Mayapan drawing of Kukulkan Temple by Luis Gorgora

Mayapan: Daily Life, Social Diversity, and the Built Environment, AD 1200-1450

Marilyn Masson, PhD, University at Albany SUNY

Residents of the last large regional Pre-Columbian Maya capital of Mayapan experienced daily life in the context of a dense urban landscape and built environment that marked neighborhoods, public places, stone-lined pedestrian thoroughfares, and resources. Life in the city balanced perpetual encounters with other people distinguished by class, occupation, and diverse hometown origins. Urban Mayapan was tied by complex trade and labor dependencies within the city itself as well as to its sustaining area, and subject towns across the northern peninsula. This presentation reviews and compares the features of urban and rural organization and their implications for cultivating a unifying state identity and reconciling social diversity. Further explored are capacities for economic sustainability, and lingering legacies traced into the era of Spanish Contact (until A.D. 1540). Findings at Mayapan draw on twenty years of research in the walled urban zone and rural periphery, including a regional LiDAR survey project.

Marilyn Masson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University at Albany SUNY. Her Maya area archaeological research focuses on political economies, the archaeology of daily life in urban and rural settings, and the historical anthropology of societal transformations during the Postclassic, Contact, and Colonial periods. Her recent books include Kukulcan's Realm: Urban Life at Ancient Mayapan (2014, with co-author Carlos Peraza, U. Press of Colorado), The Real Business of Ancient Maya Exchange: From Farmers' Fields to Rulers' Realms (2020, with co-editors David Freidel and Arthur Demarest, U. Press of Florida), Settlement, Economy, and Society at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico (2021, with co-editors Timothy Hare, Carlos Peraza, and Bradley Russell, Center for Comparative Archaeology, U. of Pittsburgh), and Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region (forthcoming, co-editor with Patricia McAnany, Dumbarton Oaks)..

Because of the long holiday weekend, the next virtual meeting of the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, D.C. will be held Friday, September 9th rather than the first Friday of the month. This meeting is free and open to the public but you must pre-register. To register click HERE.