that reduction and relocation of Maya houselots and houses were some of the first ordinances imposed by Spaniards in Yucatán, starting in the 16th century (Roys, 1972; Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934: 31). Further processes of industrialization and globalization have continued to minimize the role played by houselot gardens in more modern contexts. Researchers have long noted the potential contributing capacity of houselot gardens. Under conditions of urban development, that potential would not have been ignored. Therefore in models of low-density Maya cities that emphasize intra-settlement agriculture, it becomes necessary to increase our expectations for what could be and was produced in houselots. Another challenge might be that houselots serve a number of other purposes unrelated to subsistence. This is true – houselots, as I said, are the organizational centers and main living spaces of households. Other activities like craft production could have motivated the maintenance of open space around houses. Phillip Arnold (1990) demonstrated this when he found that houselot size was significantly associated with pottery firing techniques in a contemporary village in Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz. Potters who lived in larger houselots had more flexibility to relocate firing as conditions demanded and required no permanent facilities. Potters who lived in smaller houselots faced spatial constraints and had to rely on kilns. He concluded that, ‘‘domestic space is used in a patterned fashion, at least partially determined by the amount of available area and the number and type of activities to be conducted in a given location’’ (Arnold, 1990: 930). Kinds of craft production requiring open space are simply another variable that we need to
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incorporate when considering sources of variation in low-density cities. This paper responds to recent discussion of agriculture’s role in Maya low-density cities. That focus does not preclude the possibility of other factors motivating the size of households and houselots. Rather this should be a call to examine other possible sources of urban variation and then to test those ideas with excavation. An interesting addendum to that point comes from Killion (1990). As already mentioned, Killion favored a more rigid application of infield-outfield agriculture to tropical lowland Mesoamerica – for him, infield agriculture was spatially and conceptually apart from the houselot. But fascinatingly, in his own contemporary study in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, he found that households with greater involvement in infield agriculture (outside of the houselot) still maintained larger houselots. Tasks related to agriculture, rather than cultivation itself, were the reason. Because infield plots were conveniently accessible from the house, farmers tended to carry out processing, storage, and other related activities in the houselot. If a household’s primary agricultural zone were located further away, however, these activities would take place at field locations (Killion, 1990: 200). Infield agricultural systems impact settlement patterns, the houselot specifically, regardless of whether or not the houselot is the locus of those systems. In other words, the maintenance of open houselot space, even in the absence of evidence for gardens and orchards, could still signal the importance of infield agricultural strategies. This is another nuance that needs to be factored into comparative studies of Maya cities. For reasons already discussed, however, here I adopt a more flexible approach to infield agriculture, one that stresses the consequences of houselot-based subsistence strategies. 3.3. Connecting the multigenerational household to houselot subsistence Having established the presence of multigenerational households and houselot-based subsistence in the Maya area, how are the two phenomena related? To answer that question, I turn to Robert Netting’s research on ‘‘smallholders’’: ‘‘rural cultivators practicing intensive, permanent, diversified agriculture on relatively small farms (smallholdings) in areas of dense population’’ (Netting, 1993: 2). Netting’s ethnographic synthesis is based on post-industrial farming societies, and smallholdings themselves fit more closely with the strict definition of infield-outfield agriculture (meaning they are fields separate from garden areas immediately adjacent to houses) so again a more flexible approach is necessary. Nonetheless, several of his key ideas are relevant for evaluating long-term interaction of multigenerational households and houselot-based subsistence in ancient Maya cities. Smallholders practice intensification strategies to make a relatively small plot of land a continuous and sustainable source of food. Intensification requires regular monitoring and near-continuous labor. These tasks are made easier by situating the dwelling itself on the smallholding. Doing so also serves as a material proclamation of ownership. Beyond that there are several strategies smallholder families use to make their plot of land more productive. Soil might be manipulated or brought in from elsewhere, and/or its fertility restored by regularly applying fertilizer (or garbage and food remains). Artificial means of irrigation and drainage might be constructed to regulate plants’ and animals’ access to water. Surveillance and fences guard cultigens and livestock from weeds, disease, and pests. In a single plot, numerous garden plants are combined in diverse ways with equally diverse planting schedules over the year to maximize production. Combining these strategies makes smallholdings reliable, continuous, and sustainable sources of food throughout the year in many societies where this kind of agriculture is practiced.
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Those strategies involve investment in land improvements. Some might require investment of physical labor into the construction and upkeep of material features. Fences must be mended, canals dug, manure spread, and fruit trees carefully tended into maturity. However there is also a non-physical element at work in determining a smallholding’s productivity. Maximum intensification of the plot itself requires time and a sort of ecological intimacy only possible through seasons of trial and error. What is the best way to prepare for an unusually dry year? How should the garden be arranged to provide the best distribution of shade and sunlight? Which areas of the yard require reapplication of fertilizer? Over the course of many years a family develops a body of knowledge on how to solve these problems. The success of a family’s smallholding, then, is contingent not only on physical improvements (wells, fences, ditches, etc.) but also on localized and cumulative knowledge of scheduling and agricultural strategies idiosyncratic to a particular plot. Thus, because of the longterm human and ecology rapport required, smallholdings are most productive when multiple generations occupy and farm the same plot. If the household is a repository of ecological knowledge, then it is advantageous for new generations of kin to remain living and working on the same plot as older generations had. Younger household members, marrying and starting their own families, benefit from pre-existing land improvements and guidance from older relatives if they live at home. Their continued participation in farming contributes immensely to the collective household’s success. Multigenerational households are so common among smallholders precisely because all generations profit from the cohabitation. As a result of this trend, property rights are almost always transmitted within the lineage, rather than to non-kin buyers, as a way of securing the family’s long-term interests. Netting (1993: 172) notes that in fact the practice of intensive agriculture initially correlates with but eventually requires private property rights. These lineal inheritance patterns become more formalized and corporate descent groups may be ascribed special significance under conditions of land scarcity. Smallholder families are corporate units whose members are mutually dependent. Though that cohesiveness originates in land improvement and food production, it also transfers to other activities and ultimately makes the household a center of economic gravity (Netting, 1993: 62). Family members may also invest in supplemental activities like craft production. They might practice rituals in a domestic context. Yet fundamentally it is the shared investment in land improvements that defines the household. Households take on centrality as social institutions because as a collective unit the family is the steward of the smallholding. That land is the locus for families’ current prosperity and future security (ibid). What Netting calls smallholder agriculture is linked closely to the multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based infield subsistence that I propose is responsible for some of the variation in Maya urban settlement patterns. The value of Netting’s smallholder model for studying ancient Maya farmers has been recognized before. Ancient Maya farmers (at least during the Late and Terminal Classic periods) fulfill Netting’s definition of smallholders: they lived under conditions of scarcity, were not economically isolated, depended on the smallholder economy for a substantial portion of their subsistence, practiced intensive and sustainable agriculture, employed diverse technologies, accrued expert ecological knowledge, worked to secure land tenure, and invested special significance in the household in realms beyond agriculture (Murtha, 2002). Yet the foundation of all of these traits is the relationship between multigenerational households and intensive subsistence strategies localized near the house.
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In the northern Maya lowlands, archaeological correlates of multigenerational households and intensive subsistence near the house include the number of associated domestic structures and the maintenance of vacant houselot area, respectively. (Evidence for each and potential caveats were addressed in an earlier section.) When these two correlates co-occur as the dominant settlement pattern in a given Maya city, we can assess that city’s investment in multigenerational house-lot based subsistence systems relative to other cities. This specific kind of subsistence system is better thought of as one option on a spectrum of investment placed in possible food production strategies. Investment in those strategies is variable between and within neighborhoods, cities, and regions. It is also variable between and within time periods and individual lifetimes. Thus the Maya farmers of one city (or neighborhood or period) may be more committed to long-term stewardship of the houselot ‘‘smallholding’’ than the Maya farmers of another city (or neighborhood or period). More energy invested in houselot food production means less available energy investment for food production in other locations (and/or other strategies), and vice versa. I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that any Maya city, or even any Maya household, would have practiced only one kind of subsistence strategy. Just because we might see a pattern of heavy investment in houselot gardening in one place does not by any means negate the existence of milpa cultivation in outfields some distance away. Rather the point of this approach is to provide a way to assess relative differences in investment in a broad range of possible subsistence schemes. The degree to which families invest in multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based strategies encodes information about the total distribution of efforts across all possible strategies of food production. That energy investment variability can be studied at different scales. Investigation of the minutest scale of variability, like a single household’s seasonal shifts in subsistence investment, would require broad and careful excavation, not to mention soil and botanical analyses under nearly pristine conditions. At the moment coarser-grained scales of broader variability, based mostly on survey data, are more readily accessible. After consulting the published data, I realized it would be possible to adopt a regional scale and compare houselot data from across the northern part of the Yucatán Peninsula, the area broadly referred to as the northern Maya lowlands (see Mathews and Morrison, 2006).
4. The present study To evaluate differential investment in multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based subsistence among cities in the northern Maya lowlands, we can look at two variables from within walled houselots: (1) the total number of associated structures and (2) the amount of houselot area left vacant. Reiterating my earlier discussion, the number of structures is a rough approximation of family size (and by extension, a measure of multigenerational coresidence) and the vacant area of the houselot is a rough approximation of land preserved for infield agricultural strategies. Arranging the two variables as axes permits the plotting of individual houselots, as shown in Fig. 4, according to the number of structures and amount of vacant area they contain. This cross-plot could be used to study variability within sites, but because I am interested in comparing urban settlement across sites, it is necessary to calculate a representative measure for each site. I chose to use the means of each city’s sample. While the mean obscures some of the intrasite variability, it allows for a clearer representation of intersite variability. Also the sample sizes are dramatically different – Chunchucmil’s sample is well over ten times that of either Cobá or Mayapán. For this and other reasons,
Fig. 4. Hypothetical options for infield agriculturalists based on the number of structures (approximating family size and multigenerational coresidence) and available houselot area (approximating space preserved for gardens and arboriculture) per walled houselot. Options correspond to numbered ‘‘x’’s on the cross-plot. Option 1 is relatively fewer structures and relatively less vacant houselot area: a pattern of single nuclear families each maintaining a separate, relatively small houselot. Long-term claims to houselot landholdings may be unimportant, and the small size of the houselot may suggest that it is not a significant site for food production. Option 2 is relatively fewer structures and relatively more vacant houselot area: a pattern of single nuclear families living in expansive bounded yards. Houselot-based food production may contribute significantly to the household’s needs, but this contribution is not necessarily dependent on long-term land improvements. Competition over land may be low, thus freeing younger generations of household members to move elsewhere. Option 3 is relatively more structures and relatively less vacant houselot area: a pattern of extended or multigenerational families inhabiting small houselots. Suitable agricultural land may be scarce, thus motivating long-term claims over established landholdings. Possible explanations for the small size of the houselot include land scarcity, intensification (thus rendering a small space more productive), or that most food production occurs beyond the houselot walls. Option 4 is relatively more structures and relatively more vacant houselot area: a pattern of extended, multigenerational families living together in expansive walled houselots. Maintaining a long-term claim over a larger parcel of land around the house(s) may have high returns for households. This pattern approximates a scenario of significant investment in infield food production strategies based in the houselot (i.e. gardens and orchards) while simultaneously suggesting that accumulated land improvements and ecological knowledge are critical. Option 4 most closely approximates Netting’s descriptions of smallholders and what I call multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based infield agriculture.
this exploratory approach is intended to demonstrate relative differences between samples rather than to quantify those differences. Before getting to the archaeological data, I indicate some implications of four hypothetical subsistence ‘‘options’’ plotted along the axes of number of structures (x-axis) and vacant houselot area (y-axis) as detailed in Fig. 4. Each numbered option represents a houselot with different combinations of total structures and vacant area. This introduction to the cross-plot will clarify how the archaeological case studies are later compared and discussed. The most salient point expressed is that ‘‘Option 4,’’ a pattern of relatively more structures and more vacant houselot area per houselot, most closely approximates investment in multigenerational houselot-based subsistence (a pattern similar to that of Netting’s smallholders). Such investment has different implications for overall urban settlement patterns than the other options. A note: my repeated use of the words ‘‘relative’’ and ‘‘relatively’’ is deliberate. The ends of each spectrum (that is, the maximum possible number of structures and maximum vacant houselot area) are undefined. The grounds for comparison provided by the model are by no means absolute, but rather can be modified to address variability at different scales. The relative positions of each carry different meanings that speak to different research questions.
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N
20 meters Fig. 5. Example of a walled houselot and associated household compound at Cobá. Redrawn from Fig. 6.4 in Fletcher (1983: 96).
Additionally I must repeat that these scenarios do not suggest strict presence/absence of subsistence strategies; rather they represent diverse ways of distributing investment across multiple subsistence strategies. For instance, a predominant residence pattern of nuclear families living in small houselots does not mean those families did not practice houselot gardening, rather, it might suggest that the role of that particular subsistence strategy was less important relative to others. Having established some hypothetical situations, let us evaluate how the configuration of actual ancient houselots and associated house clusters varies so as to investigate how investment in infield agricultural systems varies. I chose three sites in the northern Maya lowlands from which data on walled houselots have been collected and published: Cobá (in Quintana Roo, Mexico), Mayapán, and Chunchucmil (both in Yucatán, Mexico). After a brief introduction of each site, its sample of walled houselots is described. A cross-plot showing the number of structures and vacant houselot area per walled houselot is provided for each site, to evaluate degree of participation in multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based infield agriculture. At the end of this section, the means of the number of structures and vacant houselot area for all three sites are plotted together to show how those degrees of participation vary. 4.1. Cobá Cobá is located in northeastern Yucatán among five shallow lakes. The presence of surface water here (exceptional for the northern Maya lowlands) along with a mean annual rainfall of about 1500 mm makes this part of the Yucatán Peninsula look more like the tropical rainforest to the south than the dry savannas typical of the north. Similarly the ancient city itself seems to have ties with cities of the southern lowlands (Sharer and Traxler, 2006). During its peak in the Late to Terminal Classic (ca. AD 730-1000) Cobá covered 70 km2 and supported a population of 55,000 people (Folan et al., 1983). Archaeological research at the site began with investigations by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the 1930s. Decades later, in the 1970s, William Folan directed a project dedicated to mapping and excavating Cobá’s ceremonial center and environs (Folan et al., 1983). Part of this work was spent documenting numerous linear features, a term given to low-lying stone walls that organized space and likely directed traffic during
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the site’s occupation. Among these linear features are stone boundary walls that enclose houselots. Folan’s team created a detailed map of the complex system of houselot walls and related structures in the northern test zone of Cobá (Zone 1). Stone walls mark the perimeters of many, but not all, household compounds2 at Cobá. With the mapping of so-called Type I linear features, which included stone walls that were directly associated with household compounds, project members Fletcher and Kintz (1983) calculated houselot size of 144 household compounds in Zone 1 of the site. As mentioned, however, not all compounds were demarcated with stone in this way. Zone 1 actually included many more (n = 204) household compounds that had no houselot walls, which may simply have never had perimeter markers of any sort or may have instead used perishable boundary walls, as seen in some modern Maya villages today (Fletcher and Kintz, 1983: 107). In order to determine the amount of space available for gardening and other activities, Fletcher (1983) compared the size of walled houselots and associated structures (see Fig. 5 for an example of one of the mapped groups). She selected a sample of 21 walled houselots3 from an area 2 km distant from downtown Cobá which she considered representative of settlement patterns across the site. Elite and nonelite household compounds, as well as walled and unwalled household compounds, were present in the chosen study area. Within each walled houselot, platforms and superstructures were measured and recorded. Then the area covered by structures was subtracted from the total area enclosed by walls to produce a measure of vacant or available space per houselot. Since my reexamination of these data requires an analysis of the number of structures and not simply the area covered by architecture, I consulted the maps from Folan et al. (1983) to count the number of structures associated with all 21 of the investigated walled houselots. The total structure counts and vacant houselot areas for the sample are plotted in Fig. 6 and listed in Table 3. Then by calculating the means for the sample, we see that the average walled houselot contained 3.05 structures and 723.81 m2 of vacant space. The conclusion from this analysis was that the extended family residence, housed in multiple structures, was the preferred household composition at Cobá. The type and number of both superstructures and ancillary structures vary considerably in the sample, but Fletcher notes that the most frequent type had 2–3 superstructures plus ancillary structures. Later, the authors of the Cobá study note that in Zone 1 there are 73 one-structure household compounds, which they suggest represent single nuclear families that split off from larger units, but that the most common arrangement, at a total of 88 clusters, consists of three-structure household compounds. In the cases where a household compound does include more than one structure, one is more elaborate and likely served as the household head’s or founder’s home (Tourtellot, 1983). Presumably, as seen from my counts, these designations do not include ancillary structures, which can be problematic since we know from ethnography that people indeed lived in ancillary structures and that structure function changed over time. To be sure, Folan and colleagues were also well aware of the difficulty in assigning functions and possible numbers of
2 Folan et al.’s ‘‘household compound’’ corresponds with ‘‘house cluster.’’ However, since in some cases Cobá’s household compounds contain only one structure, I chose to maintain the original terminology in this section. 3 Originally 24 walled houselots were included in the sample. After comparing the sample to the 144 mapped houselots, Fletcher decided to leave out the smallest (which measured 20 m2) because it was more likely used as an animal pen or sheltered work area, not a formal houselot. The largest two houselots in the sample were dropped because they so exceeded the average houselot size. Both were larger than 5000 m2, and out of the 144 mapped houselots only 13 measured more than 3000 m2 . Therefore they were classified as ‘‘specialized activity areas’’, not houselots, and excluded from the analysis. (See Fletcher, 1983: 126–127.)
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2500
Vacant houselot area (m2)
2000
1500
N
1000
20 meters
MEAN
Fig. 7. Three examples of walled houselots and associated household compounds pulled from the map of Squares H and I at Mayapán. Houselot walls are indicated by ‘‘x x x’’. Redrawn from Fig. 1 in Smith (1962: 279).
500
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Total structures per houselot Fig. 6. Cross-plot of the Cobá houselot sample, showing each sampled houselot and associated household compound plotted according to its total number of structures (x-axis) and vacant houselot area (y-axis).
Table 3 Total structure count and vacant houselot area per houselot sampled at Cobá. Cobá houselot sample (n = 21) Total structures
Vacant houselot area (m2)
1 1 4 3 2 4 3 4 3 3 3 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 3 2
66 92 99 120 127 175 263 349 426 550 689 701 804 864 890 954 1267 1322 1594 1820 2028
Mean: 3.05
Mean: 723.81
occupants to walled houselots and house clusters without excavation.
4.2. Mayapán Mayapán is located in an area that is considerably drier than Cobá. Water sources are limited to cenotes and annual rainfall was recorded to be about 1000 mm in the 1950s (Pollock, 1962: 1). Mayapán rose as the Postclassic capital of Yucatán after the fall of Chichén Itzá, its neighbor 100 km to the east (Sharer and Traxler, 2006). Much of Mayapán’s history is recorded because its lore still persisted in living memory during the early years of Spanish colonization. Records like Diego de Landa’s description of Mayapán can be matched quite closely to archaeological data. Despite numerous discrepancies in Mayapán’s historical chronology, the given dates
suggest the capital was founded in the late A.D. 1100s and fell apart around A.D. 1441 (Sharer and Traxler, 2006). Between 1951 and 1955 the site was the subject of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s final archaeological project in the Maya area. When the Carnegie archaeologists mapped the densely settled urban core of the site, they found that nearly every house cluster demarcated its houselot with stone boundary walls (Bullard, 1952). They mapped a total of 1100 walled houselots. In describing the structures associated with these walled houselots, Smith (1962) differentiates between dwellings (houses) and non-dwellings. While this distinction is speculative without excavation, it does allow us to make some observations about the preferred household size at the site. When discussing dwellings or ‘‘living structures,’’ Smith (1962: 206) notes that the majority (more than 600) of household compounds have one dwelling, more than 300 have two dwellings, about 35 have three dwellings, and possibly three have four dwellings. Household compounds with more than one dwelling will have one that is more elaborate than the others, which likely housed the head of the household (Landa in Tozzer, 1941: 101). However if we are concerned with the sheer number of structures without the tenuous distinction of dwelling vs. nondwelling (as I am), we see that about 750 house clusters have two structures, 240 have three structures, 65 have four structures, 16 have five structures, seven have six structures, and two have seven structures (Smith, 1962: 205). We can distill this information to say that the most common residence pattern at Mayapán consisted of a house and an auxiliary structure (perhaps a kitchen or a storage room) situated in a houselot surrounded by a stone wall. For their analysis of linear features, the Carnegie archaeologists selected a sample of 30 walled houselots with enclosed house clusters (see example illustrations in Fig. 7), constituting about 2.7% of all household compounds recorded by the project (Bullard 1954; Smith, 1962: 267). This sample came from Squares H and I as designated in the Mayapán report edited by Pollock (1962). For each walled houselot, the area covered by architecture was subtracted from the total area enclosed by the houselot wall, resulting in a measurement of available houselot area. I consulted published maps of Squares H and I to count the number of structures contained in each houselot of the sample. These counts and the available houselot space are listed in Table 4 and plotted in Fig. 8. By calculating the means for this sample, we see that at Mayapán the typical walled houselot contained 1.83 structures situated within 725 m2 of vacant, available space. 4.3. Chunchucmil Chunchucmil is located in the northwest corner of the Yucatán Peninsula, a region characterized as having some of the poorest
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known for the Maya area, reaching its peak in the late Early Classic and first part of the Late Classic (ca. A.D. 400-650) (Magnoni et al., 2012). The site’s proximity to the coast and access to the Celestun saltworks probably provided an incentive to settle here (Dahlin et al., 1998; Dahlin et al., 2005). The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program (PREP), which started in 1993, was designed to address how Chunchucmil’s dense population could have supported itself in these harsh conditions. Culminating in intensive research from 2000 to 2006 under Bruce Dahlin and co-directors Traci Ardren and Scott Hutson, PREP produced an incredibly detailed map of the site with data on nearly 400 walled houselots and associated house clusters (Hutson, 2010). Most houselots at Chunchucmil are enclosed by low stone walls, and most share these walls with little or no unclaimed space between houselots (Hutson et al., 2004, 2006). PREP mapped 11.77 square kilometers of Chunchucmil (Hutson et al., 2008). Within that area, a representative sample of 392 (or 36%) walled houselots were mapped. Walled houselots and associated house clusters at Chunchucmil can be classified into three modes based on the size of the houselot and the number of structures: (1) 49% (n = 192) are small groups of 1–5 structures and houselot size of 2000 m2; (2) 37% (n = 144) are medium groups of 6–10 structures and houselot size of 4000 m2; and (3) 14% (n = 56) are large groups of more than 10 structures and houselot size of 7000 m2 (Hutson et al., 2006; Magnoni et al., 2012). Fig. 9 shows two walled houselots, one classified as small and the other as large, to give a sense of the range of variability. Looking at the entire sample, the average walled houselot at Chunchucmil contained a basal platform, five rectangular structures, and one round structure. A third of all houselots sampled included a ‘‘pyramid’’ structure (square based structures with height exceeding 2.5 m). Approximately a third of all houselots included shrines on the eastern side of patios. These structures are incorporated into the total counts of domestic structures recorded at the site. Because the sample (n = 392) is so large, a complete table of structure counts and vacant houselot area is not feasible here but can be found in Magnoni et al. (2012, Appendix 1). The basic descriptive statistics of the sample are presented for number of structures (Table 5) and vacant houselot area (Table 6) and the entire sample is plotted in Fig. 10. For purposes here, we can say that the average walled houselot at Chunchucmil contained 5.83 structures and 3594.92 m2 of vacant, available space.
Table 4 Total structure count and vacant houselot area per houselot sampled at Mayapán. Mayapán houselot sample (n = 30) Total structures
Vacant houselot area (m2)
1 1 1 3 2 3 2 2 1 1 1 3 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 2 1 2
76 89 336 360 380 384 392 410 416 429 508 512 523 538 542 544 559 629 638 679 718 752 797 914 1196 1272 1310 1713 1803 2333
Mean: 1.87
Mean: 725.07
2500
2000
Vacant houselot area (m2)
205
1500
4.4. Synthesis
1000 MEAN
Table 7 presents the summary statistics from the Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil samples. Then, the mean total number of structures per houselot is plotted against the mean vacant area (m2) per houselot for each site on the cross-plot in Fig. 11.
500
0 0
1
2
3
4
Total structures per houselot Fig. 8. Cross-plot of the Mayapán houselot sample, showing each sampled houselot and associated household compound plotted according to its total number of structures (x-axis) and vacant houselot area (y-axis).
agricultural conditions in the Maya lowlands (Dahlin et al., 2005). Over half of the site area has thin to no soil, and soil deemed well suited for agriculture is even scarcer (Beach, 1998; Dahlin et al., 2005; Sharer and Traxler, 2006). Annual rainfall may average 640–900 mm, but of that, much is lost to seepage and wind and rendered unavailable (Mosely and Terry, 1980). Somewhat paradoxically, Chunchucmil supported one of the densest populations
5. Discussion When comparing the cross-plot of archaeological case studies (Fig. 11) to the hypothetical cross-plot (Fig. 4), the result emerges immediately: the composition of Chunchucmil’s houselots suggests that multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based infield agriculture was occurring at a much higher intensity there than at Mayapán or Cobá. But as I have tried to emphasize, approaching the degree of investment using just these two variables is an approximation, less a last word and more a place to start assessing the total suite of agricultural strategies and how those contributed to variation in urban settlement patterns. We need to situate these results in context and see how they fare.
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N
20 meters
N
20 meters Fig. 9. Examples illustrating the range of walled houselots and associated house clusters at Chunchucmil. On the left is an example from the ‘‘small’’ mode, and on the right is an example from the ‘‘large’’ mode. Dashed lines indicate houselot walls (albarradas), and shading indicates narrow, raised causeways (chichbeh). Redrawn from Figs. 5b and 7a in Magnoni et al. (2012: 319, 321).
Table 5 Descriptive statistics of structure counts in the sample of houselots from Chunchucmil (n = 392). From Table 1 in Magnoni et al. (2012: 322).
Structures Round structures Pyramids All domestic structures
Total
Mean
1767 404 115 2286
4.51 1.03 0.30 5.83
Table 6 Descriptive statistics of houselot area in the Chunchucmil sample (n = 392). From Table 3 in Magnoni et al. (2012: 324).
2
Total houselot area (m ) Houselot area covered by architecture (m2) Vacant houselot area (m2)
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
527.06 5.12
17728.79 4986.12
4197.26 602.34
442.34
15205.86
3594.92
Cobá and Mayapán both exhibit patterning that suggests infield agriculture was practiced but probably more as a way of supplementing food produced by other strategies. Thus, it was not quite so urgent that families maintained long-term cross-generational claims to houselot plots, nor was it common for households to stake out expansive swaths of land next to the house(s) and then leave them unbuilt. At Cobá in particular it seems likely that incentives for multiple generations of kin to occupy the same houselot were low. Furthermore, recall the fact that Zone 1, where Folan’s project mapped 144 walled houselots with associated household compounds, also contains 204 household compounds with no associated houselot walls. Property markers around the residence, or at the very least non-perishable property markers, do not seem to have been a concern for most people at Cobá. I would argue that ecological circumstances, specifically the abundant surface water and rainfall enjoyed by Cobá and its environs, enabled outfield agricultural systems to be much more dependable sources of food here than elsewhere in the northern Maya lowlands. It may be possible that more energy was channeled into extensive field systems and diverted away from intensification in the areas surrounding houses. The role of the houselot decreased.
Mayapán, in contrast, lacks the tropical lushness of Cobá. Many of the ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of infield agriculture come from places ecologically similar to Mayapán’s microenvironment. Mayapán seems like a probable candidate for multigenerational household-managed, houselot-based infield agriculture; that the results of this study suggest otherwise merits exploration. While there is evidence to suggest that areas of its walled houselots were devoted to gardens and orchards, Mayapán is more similar to Cobá than to Chunchucmil, though the latter is a closer match for geology, climate, and vegetation. Thus we can say with some confidence that other factors shaped household composition, organization, and agricultural investment at Mayapán. It could be that the political reorganization associated with the capital’s founding (and the Classic-Postclassic transition more generally) had an impact that reached down to the household level of society. Maybe the site was not occupied long enough to produce the multigenerational ecological knowledge necessary for longterm investment in infield intensification. Perhaps Mayapán’s administrative division into provinces somehow reconfigured the way food was produced and where it was produced. We know from recent excavations in domestic contexts at Mayapán that elites promoted craft production at the neighborhood level (Hare and Masson, 2012), so could something similar have happened for infield agriculture? The similarity of the samples from Cobá and Mayapán should alert us that this particular kind of infield agriculture was not a significant determinant of urban settlement. What, then, motivated the specific developmental trajectory of each city? Did households instead invest in infields beyond their houselot walls? Were the activities typically associated with houselots occurring in separate, perhaps more public, locales? Were households autonomous or were settlement patterns imposed? These are exciting possibilities, but excavation would be needed to assess these and other questions. Lastly, Chunchucmil’s position on the cross-plot relative to Cobá and Mayapán indicates that it most closely resembles a ‘‘smallholder’’ situation – that is, residence patterns of multigenerational households which maintained long-term claims over houselot landholdings were relatively more common there. The configuration of its houselots suggests heightened investment in infield agriculture. This is not news for any readers familiar with Chunchucmil. However, focusing on the co-occurrence of extended
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Chunchucmil houselot sample (n=392 ) 15000 14500 14000 13500 13000 12500 12000 11500 11000 10500
Vacant houselot area (m2)
10000 9500 9000 8500 8000 7500 7000 6500 6000 5500 5000 4500 4000 MEAN
3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
Total structures per houselot Fig. 10. Cross-plot of the Chunchucmil houselot sample, showing each sampled houselot and associated house cluster plotted according to its total number of structures (xaxis) and vacant houselot area (y-axis).
Table 7 Summary statistics from the Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil houselot samples. Site
Houselots sampled (n)
Mean total structures per houselot
Mean vacant area (m2) per houselot
Cobá Mayapán Chunchucmil
21 30 392
3.05 1.87 5.83
723.81 725.07 3594.92
family residences and associated houselots with large areas of preserved vacant space carries implications for understanding the relationship between agricultural strategies and the site’s urban settlement. The specific combination of high numbers of structures and large houselots at Chunchucmil provides indirect evidence that long-term infield agricultural strategies were critical there. This would seem to run counter to the notion that Chunchucmil had to depend on its trade networks to feed its population. Dahlin et al. (2005) note a number of strategies that could have been in place at Chunchucmil which regrettably leave few or no archaeological signatures. I contend that although the evidence for infield agriculture is inconclusive, that should not preclude the possibility that Chunchucmil families may have intensified food production in houselots to such a degree as to provide sustenance for a larger percentage of the population than might be expected. All of the possible strategies proposed by Dahlin et al. (2005) make sense in the smallholder framework developed earlier. For instance, houselot walls at Chunchucmil are arranged so as to incorporate rejolladas and sascaberas, both of which are natural sources of deeper, more humid soils; these features appear to have
been rarely if ever left open for public access (Dahlin et al., 2005). One of the many reasons to claim ownership of rejolladas and sascaberas would be to harvest soil from them and redistribute it in garden areas of the houselot to replenish soil fertility and thereby intensify agricultural production. Occasional wells found throughout Chunchucmil’s settlement could have been used for pot irrigation of houselot gardens to help offset the region’s low annual rainfall. The private maintenance of these features as facilities for intensification is consistent with smallholder practices. After conducting soil chemistry analyses at three houselots, archaeologists at Chunchucmil have noted that less than 10% of the total houselot area was dedicated to artificially fertilized gardens (Hutson et al., 2004). However, in a later paper (Hutson et al., 2007), archaeologists suggested that the measurement of high phosphorus levels may not fully capture the degree of intensification in Chunchucmil houselots. Perishable raised wooden garden beds, seen today in modern Yucatec Maya houselots, could have met some of the needs of the ancient residents of Chunchucmil. We also may be missing the full importance of ‘‘alternative’’ crops that thrive without human encouragement in northwestern Yucatán’s dry landscape, such as agave and nopal (Dahlin et al., 2005; Hutson et al., 2007). Identifying how much, if any, space was devoted to such plants remains a challenge because of poor preservation. Fruit trees, however, do leave phytoliths behind and also do quite well without much effort on the part of human farmers. The rejolladas and sascaberas mentioned earlier, along with other naturally occurring cavities in bedrock, would create pockets of soil and moisture ideal for the planting of economically useful trees (Gómez-Pompa et al., 1990; Kepecs and Boucher, 1996). The greatest concentration of fruit tree phytoliths found at
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Houselot sample means from three sites
events were enacted to reaffirm kinship relations over generations. They were ceremonies meant to cement the corporate identity of the household, even as its composition and members changed over time (Hutson et al., 2004). This is precisely the sort of behavior that accompanies multigenerational investment in infield agriculture, the foundation of Netting’s smallholders. I have to concede that I cannot definitively end the debate of whether or not the ancient people of Chunchucmil were agriculturally self-sufficient. What I have done is demonstrate that Chunchucmil households maintained claims to houselot landholdings across multiple generations more than did the households of Cobá and Mayapán. This in turn lends support to the assertion that differences in degree or kind of infield agriculture produce very different iterations of the so-called low-density city.
4000 Chunchucmil
Mean vacant houselot area (m2)
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
6. Conclusion
0 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Mean total structures per houselot Fig. 11. Cross-plot for comparing average walled houselots from three archaeological sites in the northern Maya lowlands (Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil). The mean total structures per walled houselot is plotted along the x-axis, while mean vacant houselot area is plotted along the y-axis. Based on its relatively high average number of structures and high average vacant houselot area, Chunchucmil more closely approximates the pattern associated with multigenerational householdmanaged, houselot-based infield agriculture, than Cobá or Mayapán.
one excavated houselot at the site was found in an area with thin soil and no apparent phosphate enrichment indicative of fertilizer (Hutson et al., 2007: 464). The importance of fruit trees may be underscored further by the occasional presence of chich mounds, or circular piles of loose stones, across the site. These features are similar to modern stone circles found around fruit trees that serve to conserve soil and moisture, but the connection to these ancient piles is, unfortunately, not clear (Dahlin et al., 2005). Regardless, we should expect that the residents of Chunchucmil would be well-versed in a sophisticated suite of intensification practices, chief among them being soil manipulation and cultivar diversification. Such land improvements would encourage multiple generations to live together and continue investment in houselot subsistence systems. The ambiguity of much of the evidence for infield agriculture at Chunchucmil can be discouraging: ‘‘We cannot ignore the possibilities of intensification techniques, like intensive arboriculture, unknown crops, weeding, watering, and organic amendments that would have left no or only modestly elevated major elements, but we still have no evidence that they practiced anything but traditional methods’’ (Sweetwood et al., 2009: 1218). Nevertheless, I propose that the co-occurrence of (1) high numbers of structures per houselot with (2) large areas of vacant land per houselot serves as a line of evidence supporting the importance of houselot-based infield food production at Chunchucmil. This combination suggests that the strategies of ancient people of Chunchucmil approximated the strategies of Netting’s ethnographically observed smallholders. This connection is strengthened by published excavation data from three household groups at the site (e.g. Hutson et al., 2004; Magnoni et al., 2012). Two of these, the so-called ‘Aak and Muuch groups, do a particularly fine job of illustrating the long-term occupation of particular parcels. Not only do these household groups show generational growth in the accretion of discrete structures, but also demonstrate another of Netting’s main themes: the transfer of corporate identity into other arenas beyond subsistence. Excavation of domestic shrines located within many of the houselots at Chunchucmil show that ritual rededication of shrines were celebrated periodically. PREP archaeologists contend that these
Archaeologists have come a long way since one system (a slash and burn field or the milpa) dominated reconstructions of ancient Maya subsistence systems. Part of the pushback against that traditional view involved an awareness that there were many agricultural technologies that co-existed, one of which was infield agriculture. Archaeologists now recognize that infield agriculture within cities contributed to a widespread pattern of low-density urbanism in the Maya area. This realization has called attention to evidence for the extended family household and its use of its houselot as an important locus for subsistence in Maya cities. There is abundant ethnographic and historic documentation of houselot gardens and orchards and these can be linked to Classic period houselots, if not earlier. Yet while this agro-urban model marks progress, much still remains to be understood about how and why decisions to invest in different kinds of agricultural systems were undertaken and how those decisions affected land-use patterns. In this paper I have proposed that we take a unit of Maya settlement – the house/house cluster and its associated houselot – and consider it not simply as domestic architecture but as the cumulative end-product of key sequential decisions, some of which dealt with agricultural investment over the timespan of multiple generations. Situating this approach in Netting’s smallholder model allowed an anthropological assessment of how the specific composition of houselots we see archaeologically could result from dynamic sociocultural processes and family decisions. Depending on how important multigenerational houselotbased infield agriculture was (relative to all possible subsistence strategies), a household would differentially preserve available space in the houselot for gardens, orchards, turkey pens, beehives, and other subsistence-related features. This incentive to preserve houselot space would affect residence choices, as younger generations of household members started their own families. In situations where land was scarce and reliance on the houselot’s yields was substantial, the highest returns would come from maintaining multigenerational households and larger houselots. Doing so gave younger generations access to pre-existing land improvements and the family’s accrued ecological knowledge while at the same time giving older generations access to a replenished labor pool. This scenario is one option or strategy in a spectrum of possible agricultural strategies. Probably most Maya families practiced some combination of infield (either within or outside the houselot) and outfield agriculture along with exploitation of wild resources. Food contributions from trade, whether within a polity or with external networks, have to be considered as well. Since this paper is intended to focus more attention on houselots, infield strategies, and smallholder models, I have not been able to fully explore the relationship between infield and outfield systems of agriculture. I
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have explored the notion that if we can assess the level of investment in one particular agricultural strategy, we can then infer something about the distribution of total investment across all possible agricultural strategies. So the more closely we can link a residential group to smallholder behavior, the more likely the family that lived there invested most heavily in infield agriculture over multiple generations. Conversely, if a residential group does not match what we would expect for smallholder behavior, then it is more likely that the family that lived there channeled their investment into other agricultural strategies. To assess this variability on a regional scale, three sites in the northern Maya lowland were selected – Cobá, Mayapán, and Chunchucmil – because they had sufficient detail on walled houselots. By combining structure counts with measurements of the vacant (available/unbuilt) area per houselot sampled, I calculated a representative houselot and associated structures based on the sample means for each site. By plotting these against each other, it is possible to evaluate the importance of multigenerational householdmanaged, houselot-based infield agriculture since we expect to see more structures (representing multiple generations living together) and more available space (representing land preserved for subsistence practices). From the cross-plot it is clear that Chunchucmil most closely resembles this pattern whereas Cobá and Mayapán do not. Agro-urban landscapes are increasingly invoked to explain the low-density nature of Maya cities. Infield agriculture was, it seems, a major reason why settlement at Maya cities remained relatively dispersed even as populations increased. Yet variation within this general template of low-density agro-urbanism is still poorly understood. In this paper I have demonstrated that at certain sites and in certain time periods, the patterning associated with one specific agricultural system – multigenerational household-managed infield agriculture based in houselots – can be used to explain some of the variation in urban settlement. Therefore, diverse urban landscapes must owe some of their differences to diverse infield agricultural systems. While I have focused on multigenerational household-based infield agriculture in the northern lowlands, that particular system seems to have been less common or absent elsewhere in the Maya area. Infield agriculture in the Río Bec zone tended to be based on single, autonomous household units surrounded by cultivated fields and land management features. This patterning has been attributed to weak nucleation that differentiates Río Bec from contemporary Maya cities (Lemonnier and Vannier, 2013). At Caracol in Belize, terraces cover most of the landscape between residential groups but no clear associations between specific fields and specific households have been identified. The city’s intrasite causeway system, topdown regulation of settlement spacing, and uniformity across household artifact assemblages all hint strongly at a system in which households held less autonomy when it came to agriculture (Chase and Chase, 1998, 2001, 2012). In these cases as with those discussed in the northern lowlands, different iterations of infield agriculture are directly associated with the variation we observe in urban settlement. Most Maya families were probably engaged to some degree in multiple agricultural systems. We need to know to what degree different families invested in a range or mix of agricultural strategies to obtain a more accurate representation of the nature of Maya cities. Acknowledgments I thank Joyce Marcus for sharing her insights and support during the preparation of this paper. Stimulating conversations with Travis Stanton, Aline Magnoni, Traci Ardren, Dan Griffin, and Stephanie Miller during the 2014 field season of the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán contributed significantly
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