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CHAN is a Maya farming village located southeast of the modern day community of San Jose Succutz, Belize. It was occupied from the Middle Preclassic period (ca. 900-400 BC) to the Terminal Classic period (post AD 790). During these times Chan’s farmers seem to have intensified the land using hill-slope terraces to create a productive agricultural landscape that supported centuries of habitation.

The Xunantunich Settlement Survey (1994-1995) directed by Wendy Ashmore surveyed a 400-meter survey-transect from the civic-ceremonial center of Xunantunich to the civic-ceremonial center of Dos Chombitos. Chan was identified during this survey as a spatially discrete cluster of mounds (the remains of structures) and hill-slope terraces that lay roughly equidistant between Xunantunich and Dos Chombitos. Estimating from this survey data, Chan encompassed an area with a 1 km radius and 182 mound groups.

Excavators begin excavations at a house mound

Str. A-6 "El Casillo" Xunantunich

CHAN was part of the Xunantunich polity and was located 4 km southeast of the Xunantunich civic-center in an upland region between the Mopan and Macal drainages of the Belize River. Each day, from their homes and workplaces, residents of Chan could see Xunantunich’s "El Castillo" atop its imposing hilltop. Given the proximity of Chan and Xunantunich, Xunantunich was most likely the center of major ceremonial celebrations and other polity-wide activities for Chan residents.

Between 1996 and 1997 Cynthia Robin conducted her dissertation research at a cluster of seven small farmsteads that lay south of the central area of Chan. This sector of Chan was nicknamed Chan Nòohol (nòohol is the Yucatec Maya term for south). This research indicated that Chan Nòohol’s occupation was short-lived, largely restricted to the AD 660 to 790 portion of the later Late Classic period. Agricultural production was at the core of life at Chan Nòohol and agricultural produce was most likely the only item – beyond labor – exported from the settlement. Chan Nòohol’s farmers intensified the land by constructing hill-slope terraces and adding fertilizer, the later indicated by elevated levels of phosphorous.

Broken jars in a chultun (underground storage chamber)

A typical stone house platform

Chan Nòohol’s short-term occupation is quite typical of settlement expansion during the Late Classic throughout the Xunantunich polity. Indeed, Xunantunich Settlement Survey results indicate that only 20% of the mapped mound groups at Chan were occupied prior to the Late Classic period with population exploding to 86% during the Late Classic period (AD 550-790) followed by a decrease to 14% occupation and eventual abandonment during the Terminal Classic period. The Late Classic expansion and contraction of settlement at Chan is unsurprising because this was the period of Xunantunich’s regional political florescence and the scale and intensity of construction at Xunantunich certainly required a large construction labor force. Possibly even more critical, this part of the Belize River valley area had always been an important area of agricultural production for Maya society. This correlation defines interaction between Chan and Xunantunich as a key arena for understanding how small-scale farming community life articulated with larger ongoings in society.

The CHAN PROJECT was designed to investigate the rise and fall of an ordinary farming village and understand the importance of the everyday lives of its inhabitants. What were the internal dynamics and developmental processes of farming community life? As Chan is not located beside prime alluvial floodplains, how does the agricultural manipulation of its undulating terrain relate to its expansion and collapse? Given the longevity of Chan prior to the rise of Xunantunich, what do the political-economic relations between Chan and Xunantunich tell us about the rise and decline of society at both the local and regional levels?

Modern Maya pole and thatch houses similar to the kind of buildings that would have been constructed on stone platforms at Chan

Looking south from the central knoll at Chan

CHAN’s founding families settled on the highest knoll and central point of the Late Classic community sometime during the Middle Preclassic period (pre 400 BC). By the Late Classic period these families occupied the largest mounds at Chan and are provisionally identified based on this data as the community leaders. How did the dynamics of primacy of occupation, economic production, and socio-political affiliation relate in the development of Chan’s largest households? What were the relationships of these early founders and expanding Late Classic populations?

The CHAN PROJECT is possible due to the previous research of the Xunantunich Archaeological Project (1991-1997) and the Xunantunich Settlement Survey (1994-1995) co-directed by Richard Leventhal and Wendy Ashmore. The combined goals of these previous research projects were to understand Xunantunich’s late florescence in the context of its regional settlement system. Because this research has defined the larger regional dynamics of the Xunantunich polity, the Chan Project can now investigate everyday life in a farming community and learn how the complexities of ordinary people’s daily lives relate to larger issues of organization and change in society.

West Frieze Str. A-6 'El Castillo' Xunantunich