Ahead of its time?
Classic Maya sites in the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula are generally known for their monumental art and architecture in central sacrosanct spaces, and their political economies are believed to have been highly centralized. The predominantly Early Classic site of Chunchucmil, however, does not fit this stereotype. Moreover, even though its urban population ranks among the largest and most densely packed in any Maya site, it inhabits one of the most depauperate agricultural landscapes. These idiosyncrasies have stimulated a great deal of archaeological research, all of which lead to the conclusion that Chunchucmil had a surprisingly commercialized economy. In addition to importing basic necessities, some of which were exchanged in a large central marketplace, its basic economy was built on servicing merchants along the most active Mesoamerican maritime trade route and funneling long distance trade items to sites in the interior of the peninsula. This article summarizes the data leading to the conclusion that Chunchucmil’s economic complexity rivaled that of the secondary states of the Postclassic Period and therefore was way ahead of its time. It also questions whether the kind of bottom-up approach applied here might reveal more complex economies at other Classic Maya sites than the more ardent advocates of the prevailing, monolithic ‘political economy’ paradigm have thus far been able to concede. In which case, it was perhaps only slightly ahead of its time.
The Dirt on the Ancient Maya: Soil Chemical Investigations of Ancient Maya Marketplaces
The Dirt on the Ancient Maya: Soil Chemical Investigations of Ancient Maya Marketplaces Daniel Aaron Bair Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences Master of Science Various criteria or lines of evidence have been used to identify ancient Maya marketplaces, including location near trade routes, artifactual evidence of trade, open space adjacent to transportation routes, proximity to public structures, low platforms and rock alignments to denote market spaces, and regular patterns in soil and floor chemical concentrations. Seibal and Mayapán were important economic Maya polities controlling the trade routes at the apex of their civilizations. The objectives of these studies were to apply geochemical and geospatial analyses of the soils and floors from public plazas and household patios, to discover the anthropogenic chemical residues of phosphorus (P) and heavy metals associated with the trade of foodstuffs and workshop items that may have been marketed there. Public access, causeways, reservoirs and a pattern of high P and metal concentrations are consistent with marketing of organic foodstuffs and workshop items within suspected marketplaces of each site. In contrast, geochemical patterns of the soils and floors of household structures are consistent with ceremonial and household activities.
Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History
This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo's exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes. The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime's mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation's large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants' free access to land during a period of economic growth, the regime secured peasant support as well as backing from certain elite sectors. This book thus elucidates for the first time the hidden foundations of the Trujillo regime.