Building Quality of Life and Social Cohesion at Ucanha During the Terminal Preclassic

Late Preclassic life in the Northern Maya Lowlands is a period of material and social experimentation, a balancing act between emerging social differentiation and an ideology of communal integration. During this period, the site of Ucanha was physically integrated into a micropolity via an 18-km-long roadway and experienced the creation of integrative civic spaces, a population apogee, and an influx of ceramic heterogeneity. Followers donated labor to build a monumental landscape, and incipient rulers provided an array of aesthetically pleasing ceramics and social events that helped forge collective trust. Ceramic distributions and the widespread use of megalithic architecture indicate a high quality of life for households. A built landscape that references a place of creation and stucco friezes and architecture attest to emergent claims of hereditary rulership and community prosperity. Evidence from Ucanha’s central plaza indicate this area was more-widely accessed during the Late Preclassic but then became more restricted to the general public during the Early Classic. Likewise, during the Early Classic, the distribution of decorated ceramics became more circumscribed, indicating economic changes that favored gifting elites rather than provisioning the populace. During this period architecture associated with elite rulership was interred and households were abandoned. Thus, around the time of broader integration during the Late Preclassic, political institutions provided for all; yet, during the Early Classic, elites turned from an inclusive, community strategy towards a more exclusionary strategy of reinforcing an elite identity. As a result, leaders lost the support of their constituents and populations declined.