: Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns . Wendy Ashmore.

The fractal geometry of ancient Maya settlement

Ancient Maya settlement patterns exhibit fractal geometry both within communities and across regions. Fractals are self-similar sets of fractional dimension. In this paper, we show how Maya settlement patterns are logically and statistically self-similar. We demonstrate how to measure the fractal dimensions (or Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimensions) of several data sets. We describe nonlinear dynami...

Modeling Settlement Patterns of the Late Classic Maya Civilization with Bayesian Methods and Geographic Information Systems

A Volumetric Assessment of Ancient Maya Architecture: A GIS Approach to Settlement Patterns

Kax and kol: collapse and resilience in lowland Maya civilization.

Episodes of population loss and cultural change, including the famous Classic Collapse, punctuated the long course of Maya civilization. In many cases, these downturns in the fortunes of individual sites and entire regions included significant environmental components such as droughts or anthropogenic environmental degradation. Some afflicted areas remained depopulated for long periods, whereas...

Can We Read Cosmology in Ancient Maya City Plans? Comment on Ashmore and Sabloff

Argumentsfor the cosmological significance of ancient Maya city layouts are plausible, but empirical applications are subjective and lack rigor. I illustrate this contention through brief comments on a recent article by Ashmore and Sabloff. I first discuss some of the complexities and pitfalls in studying cosmology from ancient city plans, and then focus on one component of the authors' cosmolo...