The role of infield agriculture in Maya cities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2014.10.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Different infield agricultural strategies lead to variation in urban settlement.

  • Houselot size and number of associated structures indicate investment in specific infield agricultural strategies.

  • Increasing amounts of each mean greater investment in specific infield agricultural strategies relative to all systems.

Abstract

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.

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 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, household-based 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.

Section snippets

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 a single structure, just as a single household can

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, houselot-based infield agriculture. Then I conclude this section with a case

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

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

Conclusion

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

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 to the reworking of this paper into its finished form, as did the astute and helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

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