Abstract
We investigated the evolution of inequality in ancient Maya society using the sizes of houses as a proxy for household wealth. We used several mathematical and statistical methods to study the distribution of wealth at four major archaeological sites in the Maya lowlands: Komchén, Palenque, Sayil, and Mayapán. We calculated the Gini coefficient and the probability density function of the distribution of the house sizes as a measure of the wealth distribution at each site. We found that the wealth distributions had some characteristics of an approximate power law at all the sites, yet the exact distributions were statistically different from each other. The results indicate that the evolution of Maya culture across these sites cannot be understood as simply dependent on a monotonic evolution of the wealth distribution with time but should rather be explained by the historical circumstances surrounding each community. Specifically, the analyses show that, before the evolution of urban, state-level society, significant inequality existed in the Late Preclassic period, but a Pareto distribution either had not emerged or was incipient. In the Late and Terminal Classic periods, economic inequality became increasingly pronounced, while in the succeeding Postclassic period inequality ameliorated, although it seems that poverty prevailed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abrams, E. M. (1989). Architecture and energy: An evolutionary perspective. Archaeological Method and Theory, 1, 47–87 Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20170197
Abrams, E. M. (1994). How the Maya built their world: Energetics and ancient architecture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Abul-Magd, A. Y. (2002). Wealth distribution in an ancient Egyptian society. Physical Review E, 66, 057104 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.66.057104
Ames, K. M. (2007). The archaeology of rank. In R. Alexander, H. Bentley, D. G. Maschner, & C. Christopher (Eds.), Handbook of archaeological theories (pp. 487–513). Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Anderson, D. (2005). Preclassic settlement patterns in Northwest Yucatán. Mono y Conejo: Journal of the Mesoamerican Archaeological Research Lab, 3, 13–22.
Anderson, D. (2010). Xtobo, Yucatan, Mexico: The Study of a Preclassic Maya Community. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from: https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A24443
Andrews, E. W. V, & Bey, G. J. III. (2011). The earliest ceramics of the northern Maya lowlands, Paper presented at the Eighth Maya Symposium. New Orleans: Tulane University.
Andrews V, E. W., González Crespo, N., & Ringle, W. M. (1980). Map of the ruins of Komchén, Yucatan, Mexico. New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University.
Ashmore, W. (1981). Some issues of method and theory in lowland Maya settlement archaeology. In W. Ashmore (Ed.), Lowland Maya settlement patterns (pp. 37–69). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico.
Bagrow, J. P., Sun, J., & ben-Avraham, D. (2008). Phase transition in the rich-get-richer mechanism due to finite-size effects. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 185001, 41 https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8113/41/18/185001
Barabasí, A.-L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286, 509–512 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5439.509
Barnhart, E. L. (2001). The Palenque mapping project: Settlement and urbanism at an ancient Maya city. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/2152/10521
Barrera Vásquez, A., Pech, A., & Pech, A.-M. (1984). Documento n. 1 del deslinde de tierras en Yaxkukul, Yuc. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro Regional del Sureste.
Bentley, R. A., Lake, M. W., & Shennan, S. J. (2005). Specialisation and wealth inequality in a model of a clustered economic network. Journal of Archaeological Science, 32, 1346–1356 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.03.008
Bouchaud, J.-P., & Mézard, M. (2000). Wealth condensation in a simple model of economy. Physica A, 282, 536–545 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-4371(00)00205-3
Bowles, S., Smith, E. A., & Mulder, M. B. (2010). The emergence and persistence of inequality in premodern societies: Introduction to the special section. Current Anthropology, 51(1), 7–17 https://doi.org/10.1086/649206
Brown, B. M. (1987). Population estimation from floor area: A restudy of “Naroll’s constant”. Behavior Science Research, 21(1–4), 1–49 https://doi.org/10.1177/106939718702100101
Brown, C. T. (1999). Mayapán society and ancient Maya social organization. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from: https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A25215
Brown, C. T., & Liebovitch, L. S. (2010). Fractal analysis. Quantitative applications in the social sciences (Vol. 165). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Brown, C. T., & Witschey, W. R. T. (2003). The fractal geometry of ancient Maya settlement. Journal of Archaeological Science, 30, 1619–1632 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-4403(03)00063-3
Brown, C. T., Watson, A., Gravlin Beman, A., & Liebovitch, L. S. (2012). Poor Mayapán. In G. Braswell (Ed.), The ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the past of the northern Maya lowlands (pp. 306–324). London: Equinox Publishing.
Carmean, K. C. (1990). The ancient households of Sayil: A study of wealth in terminal classic Maya society. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
Carmean, K. C. (1991a). Architectural labor investment and social stratification at Sayil, Yucatán. Mexico. Latin American Antiquity, 2(2), 151–165 https://doi.org/10.2307/972275
Carmean, K. C. (1991b). Leadership at Sayil: A study of political and religious decentralization. Ancient Mesoamerica, 9, 259–270 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536100001978
Carmean, K. C., Dunning, N., & Kowalski, J. K. (2004). High times in the hill country: A perspective from the terminal classic Puuc region. In A. A. Demarest, P. M. Rice, & D. S. Rice (Eds.), The terminal classic in the Maya lowlands: Collapse, transition, and transformation (pp. 424–449). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Casselberry, S. E. (1974). Further refinement of formulae for determining population from floor area. World Archaeology, 6(1), 117–122 https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1974.9979593
Champernowne, D. G. (1953). A model of income distribution. The Economic Journal, 63(250), 318–351 https://doi.org/10.2307/2227127
Clauset, A., Shalizi, R. C., & Newman, M. E. J. (2009). Power-law distributions in empirical data. SIAM Review, 51(4), 661–703 https://doi.org/10.1137/070710111
Clementi, F., & Gallegati, M. (2005). Pareto’s law of income distribution: Evidence for Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In A. Chatterjee, S. Yarlagadda, & B. K. Chakrabarti (Eds.), Econophysics of wealth distributions: Econophys-Kolkata I (pp. 3–14). Milan: Springer Italia.
Damgaard, C., & Weiner, J. (2000). Describing inequality in plant size or fecundity. Ecology, 81, 1139–1142 https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[1139:DIIPSO]2.0.CO;2
Danforth, M. E. (1997). Late classic Maya health patterns from enamel microdefects. In S. L. Whittington & D. M. Reed (Eds.), Bones of the Maya: Studies of ancient skeletons (pp. 127–137). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Divale, W. T. (1977). Living floor area and marital residence: A replication. Behavior Science Research, 12, 109–115 https://doi.org/10.1177/106939717701200202
Documentos de Tabi. (n.d.). Documentos de Tierras de la Hacienda Sn Juan Bautista Tavi en Idioma Maya o Yucateca, unpubished manuscript in the Latin American Library. New Orleans: Tulane University.
Drăgulscu, A., & Yakovenko, V. M. (2001). Exponential and power-law probability distributions of wealth and income in the United Kingdom andUnited States. Physica A, 299, 213–221 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-4371(01)00298-9
Drennan, R. D., & Peterson, C. E. (2006). Patterned variation in prehistoric chiefdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(11), 3960–3967 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0510862103
Drennan, R. D., & Peterson, C. E. (2012). Challenges for comparative study of early complex societies. In M. E. Smith (Ed.), The comparative archaeology of complex societies (pp. 62–87). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Dunning, N. P. (1989). Archaeological investigations at Sayil, Yucatan, Mexico: Intersite reconnaissance and soil studies during the 1987 season. Anthropological papers number 2, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.
Dunning, N. P. (1992). Lords of the hills: Ancient Maya settlement in the Puuc region, Yucatán, Mexico. Madison: Prehistory Press.
Dunning, N. P., Beach, T., Farrell, P., & Luzzadder-Beach, S. (1998). Prehispanic agrosystems and adaptive regions in the Maya lowlands. Culture and Agriculture, 20(2/3), 87–101.
Earle, T. (Ed.). (1991). Chiefdoms: Power, economy, and ideology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Earle, T. (1997). How chiefs come to power: The political economy in prehistory. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Ember, M. (1973). An archeological indicator of matrilocal residence. American Antiquity, 38, 177–182 https://doi.org/10.2307/279363
Erasmus, C. J. (1965). Monument building: Some field experiments. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 21(4), 277–301 https://doi.org/10.1086/soutjanth.21.4.3629433
Feinman, G., & Neitzel, J. (1984). Too many types: An overview of sedentary Prestate societies in the Americas. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 7, 39–102 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-003107-8.50007-4
Folan, W. J. (1983). Urban Organization and social structure of Coba. In W. J. Folan, E. Kintz, & L. A. Fletcher (Eds.), Coba: A classic Maya metropolis (pp. 49–63). New York: Academic Press.
Galbraith, J. K. (2012). Inequality and instability: A study of the world economy just before the great crisis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gubler, R. (2000/2001). Primus inter pares: The ruling house of Cocom. Indiana, 17(18), 239–267. https://doi.org/10.18441/ind.v17i0.239-267
Hayden, B. (1997). The pithouses of Keatley Creek. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.
Hayden, B., & Cannon, A. (1984). The structure of material systems: Ethnoarchaeology in the Maya highlands. Society for American Archaeology.
Hirth, K. (1989). Domestic architecture and social rank in a mesoamerican urban center. In S. MacEarchen, D. Archae, & R. Garvin (Eds.), Households and communities, proceedings of the 21st annual Chacmool conference (pp. 441–449). Calgary: University of Calgary.
Hutson, S. R., Magnoni, A., Mazeau, D. E., & Stanton, T. W. (2006). The archaeology of urban houselots at Chunchucmil, Yucatán. In J. P. Mathews & B. A. Morrison (Eds.), Lifeways in the northern Maya lowlands: New approaches to archaeology in the Yucatán Peninsula (pp. 77–92). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Ispolatov, S., Krapivsky, P. L., & Redner, S. (1998). Wealth distributions in asset exchange models. The European Physical Journal B, 2, 267–276 https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050249
Kurjack, E. B. (1974). Prehistoric lowland Maya community and social organization: A case study at Dzibilchaltun, Yucatan, Mexico. In Middle American research institute publication (Vol. 38). New Orleans: Tulane University.
LeBlanc, S. (1971). An addition to Naroll’s suggested floor area and settlement population relationship. American Antiquity, 36(2), 210–211 https://doi.org/10.2307/278676
Lee, R. B. (1990). Primitive communism and the origin of social equality. In S. Upham (Ed.), The evolution of political systems (pp. 225–246). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Liebovitch, L. S., Todorov, A. T., Zochowski, M., Scheurle, D., Colgin, L., Wood, M. A., et al. (1999). Nonlinear properties of cardiac rhythm abnormalities. Physical Review E, 59, 3312–3319 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.59.3312
Liebovitch, L. S., Scheurle, D., Rusek, M., & Zochowski, M. (2001). Fractal methods to analyze ion channel kinetics. Methods, 24, 359–375 https://doi.org/10.1006/meth.2001.1206
Liendo Stuardo, R. (2005). An archaeological study of settlement distribution in the Palenque area, Chiapas, Mexico. Anthropological Notebooks, 11, 31–44.
Marcus, J. (1992). Royal families, royal texts: Examples from the Zapotec and Maya. In D. Z. Chase & A. F. Chase (Eds.), Mesoamerican Elites: An archaeological assessment (pp. 221–241). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Marcus, J. (1993). Ancient Maya political organization. In J. Sabloff & J. S. Henderson (Eds.), Lowland Maya civilization in the eighth century A.D (pp. 111–184). Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.
Marcus, J. (2004). Maya commoners: The stereotype and the reality. In J. C. Lohse & F. Valdez Jr. (Eds.), Ancient Maya commoners (pp. 255–283). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Marcus, J. (2008). The archaeological evidence for social evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 251–266 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085246
Márquez, L., & del Ángel, A. (1997). Height among prehispanic Maya of the Yucatán peninsula: A reconsideration. In S. L. Whittington & D. M. Reed (Eds.), Bones of the Maya: Studies of ancient skeletons (pp. 51–61). Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
Masson, M. A., & Pereza Lope, C. (2005). Commoners in postclassic Maya society: Social versus economic constructs. In C. L. Jon & F. Valdez Jr. (Eds.), Ancient Maya commoners (pp. 197–223). Austin: University of Texas Press.
McGuire, R. H. (1983). Breaking down cultural complexity: Inequality and heterogeneity. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory (Vol. 6, pp. 91–142). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-003106-1.50008-0
McGuire, R. H. (2001). Ideologies of death and power in the Hohokam Community of La Ciudad. In D. R. Mitchell & J. L. Brunson-Hadley (Eds.), Ancient burial practice in the American southwest: Archaeology, physical anthropology, and native American perspectives (pp. 27–44). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico.
Midlarsky, M. I. (1999). The evolution of inequality: War, state survival, and democracy in comparative perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Naroll, R. (1962). Floor area and settlement population. American Antiquity, 27, 587–589 https://doi.org/10.2307/277689
Netting, R. M. (1982). Some home truths about household size and wealth. American Behavioral Scientist, 25(6), 641–662 https://doi.org/10.1177/000276482025006004
Pareto, V. (1897). The new theories of economics. The Journal of Political Economy, 5(4), 485–502 https://doi.org/10.1086/250454
Pareto, V. (1971). Manual of political economy. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century (trans: Arthur Goldhammer). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Rands, R. L. (1967). Cerámica de la región de Palenque, México. Estudios de Cultura Maya VI, 111–147.
Rands, R. L. (1974). A chronological framework for Palenque. In M. G. Robertson (Ed.), Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Part I. Pebble Beach: Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pre-Columbian Art Research.
Rathje, W. L. (1983). To the salt of the earth: Some comments on household archaeology among the Maya. In E. Z. Vogt & R. M. Leventhal (Eds.), Prehistoric settlement patterns: Essays in honor of Gordon R. Willey (pp. 23–34). Albuquerque, Cambridge: University of New Mexico Press and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Rathje, W. L., & McGuire, R. H. (1982). Rich men... poor men. American Behavioral Scientist, 25(6), 705–715 https://doi.org/10.1177/000276482025006008
Restall, M. (1995). Life and death in a Maya Community: The Ixil testaments of the 1760s. Lancaster: Labyrinthos.
Restall, M. (1997). The Maya world: Yucatec culture and society, 1550–1850. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ringle, W. M. (1985). The settlement patterns of Komchén, Yucatan, Mexico. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from: https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A25838
Ringle, W. M., Andrews, V., & E. W. (1988). Formative residences at Komchén, Yucatán, México. In R. Wilk & W. Ashmore (Eds.), Household and community in the Mesoamerican past (pp. 171–197). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Ringle, W. M., & Andrews V, E. W. (1990). The demography of Komchén, an early Maya town in northern Yucatán. In T. P. Culbert & D. S. Rice (Eds.), Precolumbian population history in the Maya lowlands (pp. 215–243). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Roys, R. L. (1939). The titles of Ebtun (Vol. 505). Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication.
Roys, R. L. (1943). The Indian background of colonial Yucatan (Vol. 548). Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication.
Roys, R. L. (1957). The political geography of the Yucatan Maya (Vol. 613). Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication.
Rue, D. J., Freter, A., & Ballinger, D. A. (1989). The caverns of Copán revisited: Preclassic sites in the Sesesmil River valley, Copán, Honduras. Journal of Field Archaeology, 16(4), 395–404 https://doi.org/10.1179/jfa.1989.16.4.395
Ruppert, K., & Smith, A. L. (1952). Excavations in house mounds at Mayapan. Current reports 4. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Sabloff, J. A., & Tourtellot, G. (1991). The ancient Maya City of Sayil: The mapping of a Puuc Region Center. Middle American Research Institute, Publication No. 60. Tulane University.
Saul, F. P. (1972). The human skeletal remains of Altar de Sacrificios: An osteobiographic analysis. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 63, No. 2. Harvard University.
Schulting, R. J. (1995). Mortuary variability and status differentiation on the Columbia-Fraser plateau. Burnaby: Archaeology Press, Simon Fraser University.
Service, E. R. (1971). Primitive social organization: An evolutionary perspective (2nd ed.). New York: Random House.
Smith, A. L. (1962). Residential and associated structures at Mayapan. In H. E. D. Pollock, R. L. Roys, T. Proskouriakioff, & A. L. Smith (Eds.), Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico (pp. 165–319). Publication No. 619. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Smith, M. E. (1987). Household possessions and wealth in agrarian states: Implications for archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 6, 297–335 https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(87)90004-3
Smith, E. A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Bowles, S., Gurven, M., Hertz, T., & Shenk, M. K. (2010). Production systems, inheritance, and inequality in premodern societies: Conclusions. Current Anthropology, 51(1), 85–94 https://doi.org/10.1086/649029
Steere, B. A., & Kowalewski, S. A. (2012). Wealth stratification in ancient Mesoamerica. Social Evolution & History, 11(1), 20–48.
Stiglitz, J. E. (1969). Distribution of income and wealth among individuals. Econometrica, 37(3), 382–397 https://doi.org/10.2307/1912788
Taleb, N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. New York: Random House.
Thompson, E. H. (1892). The ancient structures of Yucatan not communal dwellings. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 8, 262–269.
Thompson, P. C. (1999). Tekanto: A Maya town in colonial Yucatán. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 67. Tulane University.
Tozzer, A. M. (1941). Landa’s relación de las cosas de Yucatan. Vol. 18. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Cambridge: Harvard University.
Trigger, B. G. (1990). Maintaining economic equality in opposition to complexity: An Iroquoian case study. In S. Upham (Ed.), The evolution of political systems (pp. 119–145). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Trigger, B. G. (2003). Understanding early civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whittington, S. L. (1989). Characteristics of demography and disease in low-status Maya from classic period Copán, Honduras. Ph.D. Dissertation, Pennsylvania State University.
Wiessner, P. (1974). A functional estimator of population from floor area. American Antiquity, 39(2), 343–350 https://doi.org/10.2307/279593
Wilk, R. R. (1983). Little house in the jungle: The causes of variation in house size among modern Kekchi Maya. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2(2), 99–116 https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(83)90009-0
Wilk, R. R. (1988). Ancient Maya household organization: Evidence and analogies. In R. R. Wilk & W. Ashmore (Eds.), Household and community in the Mesoamerican past (pp. 135–152). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
Yoffee, N. (2005). Myths of the archaic state: Evolution of the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
York, A. M., Smith, M. E., Stanley, B. W., Stark, B. L., Novic, J., Harlan, S. L., et al. (2011). Ethnic and class clustering through the ages: A transdisciplinary approach to urban neighbourhood social patterns. Urban Studies., 48, 2399–2415 https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098010384517
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Polly Cleveland and Tom Haines for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Walter Witschey generously contributed his time as well.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strawinska-Zanko, U., Liebovitch, L.S., Watson, A., Brown, C.T. (2018). Capital in the First Century: The Evolution of Inequality in Ancient Maya Society. In: Strawinska-Zanko, U., Liebovitch, L. (eds) Mathematical Modeling of Social Relationships. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76765-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76765-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76764-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76765-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)