Tikal: A Case Study 257large, paved area surrounded by
about 300 major struc-
tures and thousands of
houses (Figure 11.3).
Starting from a small,
dispersed population,
Tikal swelled to at least
45,000 people. By 1,550
years ago, its population
density had reached 600
to 700 people per square
kilometer, which was
three times that of the
surrounding region.
Tikal and the surrounding region were intensively ex-
plored under the joint auspices of the University of Penn-
sylvania Museum and the Guatemalan government from
1956 through the 1960s. At the time, it was the most am-
bitious archaeological project undertaken in the western
hemisphere.
In the first few years of the Tikal Project, archaeolo-
gists investigated only major temple and palace structures
found in the vicinity of the Great Plaza, at the site’s epicen-
ter. But in 1959, aiming to gain a balanced view of Tikal’s
development and composition, they turned their attention
to the hundreds of small mounds that surround larger
buildings and were thought to be the remains of dwell-
ings. In a sense, this represented a shift in the practice of
archaeology toward studying the complexities of everyday
life. Imagine how difficult it would be to get a realistic view
of life in a major city such as Washington, DC, or Beijing
by looking only at their monumental public buildings.
Similarly, a realistic view of Tikal cannot be reconstructed
without examining the full range of ruins in the area.
The excavation of small structures, most of which were
probably houses, permitted the estimation of Tikal’s popu-
lation size and density. This information allowed archae-
ologists to test the conventional assumption that the Maya
inhabitants’ subsistence practices were inadequate to sus-
tain large population concentrations.
Extensive excavation also provided a sound basis for a
reconstruction of the everyday life and social organization
of the Maya, a people who had been known almost entirely
through the study of ceremonial remains. For example,
differences in architecture, house construction, and as-
sociated artifacts and burials suggest differences in social
class. Features of house distribution might reflect the ex-
istence of extended families or other types of kin groups.
The excavation of both large and small structures revealed
the social structure of the total population of Tikal.^3from one another by a grid of narrow streets, maintaining
the east-of-north orientation throughout the city. It is es-
timated that over 100,000 people inhabited this great city
until its sudden collapse possibly in the 7th century.
Finally, clear evidence for both social and economic
diversity exists in Teotihuacan. Some six levels of soci-
ety can be discerned through the varying size and qual-
ity of apartment rooms. Those at and near the top of the
social scale lived on or near the Street of the Dead. The
Pyramid of the Sun along this avenue was built above a
cave, which was seen as a portal to the underworld and
as the home of deities associated with death. Teotihuacan
artisans worked on exotic goods and raw materials im-
ported from afar, and at least two neighborhoods housed
people with foreign affiliations—one with Oaxaca, the
other (the “merchant’s quarter”) with the Gulf and Maya
lowlands. Farmers, whose labor in fields (some of them
irrigated) supplied the food to fellow city dwellers, also
resided in the city.^2
Mohenjo-Daro and Teotihuacan, like other early cities
throughout the globe, were far more than expanded Neo-
lithic villages. The changes that took
place in the transition from vil-
lage to city were so great
that many consider the
emergence of urban liv-
ing to be one of the great
developments in human
culture. The follow-
ing case study gives us a
glimpse of another of the
world’s ancient cities, in-
cluding how archaeolo-
gists have studied it and
how it may have grown
from a smaller farming
community.
Tikal: A Case Study
The ancient city of Tikal, one of the largest lowland Maya
centers in existence, is situated in Central America about
300 kilometers north of Guatemala City. Tikal was built on
a broad limestone terrace in a rainforest. Here the Maya
settled 3,000 years ago. Because the Maya calendar can be
precisely correlated with our own, it is known that their civ-
ilization flourished until 1,100 years ago.
At its height, Tikal covered about 120 square kilome-
ters (km^2 ), and its center or nucleus was the Great Plaza, a
Mohenjo
DaroCHINA
BHUTANBANGLADESHSRI
LANKAPAKISTANAFGHANISTANINDIANEPALBay of
BengalArabian
SeaTikalGuatemala
CityNICARAGUAHONDURASGUATEMALAMEXICOEL SALVADORBELIZE(^2) Cowgill, G. L. (1997). State and society at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Annual
Review of Anthropology 26, 129–161.
(^3) Haviland, W. A. (2002). Settlement, society and demography at Tikal.
In J. Sabloff (Ed.), Tikal. Santa Fe: School of American Research.