One characteristic of complex civilizations is social differentiation or ranking: the way people break their populations into people with different amounts of wealth and power, rights and responsibilities. How social ranking came to be in society is a subject of perennial fascination to many archaeologists.
How did this guy get his face on the pyramid at Orange Walk in Belize? Photo by Nick M
The Maya town of Cuello, located in northern Belize, is one of the oldest and best documented Maya cities in Mesoamerica. Since the 1970s, archaeologist Norman Hammond has been tracing the rise of social ranking at Cuello, as contributing writer Nicoletta Maestri tells us in Cuello: The Emergence of Vilage Life in the Maya Lowlands.
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