Chunchucmil is a most unusual Maya city. Where most—such as Tikal, Copan or Palenque—have a central ceremonial precinct, dominated by temple-pyramids and often with one or more ball-courts and multi-courtyard elite residences (‘palaces’), this centre in western Yucatan has a plethora of large residential groups of more or less equal standing spread around a very modest ritual core. Merchant princes rather than divine kings would seem to have controlled power and wealth in Classic-period Chunchucmil in the fifth through early seventh centuries AD.
The site came to notice in the 1970s, its dense network of house-compounds linked by walled alleys strikingly visible from the air, potentially allowing intramural relationships to be scrutinised. The location on suboptimal land, on the edge of the coastal wetlands, suggested an unconventional reason for the existence of a community of an estimated 40000±8500 people. The Gulf coastal canoe trade route and access to the Celestún salt flats via a port facility at Canbalam were two advantages that indicated a strategic and economic ‘gateway’ function, rather than a tactical and/or agricultural location.
Ceramic and other ties also adumbrate a link with the major centre of Oxkintok, 27km east atop the western end of the Puuc range, where inscribed stelae and substantial construction are coeval with Chunchucmil's floruit: the latter's location is well explained as transitional and transactional between the coast and the fertile and populated Puuc. Hutson suggests (pp. 312–13) that Oxkintok rivalled and then supplanted Chunchucmil, but the distinction between the two sites rather indicates complementarity, at least in the fifth to seventh centuries. The decline of Chunchucmil may be due more, as he notes, to pan-Maya lowland geopolitics, especially the Tikal-Calakmul rivalry between 562 and 695, and consequent shifts in trade, than to more local rivalry.
Research from 1993–2006, initially directed by the late Bruce H. Dahlin (1941–2011), latterly with collaborators including Traci Ardren and Scott Hutson (who ensures proper appreciation of Dahlin's work in this well-edited and coherent book), covered a comprehensive mapping, architectural recording and test-excavation programme, the parameters of which are laid out in detail in Chapters 2 and 3. The 10 survey blocks and 5 transect maps can be downloaded to give an overall site map that includes not only ancient structures, with the network of albarrada walls delimiting house lots in yellow, but also the tranvía narrow-gauge railways from nineteenth-century henequen farming (green) and modern roads and walls (purple and blue): multi-colouration gives clarity to a complex, layered reality.
The 12 chapters begin with an Introduction, by Hutson and Dahlin, to the history of Chunchucmil research and why the site is both different and tantalising as a focus for studying pre-Hispanic market dynamics. Once the layout and chronology of the community have been established in Chapters 2–4, there is a discussion of urban population structure. The site centre embraces 15 large quadrangle complexes, best interpreted as mansions of the elite, which are linked by a set of radial sacbeob (raised and paved causeways) to the surrounding residential zone of house-compounds, itself divided between a denser core and a more loosely organised periphery. Beyond that again is a hinterland with an overall population probably equalling that of urban Chunchucmil; a precipitous drop in residential density around 5km from the centre matches the limits we found at La Milpa in north-western Belize (Everson Reference Everson2003)—perhaps the governance of Maya cities had a natural limiting range. More samples are needed to examine this phenomenon, something that airborne LiDAR will facilitate.
Three chapters on environmental heterogeneity, hydrology and soils show the background to Chunchucmil's prosperity. While the farmland was not good, with subsistence staples such as maize necessarily brought in from the east, the seasonal and permanent wetlands westward to the coast had a rich variety of natural resources that could be exploited and traded. Most of these were perishable, as Dahlin et al.’s Chapter 10 explains, and so do not show up in occupation deposits subjected to tropical climate. As a result, such products have been consistently underestimated and undervalued as part of the Maya economy by many scholars.
Two final chapters deal with marketing within Chunchucmil and commercial connections beyond it. Distributional, contextual and configurational approaches were used to argue for the existence of, and pin down a location for, a central market. ‘Area D’, within the core of large quadrangles, adjacent to the ballcourt, and enclosed by several sacbeob, fitted the criteria best, including strong soil chemistry signatures (iron, phosphorus, zinc) for the presence of plant and animal products. Imported goods included obsidian from the El Chayal source near Guatemala City, supporting the model of an overland network north to the Usumacinta drainage and then downstream to the coastal trade route.
Overall, Hutson's judgement that “Chunchucmil's growth and urban development were driven by long-distance trade” (p. 312), the success of which led to its population outgrowing local carrying capacity and stimulating “a burgeoning market economy in staple supplies [that] compensated for food deficits” (p. 312) is justified by the evidence. This book documents settlement, environmental and economic archaeologies, and is well integrated and well executed, a worthy tribute to Bruce Dahlin's imaginative scholarship.
