Affiliation:
1. The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Abstract
Around 650 CE the city of Caracol was one of the largest cities in the world. However, it did not begin as a large city. Instead Ux Witz Ha’ (“three stone place” – the city’s hieroglyphic name) came into being from the conurbation of three separate centers. Three architectural complexes formed the initial districts of the larger city – Downtown Caracol, Hatzcap Ceel, and Cahal Pichik – between the Preclassic and Early Classic Periods. This unification resulted in a path-dependent urban form with future growth focused on multiple monumental nodes and a dendritic causeway system. Settlement growth relied on the incorporation or construction of public plazas and monumental architecture to provide urban infrastructure and administrative cohesion over the landscape. What follows is a preliminary temporal sequence for the districts, tracing the growth of the city from the Preclassic to the Terminal Classic Periods. By combining lidar, archaeology, and hieroglyphic data a broader interpretation of governance within the city can be elucidated. Over time, Caracol shifted back and forth between more collective and more autocratic governance systems until the political, economic, and demographic collapse of the city around 900 CE.
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