Lidar and the Landscape of Inequality: Comparing Household Wealth at Two Late Classic Maya Sites in Northwestern Belize

Many Classic Maya cities display aspects of wealth inequality, including monumental architecture, prestige goods economies, and differences in residential units. I evaluate wealth inequality at two Late Classic (AD 600–810) cities in northwestern Belize: Chan Chich and Ayiin Winik. Using legacy data and lidar data in GIS, I measured the area and volume of residential groups and calculated a Gini coefficient for each site. I found that both Chan Chich and Ayiin Winik had high Gini scores, reflecting extreme residential disparities. These findings largely parallel those of previous studies at other sites, alluding to regional trends in inequality in which sites in the well-connected and centralized Maya heartland of the broader Petén tend to have higher Gini coefficients than sites located in other subregions of the Maya world. My findings highlight variability in residential wealth inequality across the Maya Lowlands.