Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Community Growth and Sustainability in Unstable Times

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The goal of this research is to better understand the development of geopolitical centers in the Maya Lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, a time of general decline and abandonment across the Maya region. Researchers have previously identified a handful of centers that developed during this time, but the mechanisms for economic and political growth during a period of social upheaval, increasing conflict, and recurrent droughts remain poorly studied. To address these issues doctoral student Rafael. Guerra under the direction of Dr. Keith Prufer, will conduct archaeology fieldwork at the Maya city-state of Lower Dover located in the Belize River Valley, Belize Central America. In this region, most large Maya centers developed over many centuries following their initial foundation and are geographically evenly spaced at ~10 km apart. Preliminary research at Lower Dover suggests it developed rapidly between two of these long-established centers and at a time when neighboring sites were declining and engaged in significant interpolity conflict described in hieroglyphic texts. While Lower Dover lacks a hieroglyphic record, it may be an example of an economic "boom town" which flourished economically and politically in the power vacuum created by the abandonment of well-established Belize Valley polities. The success of Lower Dover at that time may be linked to its strategic location, along the Belize River giving it direct access to important long-distance trade routes and the ability to act as gateway between the upper and lower Belize River valley. It remains that by the end of the Terminal Classic Period (ca. AD 950) Lower Dover too was abandoned. In a region where the growth of major centers occurred over long periods of time, this research has potential to inform on the changes in political, social and economic structures during an interval of massive upheaval. The resulting dissertation will contribute to understanding of how the declining fortunes of some polities can foster opportunities for others, and to explore the stability of these "boom town" economies. The results of this research will be of interest to social scientists studying the resilience of complex geopolitical systems, and will contribute to the development of a promising young scholar. Fieldwork at Lower Dover consists of excavations and geochemical testing of soils and will focus on investigating a possible marketplace and riverside docking facility identified in preliminary studies by the co-PI., as well as investigations in the site core and settlements to develop a high-resolution chronology for the development and decline of the community. This precise AMS 14C chronology will allow determination of whether there was an existing local population prior to the development of the monumental core, or if the founders colonized previously unoccupied space between two declining polities. Preparations of radiocarbon samples with be undertaken by the co-PI at the University of New Mexico Center for Stable Isotopes. Detailed ceramic studies and analysis by pXRF of obsidian will illustrate economic interactions between Lower Dover and potential regional and long distance trade networks.