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Throughout the world, past and present, social organizations develop to cope with restricted water sources. Relying on traditional archaeology, labor estimates, and ethnographic data, the Palenque Pool Project set out to better understand a series of interconnected artificial water features located in the western sector of this Classic Maya site. Here, we detail our 2014–2015 fieldwork. First, there is consideration that the Picota Group was a civic-ceremonial center first established in the Early Classic period (a.d. 250–500), one km to the west of the “downtown” nucleus of the site. A review of labor estimates for the construction of architectural features of the Picota Group follows. We then explore the ethnographic component, comparing similar pool configurations investigated in the highland Tzotzil community of Chamula in 2015. The article concludes with a theoretical discussion of how and why social organizations evolve to manage water resources in the region, with reference to ethnographic information from highland Tzotzil communities.

This article reviews data from the modern highland Maya area in order to develop a model of vessel discard frequencies applicable to Classic Maya contexts. Estimating the number of pots consumed by ancient households is crucial to reconstructing the organization of ceramic production and exchange in antiquity. The recent publication of in situ household assemblages from the Classic Maya center of Aguateca facilitates an analysis of household pottery use during the Late Classic period. Vessel class use-lives derived from ethnoarchaeological studies are applied to the Aguateca assemblages to estimate annual consumption rates. The simulated Aguateca discard assemblages are then compared to archaeologically recovered vessel class discard frequencies from the Classic Maya center of Tikal. The article concludes with a discussion of how and why pottery requirements for Classic Maya households differed from those of twentieth century Maya and the implications these distinctions have for interpreting consumption pattern for the Classic Maya.

Archaeological imagination [is] finding new ways of asking questions that link the most empirical of research projects with innovative social theory.

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