Collaborative Research: Understanding Economic and Urban Success

This project investigates the economic, social, and demographic processes that allowed the success of some cities while others in the immediate area declined. Processes that operate in ancient cities are not fundamentally different from those operating in modern cities. Therefore, findings have the potential to impact urban planning and issues affecting contemporary cities. Scholarship on urbanism suggests a number of mechanisms that boost the growth and sustainability of cities, including the creation of neighborhoods, the development of marketplaces, and enhanced efficiencies that come from increasing scale and higher settlement density. Archaeology provides valuable insights about the growth and success of cities because the actions of parts of the population whose lives are often not recorded in written histories are nevertheless preserved in the material record. Findings are disseminated to improve the public’s understanding of science and the scientific method. This archaeological site provides a unique opportunity to address several major questions regarding urbanism and economics. Settlement scaling theory proposes that increasing density transforms cities into social reactors that enhance productivity. Thus, household economic indicators coupled with demography may also illuminate urban success. If urban growth rates are fast enough to indicate migration into the city, the degree to which newcomers assimilated or maintained distinctiveness impacts urban viability. The project uses lidar, a form of aerial laser scanning that sees through dense tropical vegetation and reveals thousands of ancient houses, to create the first systematic and detailed map of the residential areas of the city. Excavations in a representative sample of households provide the first robust understanding of how regional and domestic economies intersected. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.