Nohoch Ek Revisited: The Minor Center as Manor

Abstract

Over the last half-century, Maya archaeologists have variously identified “minor centers” as small-scale ceremonial or administrative centers, elite residential compounds, dower houses, manor houses, astronomical stations or markers, and boundary markers. Arguments for these identifications have ranged from simple assertions to elaborate analyses. What has emerged most clearly is that, as with any form of monolithic type, the “minor center” category—based in this case on relative size—represents something of a functionally mixed hodgepodge. Such architectural complexes in fact served and represented a multiplicity of as yet incompletely appreciated sociocultural functions and roles. We examine one such center, Nohoch Ek, and its likely role within the Late to Terminal Classic social landscape of the upper Belize Valley, based on investigations carried out by the authors in 1985, and by Michael Coe and William Coe in 1949. The study combines in-depth artifactual, depositional, and contextual analyses of an extensive body of data that was recovered using strategically placed purposive stripping and sampling trenches. We conclude that Classic period Nohoch Ek looked and functioned very much like a medieval European agricultural manor.