Akin to companion volumes on the rise and fall of the ancient Maya (i.e., Adams 1977, Culbert 1973), this collection constitutes an immeasurable step forward in unraveling Mayan mysteries. Being a newly adopted research strategy, settlement pattern herein means: demography (i.e., population distribution and density), types of house mounds, architectural layouts, and hierarchical (political) relationships (based on size and distance) between sites. Many new descriptive data are presented, largely for the Late Classic period.
Settlement patterns now provide a vehicle to reconstruct sociocultural systems and delineate cultural processes of change. But problems still hinder the way, namely: (1) jungles’ obscuring of sites’ layouts; (2) discontinuity of populations following the Classic, so that ethnohistoric traditions are comparatively scant; (3) conservative research traditions that are artifact oriented (describing temples, stelae, ceramics), rather than on artifactual relationships mirroring sociocultural relationships.
Since the “state of the art” is inextricably interwoven with “schools” of research, the initial chapter by Wendy Ashmore and Gordon Willey, and a fine summary chapter by Willey, afford rare personal insight in tracing assorted historical threads of the settlement pattern approach. Ashmore’s unsurpassed chapter on defining analytical units, from the settlement “atom,” the “feature,” ascending through patio groups to centers (no longer “ceremonial centers”), will serve as a baseline for future comparisons (i.e., necessary to identify cultural processes). A major breakthrough as a technique for ranking centers according to volumetric mass of construction is formulated and skillfully demonstrated by Ellen and Norman Turner and R. E. W. Adams.
Regional descriptions by leading authorities give attention to center hierarchy and/or house mounds in: Petén (Don Rice and the late Dennis Puleston), Tikal (William Haviland), Belize (Norman Hammond), Yucatán/Campeche (Adams), Yucatán (Edward Kurjack and Silvia Garza T., on roads and walls), Quintana Roo (Peter Harrison, notable as a systematic sample of an unsurveyed area) and eastern Guatemala/Honduras (Richard Leventhal). While David Freidel abstracts discontinuities in center configuration (from the Classic to the Postclassic), comparable attempts at civic center pattern recognition are not yet undertaken for the Classic (except for first attempts by Harrison and Leventhal).
Explanation of recurrent archaeological patterns usually proceeds by the comparative method, with ethnographic analogies drawn from matching cultural systems. Sociocultural reconstruction is now passing beyond such classicist dichotomies as domestic buildings versus ritual/political buildings, or elite residences/goods versus those of commoners, with references to lineage organization having underpinned Classic Maya society. Comparisons are made with peoples historically unrelated to the Maya, in the tropics of Africa and Asia, but not with the better known Postclassic Maya of Guatemala (e.g., lineages/clans/moieties detailed by Wallace and Carmack, 1977). Nevertheless, worthwhile interpretations are advanced by Adams and Woodruff Smith, William Sanders, and Freidel concerning feudal-like characteristics of Classic Maya social organization.
