Complexity, Cooperation, and Public Goods: Quality of Place at Nixtun-Ch'ich', Petén, Guatemala

Public goods are “non-excludable” and “non-rivalrous” resources, including roads, water management systems, plazas, as well “symbolic public goods,” such religious architecture social identity. occur in greater abundance cities with more cooperative inclusive forms of organization, which seems to undermine arguments that elites constructed them augment their power. Such major “pull” factors drawing migration modern cities, but ancient also had likely attracted immigrants, increasing population diversity. We examine these ideas at Middle Preclassic-period (cal 800–300 BC) Nixtun-Ch'ich', Petén, Guatemala. This city other Preclassic metropoles the Maya lowlands seem have been on more-cooperative end a cooperative–competitive spectrum, compared most Classic period (AD 200–900). speculate about how symbolic were coopted create exclusive system Late (300 BC–AD 200).