Search for: All records

Modern life in cities involves perpetual tensions between private and public spaces evoking the question whether such tensions existed when cities first emerged. This paper investigates such tensions at the lowland Maya site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in Petén, Guatemala. The city developed along with other such settlements in the Maya region, sometime between 2800 and 2500 years ago. This anomalous site has the earliest known rectangular urban grid in the Americas. Such grids have not been found in other preColumbian Maya settlements. Gridded urban space requires the invention of public space, streets, and the grid. Even with these three characteristics present, they require social mechanisms (city planning and the means to implement the plan) capable of “rationalizing” city space. They also necessitate the power to regulate public spaces if the grid is to exist over long periods of time. The gridded streets of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ seem to be the most public of all spaces at the site. Nevertheless, a longue durée examination of the site reveals that private space gradually extended into and decreased the size of public space. These transformations tend to suggest a shift from a more cooperative to a more competitive social environment, which may correlate with elaborated social differentiation and segmentation. 

Early occupation at Nixtun-Ch'ich’, on the western edge of Lake Petén Itzá, is dated by two ceramic complexes, K'as and Chich. These represent the Late and Terminal Early Preclassic or the early and late “Pre-Mamom” periods, respectively (ca. 1300–800 BC), including a “Transitional” period incorporating Nix Middle Preclassic (Mamom) pottery. Comparisons with complexes at other sites in the region permit the dating of 10 construction loci, including 3 in the civic-ceremonial core. Low late Pre-Mamom platforms were raised and expanded in Transitional and Early Middle Preclassic times, when they were elaborated into two E-Groups and a Triadic Structure on the central axis. This building activity is interpreted in terms of cooperative or corporate labor organization and related to evolutionary game theory. The ritual foundation of such organization is evident in the site's gridded layout based on a mythical world-creation crocodile. 

The lowland Maya city of Nixtun-Ch'ich' (Petén, Guatemala) exhibits an atypical gridded layout featuring quadrilateral blocks of architectural construction, established in the Middle Preclassic period (~ 800–500 BCE). Early levels of some excavated structures revealed unusual dark-colored, sticky sediments used as architectural footings overlying limestone bedrock and as adhesives for binding construction stones. Physical, mineralogical, and soil nutrient (chemical) properties of two samples of this material were analyzed. The samples were found to be highly organic (high %LOI), and composed primarily of smectite clay. They are characterized by low green strength, marked swelling when mixed with water, and corresponding shrinkage on drying, suggesting low load-bearing capacity. Chemical analyses revealed a slightly elevated pH of 7.8 and high levels of six soil nutrients but low phosphorus, likely making the material unsatisfactory for agriculture. We conclude that these sticky organic clays, probably of lacustrine origin, functioned as bonding agents in early architectural construction.