Soft Technology

Following the work of Liam Frink and others who have explored the technologies of soft storage, it is clear that archaeologists have used preservation issues to avoid careful consideration of how soft technologies such as skins, cloth, and basketry were used for the storage of food surpluses, a basic component of most complex societies (Frink and Giordano 2015; Smith 2013; Soffer et al. 2000). Monica Smith (2013:147) has questioned the designation of soft storage artifacts such as textiles as perishable, given their long use life and relative durability compared to more brittle artifacts (that preserve well) such as ceramics or flaked stone. Frink claims that cross-cultural ethnographic data support a general pattern in which durable goods such as stone and metal artifacts are generally produced by men while perishable artifacts such as textiles and basketry are often produced by women (Frink and Giordano 2015; Murdock and Provost 1973). While there are important exceptions to this generalization, the presumed association of durable goods with male producers has a long history in archaeological interpretation and has positioned such artifacts as the more visible and prestigious examples of technology as a manifestation of culture (Dobres 2010). Thus, when economic models of past societies are built around primarily durable goods, such models are androcentric and can undervalue the contributions of women, children, and elderly craft producers to their economic systems.

Issues of preservation are not a sufficient reason to overlook fiber technologies. In the Maya area there are artifacts long associated with the production of perishable crafts, such as bark beaters and spindle whorls, well documented in the archaeological record yet mostly neglected in our economic analyses. The rich ethnographic record of plant fiber use by contemporary Maya people likewise argues for plant fiber technology as a central component of the ancient economy and ethnobotanical knowledge base. The writings of the sixteenth-century Franciscan bishop Diego de Landa and other ethnohistoric documents such as the Motul and Vienna dictionaries confirm that sixteenth-century Maya craftspeople used plant fibers for a rich assortment of goods, or what Landa described as “an infinity of things,” during the contact period. Baskets, mats, rope, and nets are all well represented in the artistic corpus of the Classic period and earlier (Clark and Houston 1998; Follensbee 2008; Gates 1937 [1566]:102).

The sheer scale of plant fiber usage and exchange, as discussed below, suggests that models of ancient Maya trade that rely on a scarcity framework may be ill equipped to accommodate or explain data on plant fiber technologies. Likewise, since these models derive from data on elite exchange of rare goods, they would be unlikely to accurately represent the cultural characteristics that resulted from the management of a substantial trade in plant fiber raw materials and finished products. The harvest and transport of plant fibers likely required relatively common manual skills but a high degree of social cooperation given the perishable nature of the materials, their bulk, and the lack of pack animals for transport in ancient Mesoamerica. Did social collectivities manage these tasks? Were extended kin networks mobilized for work parties, or did individual households provide tribute payments to administrative units? The study of abundance and especially the acknowledgment that elites often justified their privilege in complex societies through the provisioning and performance of abundance provide a welcome reorientation to ancient Maya economic systems.

A City at the Edge

Chunchucmil, a large urban Classic Maya center, was located in an agriculturally marginal area of rocky, poor soils in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico (figure 6.1). This large urban center with a peak population estimated at 30,000–40,000 was situated adjacent to a rich savanna zone that borders the Gulf of Mexico. The savanna is a seasonally inundated tropical open grassland that contrasted dramatically with the bedrock and cactus landscape of urban Chunchucmil. Traditional models in Maya studies of agricultural self-sufficiency fail for this particular city, which relied instead on trade and exchange (Ardren 2015; Beach 1998; Dahlin and Ardren 2002; Dahlin et al. 2005; Hutson, Dahlin, and Mazeau 2010; Magnoni et al. 2014). Most scholars working at ancient Maya urban centers utilize some variant of the regal-ritual model to theorize the city-states of the Classic period (Chase and Chase 1998; Demarest 2005; Houston and Inomata 2009; McAnany 2010; Sanders and Webster 1988). A key component of this model is the lack of a well-developed economy (acknowledging that no consensus exists on a definition of this term for ancient Mesoamerica) and a reliance on local provisioning for subsistence needs. Such centers were primarily venues for the exchange and consumption of prestige goods rather than the production or distribution of crafts or commodities. Evidence for craft specialization, large-scale storage, or markets is scarce at most Classic Maya cities. Production of utilitarian items for exchange is also scarce, and daily commodities such as pottery, textiles, and tools were generated in outlying residential settlements. Likewise, there is little evidence for storage or redistribution of agricultural goods in Maya urban centers, leading most scholars to believe that in general, each city was largely agriculturally self-reliant and autonomous.

Figure 6.1. Location of Chunchucmil in the Maya lowlands. Map by Traci Ardren.

Located inland from the second-largest natural saltworks in Mesoamerica, the 25 km² urban population of Chunchucmil grew to its largest extent in the Early Classic period (AD 200–700), a period of intensive interregional trade throughout the region. It survived into the Late Classic and Terminal Classic periods (AD 700–1200), but with a reduced population and less architectural construction. Despite the poverty of the soils in this zone of the peninsula, Chunchucmil had a strategic location that facilitated the control and movement of coastal resources, especially salt and trade goods, to interior population centers; this location was the motivation for the settlement of Chunchucmil and its long-term success (Hutson 2016). Research has demonstrated that the agricultural needs of the city, which functioned as a port of trade and gateway center, were met through market-based exchange of salt, obsidian, and other goods in a down-the-line form of exchange (cf. Renfrew 1975; Hutson 2016). While earlier publications have emphasized the importance of salt and Gulf Coast trade items in the non-agricultural economy of Chunchucmil, in this chapter I focus on the role of savanna resources, especially plant fiber products, in the city’s success.

A cornerstone of the research agenda at Chunchucmil was the rich supplementary resource base of the savanna that to all of us working at the site clearly provided subsistence insurance against the harsh conditions and poor soils of the urban center. Bruce Dahlin and Traci Ardren (2002) wrote about resource diversification as one of the key mechanisms for the success of the Terminal Classic state centered at Chichen Itza and considered the uncultivable savanna a significant limitation on the ability of the ancient population at Chunchucmil to sustain itself agriculturally (Dahlin et al. 2005). The 20 km band of wetlands to the west of Chunchucmil was a constant factor in earlier models developed to explain the rise of this unique urban center, both as a limit on arable land and as a source of other resources. Yet little attention has been paid to investigating one class of savanna products that is certain to have been heavily exploited—the palms and other vegetal fibers used in woven plant technology.

Plant Fiber Technology in Yucatan

Today, the Yucatan Peninsula is home to expert plant fiber artisans who preserve local traditions of plant fiber processing and use. Within the peninsula is a rich and diverse tradition of plant fiber technology, and products from many different plant species are used in a wide variety of woven forms and purposes (Rasmussen, Arroyo, and Terán 2010). Yucatecan artisans are famous for specialized products made of henequen and jipijapa, both of which require elaborate processing and expert weaving skills (Fadiman 2001). The bejuco vine is used for a variety of forms, and there are at least seven varieties of palms whose leaves are used to make basketry, rope, and thatch (Rodriguez Lazcano and Torres Quintero 1992:13). The role of this superabundant soft technology in models of domestic economies within the Classic Maya lowlands has been overlooked and under-theorized.

What can we say, then, about how the unique resources of the Chunchucmil savanna were used within Classic period systems of plant fiber technology and crafting? First we must establish that plant fiber technologies are not necessarily less complex or sophisticated than others but are simply under-studied in the Maya area. The skills needed to identify and harvest the correct plants, process them to extract usable fibers, and then weave or construct usable items are numerous and highly specific. Basketry alone can be classified into three main technologies of twining, coiling, and plaiting; and the potential number of technological subtypes within each class is relatively great (Adovasio 1977:1). Ethnographic studies have shown that rarely do cultural groups reproduce the exact same types of baskets, and while technological attributes are standardized, they are also culturally determined, and no class of artifacts presents a greater diversity of culturally visible attributes than does basketry (Adovasio 1977:4; Flechsig 2004:78). Given most Western archaeologists’ unfamiliarity with fiber technologies and their relative scarcity in the archaeological record of the tropics, it has been easy to consider them simple technologies requiring little expertise, skill, or value in Classic Maya economies.

Today, Maya children begin learning to manufacture simple tools with plant fibers at a very early age and progress to more complicated forms given their individual abilities—evidence that certain plant fiber expertise requires years of apprenticeship to master (Rodriguez Lazcano and Torres Quintero 1992:15). While many apprenticeship processes are highly gendered in modern Maya societies, such as instruction in back-strap weaving, which is limited to young girls, the variety of forms and products made from plant fibers allows access to training for all children who have an aptitude. The social relationships generated and circulated during the plant fiber apprenticeships of modern Yucatan center on family units and crosscut age and gender groups, although certain classes of soft technology such as woven mats and baskets are more often produced by women, especially the elderly with assistance from children (Fadiman 2001; Flechsig 2004; Snoddy Cuellar 1993). Weavers who make their living working with plant fibers to make high-quality “Panama” hats (a misnomer) spend nine hours a day in a human-made underground cave that keeps fibers supple and pliable, but they earn less than one-tenth of the final selling price because of modern marketing strategies (Fadiman 2001:544). These highly skilled weavers have invested significant time in training and learning complex technologies not easily mastered. The materials they utilize are easily cultivated in Yucatan, but few people understand how to work the palm fibers while they are pliable or the complex weaves necessary to create a waterproof and durable hat with up to 1,000 weaves per square inch. The range of plant fiber products made in Yucatan today, and the variety of skills needed to produce such a range of products, suggests that while in the past many people may have possessed the ability to make simple ropes and utility baskets, other forms of craft making such as supple mats, cloth, and ceremonial items were likely the product of specialized craftspeople who possessed the knowledge of intricate weaving patterns and sophisticated plant fiber processing technologies.

Plant Fiber Products in Classic Maya Economies

Imagery from elite ceramic vessels and carved stone monuments suggest a wide range of uses for plant fibers during the Classic period. Many forms of baskets are shown with offerings of food and other substances, and they mirror certain domestic forms of woven technology produced today (figure 6.2). Carrying devices, such as net bags, tump lines, and bundles, are also common in the iconographic record and likewise are used today (figure 6.3). Rope, twine, and cordage of all types are shown, as are codices or books made of lime-covered bark paper. Modest domestic structures covered in palm thatch are shown in monumental elite architecture in a metaphorical equation of elite and commoner domestic architecture (figure 6.4). Even clothing, hats, headdresses, and capes were made of plant fibers, according to Classic iconography. Mats, for covering both stone surfaces and walls, were obviously ideologically significant as well as ubiquitous symbols of privilege (figure 6.5).

Figure 6.2. Rollout of Classic Maya painted vase showing woven baskets holding tribute payments in a royal court. Used with permission, © Justin Kerr.

Figure 6.3. Classic Maya carved bowl showing the Merchant God carrying goods in a woven back rack. Illustration by Traci Ardren.

Figure 6.4. Monumental Arch at the Classic Maya city of Labna, decorated with depictions of thatched Maya domestic structures. Photograph by Dan Griffin.

Figure 6.5. Elite Classic Maya cylindrical ceramic vase painted to resemble a woven basket (detail). Used with permission, © Justin Kerr.

Research has shown that Classic Maya people managed forest resources in a sustainable manner, for consistent yields and access, at least during the majority of the Classic period (Faust 1998; Ford and Nigh 2009, 2015; Gómez-Pompa et al. 2003). Earlier theories (Abrams and Rue 1988; Paine and Freter 1996) that deforestation may have played a significant role in the collapse or cessation of new construction late in the history of southern Maya lowland cities such as Copan have recently been challenged with new data (McNeil, Burney, and Burney 2010). Normal forest management yielded a modest surplus for exchange, as demonstrated by the presence of forest products such as jaguar pelts, parrot feathers, and hardwoods in multiple contexts at nearly all major Classic Maya cities, even those far from forest zones. The difficulty of finding evidence for these highly perishable materials outside of tombs or iconographic illustrations has likely resulted in an underestimation of the movement of forest products across regions. Bark paper made from the fig tree, natural rubber used for balls and ritual offerings, and cacao beans are all ephemeral organic forest products that textual and iconographic indications suggest were crucial materials produced for exchange. Patricia McAnany, for example, suggests that cacao production zones could have been controlled as “chocolate factories” through a system of tribute exchange at the heart of Classic Maya palace economies (2010:294).

Because of their relative inaccessibility and inundation, the coastal savannas of the Yucatan Peninsula are virtually unoccupied today and thus are reserves of high forest biodiversity (Martinez-Ballesté, Martorell, and Caballero 2008). Plants and animals that might have been present across the peninsula at one time have retreated to these environments in recent decades, and certain resources are significantly more plentiful in the savannas because of their rich soils and moisture. Palms of all species grow well here, and today the savannas, with their associated islands of higher ground fed by freshwater springs, are important economic resources in part for their ability to provide thatching material for traditional Maya domestic structures, a commodity that has become increasingly difficult to obtain in certain parts of the peninsula.

To examine in detail one of the most dominant forms of woven plant technology in Classic Maya economies, we need look no further than thatch. The architectural remains of Classic period domestic structures across the Maya lowlands support a hypothesis that the vast majority of living structures were covered with thatch roofing in a manner very similar to the way traditional Yucatec Maya homes are roofed today. The dimensions of Classic period structures are easily accommodated by perishable roofing. The absence of evidence for an alternative manner of roofing in most archaeological contexts and iconographic depictions of small domestic structures that show in detail the use of palm thatch provide additional evidence supporting an extensive use of plant technology in living structures of the past (see figure 6.4).

An Abundance of Thatch

Aline Magnoni’s (2007) careful analysis of settlement pattern data generates a population estimate useful for understanding the importance of thatch in the economy of a Classic Maya urban center. Based on a detailed calculation of mean family size from ancient, historic, and modern data, Magnoni identified structures in the range of 18 m² as likely domestic buildings, eliminating smaller structures as likely storage or animal pens and larger structures as multi-use facilities. Within the 25 km² of continuous ancient settlement at Chunchucmil, she identified between 7,871 and 8,555 simple domestic structures, accounting for the change in structural density in the outermost periphery (Magnoni 2007:163)—a number range we can simplify to suggest that there were approximately 8,000 thatched-roofed domestic structures at the site.

Using figures from modern domestic construction techniques in Yaxunah, Yucatan, which utilize similar dimensions as ancient structures and so represent a reasonable proxy for thatching techniques of the past, a conservative estimate of 4,000 guanos or palm leaves would be required to thatch an 18 m² domestic structure. This type of roof would have been under constant maintenance and repair, with the entire set of fronds replaced after approximately ten years. This process of replacement would have occurred piecemeal as individual sections degraded, indicating a continuous and enduring engagement with thatch procurement and technology. Using Magnoni’s data on the number of domestic structures at Chunchucmil, which we know from extensive residential sampling date largely to the Early Classic period, 32 million palm leaves were required at any given time for domestic architecture alone. If we think about this figure for the entire Early Classic period, 200–700 CE, a 500-year period in which domestic thatched roofs would have been replaced approximately forty times, the total amount of palm thatch necessary is 1.28 billion fronds for Chunchucmil alone. Studies of Sabal mexicana and Sabal yapa (palma de guano in Spanish and xa’an in Yucatec Maya) in the Yucatan have shown that these palms produce only about six–twelve leaves per year, when managed in a sustainable manner according to traditional Maya forest management techniques used across the peninsula (Martinez-Ballesté, Martorell, and Caballero 2008:1322). These techniques are aggressive, and they harvest all but a single frond once a year, in part because these palm species regenerate faster when harvested at this rate compared to a less aggressive harvesting regime or when not harvested at all (Martinez-Ballesté, Martorell, and Caballero 2008:1323). However, this still results in the need for a staggering amount of palms in the forests of the peninsula to accommodate this one particular usage of palm fronds.

The ancient inhabitants of Chunchucmil would have been situated advantageously for the procurement of thatch, a commodity that today has a clear market value in Yucatan. Sabal palms are ubiquitous across the various microenvironments of the peninsula, but they grow best in the wet, rich soils and closed canopy of the savanna zones (Pulido and Caballero 2006). The shift to more intensive agricultural practices, smaller forests, and increased demand for thatch in the tourist facilities of the Caribbean coast has contributed to the scarcity of thatch in some parts of the peninsula today.

While today thatch can be harvested for free by modern villagers of Chunchucmil, as many of them maintain rights of access to the savanna, traditional Maya in the center of the peninsula within the village of Yaxunah pay as much as 4 pesos a frond to purchase the raw materials necessary to construct a thatched roof. The cost of a new roof can be over US$1,000, which negatively impacts the choice of traditional building methods and practices today when the daily minimum wage in Mexico remains approximately US$5. While monetary considerations are a relatively recent development in the history of plant fiber technology within the Maya area, ancient families still had to calculate either labor investments for procurement or exchange value in other goods. Demand was also much higher in the past, when other roofing materials used today such as aluminum or tarpaper were not available. The differential access to thatch between modern Yucatec people in Chunchucmil versus those in Yaxunah is still a relevant model for the prehistoric period, in which Chunchucmileños and other near-coast residents certainly had enhanced access to this very necessary commodity.

Savanna Products and the Chunchucmil Economy

The valuable products of the savanna and associated estuary zone include palm fibers and other plant materials such as hardwoods and medicinal flora but also an abundance of animal resources, such as migratory birds, reptiles, deer, jaguars, sea turtles, and fish. Procurement and trade in these materials is believed to have been a central part of the market economy of ancient Chunchucmil, and the isotopic studies of Eugenia Mansell and colleagues demonstrate that the inhabitants of the city ate a more diverse diet than did most ancient Maya people of the region (Mansell et al. 2006). Thus the movement of people, both traders and regular citizens, back and forth from the city to the coast was a regular part of the experience of living at ancient Chunchucmil. The savanna and its distinct landscape of forest and wetland features must have been a familiar background to the frequent expeditions to the coast undertaken by many of the city’s inhabitants.

Based on Landsat satellite photographs and radar imagery, David Hixson located two previously identified campsites within the western wetlands and surveyed their microenvironments (Hixson 2005, 2011). Using the remote data to identify similar microenvironments, Hixson was able to verify the presence of prehistoric habitation in a number of locations throughout the savanna. Small hamlets are found on many pockets of higher ground in the wetlands, and ancient field houses are found even in the most isolated locations within the swamp (Hixson 2005:4). Rock alignments of human manufacture but unknown function were also documented in the savanna by the Pakbeh Regional Archaeological Project members. These alignments are the physical manifestation of Chunchucmil’s regional communication and trade network, outlining a dendritic system of local and regional pathways.

The concept of the urban imaginary acknowledges that cities are largely “fictionalized interrelationships among strangers” (LiPuma and Koelble 2005:156). In this sense the “imaginary” captures the ambiguities of urban life, the sacrifices of crowded and dangerous living counterpoised with the continued willingness of people to participate in urban environments. These characteristics are no less true of ancient urban centers—in many cases the harshest aspects of urban life were more prevalent in ancient societies, which had little expectation of public works such as education or sanitation. Edward LiPuma and Thomas Koelble suggest that one of the characteristics of the urban imaginary is the specific nature of circulations—an overlapping set of experiences of exchange, whether of goods, stories, ideas, or ways of being that lead to a unique and specific everyday understanding, an identity of being “from there.” Each time a person states that he or she is headed to the savanna or coast, for example, the individual is reasserting a position in a shared imaginary urban space and circulating this idea to those around him or her.

Obviously, one of the most important forms of circulation accessible to an archaeologist would be the circulation of goods throughout an urban space and the shared experiences this generates. At Chunchucmil, another avenue for shared participation in circulation is the movement of people to and from the coast by way of the wetland savanna (Ardren 2015; Magnoni et al. 2014). An economy built around control of salt trade and savanna products necessitated movement from the urban center to the coast by some part of the population. Based on ethnographic analogy, apparently on an annual basis a large segment of the urban population moved out to the salt flats to harvest salt, perhaps also transporting it back to the site for warehousing. Monumental architectural groups with enclosed patio areas may have been the setting for salt storage or trade. The hamlet and campsites identified within the savanna zone certainly played a part in this experience, perhaps as way stations for rest along the journey or as landmarks along the way (Ardren and Lowry 2011). To walk to the coast, one left the relatively higher ground and dense urban atmosphere of the city, moved through an often wet and grassy savanna filled with freshwater springs and wildlife, then eventually reached the coastal mangroves and estuaries of the salt flats. Workers who traveled together must have shared stories of their work and lives and returned home with stories of the landscape outside the city. This circulation of people through contrasting environs, locations of profound economic, political, and cultural significance in the economy of ancient Chunchucmil, became part of the shared circulations of stories and knowledge that helped shape the experience of the city and the urban social relations that kept it functioning (Grieco 1995:190).

While Dahlin and other members of the Pakbeh Project, including myself, argued often that the urban settlement of Chunchucmil was located at the westernmost point of inhabitable land on the peninsula, I wish to clarify that the savanna and estuary zones were not in any way marginal to the complex history of this ancient city (Dahlin and Ardren 2002). The unique and abundant resources of the savanna were central to Chunchucmil’s trajectory and contributed to its immense growth despite the poor agricultural potential of its location. The multitude of natural resource assets the savanna provided were an inescapable component of not only the local economy but the local identity as well.

As Monica Smith (this volume) points out, abundance is implicated in many social processes that were fundamental to ancient complex cultures. The abundance of the savanna may have contributed to the unique nature of Chunchucmil in the key arenas of adaptability, collective engagement, and mass trade. The rich resource diversity of the savanna coupled with poor agricultural potential presented an opportunity for rapid adaptation to an “abundance of variants” (Smith, this volume). It may have been the accumulated advantages of long-term adaptation to the multiplicity of challenges and opportunities presented by life adjacent to the savanna that predisposed Chunchucmileños to venture into long-distance trade in salt and savanna products. The diversity of goods sourced and managed locally in the savanna likely provided a very different set of skills than were necessary at inland centers or small coastal hamlets more characteristic of Classic Maya settlement patterns. Those typical centers were supported by large resident farming populations, while Chunchucmil was filled with a wider range of specialists (as documented in craft production debris, the absence of agricultural land, and an architectural corpus that mutes hierarchical difference). For many reasons Chunchucmil was not a typical Maya city, although a similar pattern of muted social hierarchy as demonstrated in relative architectural homogeneity can also be seen in other Maya sites active in natural resource trade, such as the cacao-producing sites of the Sibun Valley in Belize and the chert-producing site of Colha—but the opposite is true for the jade ornament production site of Cancuen, which is located far from the jade sources (Kovacevich 2007; McAnany et al. 2002; Shafer and Hester 1983). Maya settlements in areas with abundant and valuable natural resources were organized in variable ways, although more work remains to be done to assess the role of such resource hot spots in the evolution of Classic period polities.

Abundance and Local Identity

The “acquisition of repetitive objects from a particular place constitutes another form of collective engagement” (Smith, this volume), and, as discussed, circulation between the city and coast through the resource-rich wetlands was likely a key component of how a sense of place and identity was perpetuated at Chunchucmil. When the importance of plant fibers is introduced into these circulations, the numbers needed to provide adequate roofing material argue that hundreds of thousands of palm fronds were cut every year. The abundance provided by the savanna but also the physical act of harvesting that abundance was certainly a repetitive activity that large numbers of ancient Maya people experienced. The visual impact of leaving a city covered in palm thatch to individually harvest hundreds of such fronds and then return with them to the collectivity is a clear example of the materialization of collective engagement and place-making rooted in the principle of abundance.

As a port of trade with a central market, Chunchucmil was marked as a place of plenty (Dahlin et al. 2007; Hutson 2016). A greater diversity of trade goods from elsewhere, larger-than-average percentages of commodities such as obsidian, and a huge resident population all demonstrate the unusual access this city had to economic resources. The lack of typically Maya signatures of dynastic rule at the site, such as funerary pyramids and rich elite burials, has long perplexed us but can be explained as the result of the leveling effect of an economic alliance of relative equals. Traders who were made wealthy through the movement of a wide variety of goods seem to have set up individual compounds with private areas for viewing materials or related negotiations. These patio quadrangles were linked to the central market area by clear administrative features such as raised roads and walkways. Abundance muted the highly stratified expressions of power usual in the Maya area and problematized typical hierarchies of elites versus commoners, perhaps engendering a form of social cooperation between quadrangle occupants and their nearby domestic groups (Hutson, Dahlin, and Mazeau 2010). The city was sustained not through the movement of exotic goods alone but through an ongoing and pervasive trade in daily goods such as marine products, salt, plant fibers, and other goods that acquired distance-value through transportation (Smith 2013:155).

What we find instead at Chunchucmil is a huge population living in relatively comparable conditions with similar levels of access to goods. The city was premised on the movement of a profusion of goods that required a more extensive trading machinery than found at many typical Maya centers, where a very limited number of elites controlled access to long-distance prestige items and goods. Such a system was not functional at a location where the economy was based on exchange of a rich abundance of natural resources from the savanna and coast coupled with a high-volume trade in non-local ceramics, obsidian, and foodstuffs. In fact, the development of urbanism at an interaction zone like Chunchucmil may have been substantially different than at most Classic Maya centers because the latter grew in size largely as a result of rituals of inclusion and trust performed between rulers and subordinate elites (Golden and Scherer 2012). While in those centers the perception of abundance was reliant on the generosity of a royal dynasty, Chunchucmil’s immense size and density was largely the result of a shared perception of resource abundance and the potential for exchange. The multiple elite compounds of similar size and configuration, the open marketplace at the center of the city, and the absence of iconography reinforcing restricted access to trade goods all demonstrate how abundance was performed as a guiding principle of the city’s identity. These features underscore not only an abundance of raw materials but an abundance of access to resources across the population.

Conclusion

Plant fiber technology has been overlooked in models of ancient Maya resource diversity and craft production, despite the availability of relevant artifactual and ethnographic information. This omission marginalizes a key component of the economy in the Maya region, which like other tropical areas enjoys a profusion of usable plant materials. Forested areas tended by Maya people today are characterized as species-rich, with a complex structure of highly valued native species. Research has demonstrated that the diversity of tree species parallels the diversity in their economic value to the people who manage them in this region today (Thompson et al. 2015:126). The use and management of non-timber forest products in the Maya area is a topic of great current interest in the fields of ecology and environmental management, and archaeologists should contribute to those conversations more often, given our rich data on populations that were even more dependent on natural resources than those of today (Ford and Nigh 2015; Martinez-Ballesté, Martorell, and Caballero 2008; Ross 2011; Thompson et al. 2015).

While many other aspects of traditional Maya ethnobotany are lost to us, plant fiber technology remains a vibrant and self-perpetuating body of specialized knowledge and skills to which we have ready access. A consideration of the abundance of savanna resources provides a new perspective on initial settlement and eventual urban migrations to this unusual ancient center. Urban neighborhood networks may have facilitated annual migrations to the coast for littoral resources where social or kinship relations were deployed for the recruitment of labor. Rather than agricultural scarcity, natural resource abundance may be a more salient characteristic for the initial settlement and later success of Chunchucmil and other ancient Maya trade centers located in environments marginal for agriculture but rich in opportunities.