Resumen de Watchful realms: integrating GIS analysis and political history in the southern Maya lowlands

James A. Doyle, Thomas G. Garrison, Stephen D. Houston

• Travellers naturally prefer to use the most passable routes and establish staging points on the way. Cost surface analysis predicts the easiest routes and viewshed analysis the territory visible from a staging point or destination. Applying these GIS techniques to the Buenavista Valley Corridor, our authors write a history of travel and exchange that vividly reflects the rivalry of two polities and the rise and fall of their nodal settlements