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Late Classic Lowland Maya Political Organization and Central-Place Analysis: New insights from the Upper Belize Valley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Joseph W. Ball  and
Jennifer T. Taschek
Joseph W. Ball
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182
Jennifer T. Taschek
Affiliation:
School of Architecture, Lawrence Hall, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403
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Abstract

Between 1984 and 1989, the San Diego State University Mopan–Macal Triangle Project carried out six extended seasons of fieldwork oriented toward documenting the internal sociobehavioral structure and organization of a representative Classic period community in the southern Maya Lowlands. The project also undertook to delineate the spatial boundaries of several such contiguous communities and to test a selected set of alternative models for Classic period political organization at the local and regional levels. This article summarizes our approach to understanding political organization and presents our preliminary conclusions: a model of the so-called segmentary state type as recently espoused by several researchers best approximates the reality of internal political organization at the single polity level during the Late Classic period of the southern Maya Lowlands.

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Articles
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Fall 1991 , pp. 149 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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