Sustainability and duration of early central places in prehispanic mesoamerica.
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Published version
Date
2023-03-03
Authors
Feinman, Gary
Carballo, David M.
Nicholas, Linda
Kowalewski, Stephen
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
G. Feinman, D. Carballo, L. Nicholas, S. Kowalewski. 2023. "Sustainability and Duration of Early Central Places in Prehispanic Mesoamerica." Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Volume 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1076740
Abstract
During the last millennium BCE, central places were founded across many
regions of western (non-Maya) Mesoamerica. These early central places differed
in environmental location, size, layout, and the nature of their public spaces and
monumental architecture. We compare a subset of these regional centers and find
marked differences in their sustainability--defined as the duration of time that they
remained central places in their respective regions. Early infrastructural investments,
high degrees of economic interdependence and collaboration between domestic
units, and collective forms of governance are found to be key factors in such
sustainability.
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License
© 2023 Feinman, Carballo, Nicholas and Kowalewski. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.