Ancient Maya labor relations: Constructing a palace at Ucanha, Yucatán, Mexico

This dissertation studies the labor relations involved in the construction of Ucanha Structure 92, a Maya palace located in Yucatán, Mexico. Archaeological investigations have uncovered a complex history of episodic building events that transformed a one-room building in the Terminal Preclassic (1–250 CE) period into Ucanha’s largest residence at the end of the Late Classic (750–900 CE) period. This transformation included the construction of entirely new monuments, as well as minor renovations to pre-existing construction phases. The monumentality of Ucanha Structure 92 implies that the site’s royal family could recruit laborers to build their residence; therefore, this structure offers an ideal locus for studying labor recruitment, organization, and management. This investigation explores three central aspects of building projects in the past. First, building architecture brings together diverse sets of individuals who collaborate with and learn from each other on-site. The dichotomy that modern architecture imposes between design and construction does not resonate with most contemporary building projects worldwide, nor with those in the past. Second, architectural energetics persists as the most common method of studying the production of ancient architecture. Its focus on the more objective factors of production could benefit from the chaîne opératoire approach’s receptiveness to the influence of social phenomena on productive acts. Last, combining architectural energetics and chaîne opératoire approaches offers one way to study labor relations, defined generally as who one works for and under what conditions. Labor relations related to industries such as construction differ in terms of their technologies, labor organization, recruitment, and reward distribution, and ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources draw attention toward culture-specific aspects of the building process. Applying ethnohistoric data from Yucatan provided new insight on how palaces like Ucanha Structure 92 came into being. Overall, this study sought to problematize several modern assumptions imposed onto ancient building projects and their management, animate the building process, give builders the human face they deserve, and reflect on how labor relations changed over time in the Northern Maya Lowlands.