Date of Award

5-2016

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Anthropology

Advisor/Committee Chair

Marilyn A. Masson

Abstract

Previous research on the archaeological site of Mayapán , the las t political capital of the Maya, located in the N orthwest of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula , has focused mainly on urban life and the monumental architecture of the city center. In the 1950s the Carnegie Institution of Washington initially mapped and investigated Mayapán but the more recent contributions of both the Mexican government’s National Institute of Anthrop ology and History (INAH) and the Economic Foundations of Mayapán Project (PEMY) have greatly expanded current knowledge regarding the social, political, and economic organization of the population that once inhabited the metropolis . T he Carnegie Institutio n originally estimated the population of Mayapán to be between 10,000 and 12,000 residents, but Bradley Russell’s recent Mayapán Periphery Project (MPP) found the site to be much more densely populated than previously imagined. By extending the range of st udy of the site to include those inhabitants living up to one kilometer beyond the city wall, the population of Mayapán was revealed to more likely be arou nd 17,000 people at the height of its occupation (Russell 2008). Thus, the region beyond the wall merits just as mu ch investigation as that within; t his preliminary study offers a glimpse at ancient life at Mayapán by investigating the lives of the people who lived outside t he city’s circumferential wall and complements prior research on the city cente r.

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