The ancient Maya civilization - famed for its monumental architecture, beautiful jade and obsidian artifacts, and intricate calendar - arose from 2000 BCE to 250 CE, and peaked from 250 to 900 CE. At its peak, it was among the most densely populated, socially complex societies in the world. The largest and most complex polities were located in the southern lowlands in areas dependent on rainfall for drinkable water. Lisa Lucero (2002, 2006) proposes a hypothesis that ritual and physical control of potable water in these regions provided Mayan elites the power to demand tribute from their farmer clients. Interactions between resource exploitation and changing rainfall patterns may have taxed elites' ability to convince their clients of their ritual and economic control over water. If we think of public rituals as a sort of bargaining process between Mayan elites and their subjects and focused on water access, perhaps the vicissitudes of climate change gave commoners cause to leave the bargaining table for good. Dr. Lucero presented a paper at the Society for American Archaeology meetings in 2009 on the water control hypothesis. In the same session, I presented a paper proposing the potential utility to archaeologists of the Patron-Client simulation, bargaining theory, and reproductive skew frameworks discussed elsewhere on my website. More recently, I began collaborating with Dr. Lucero on a paper that provides theoretical support for the water control hypothesis from an economic, evolutionary, and ecological standpoint. I hope that, when published, this paper will motivate researchers to modify our theoretical models so as to unite them with empirical data from the archaeological and paleoclimatic records. |
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