Architectural energetics, ancient monuments, and operations management

Architectural energetics, subsumed within replicative archaeology, provides a means through which buildings are translated into labor-time estimates. To date, the majority of architectural energetics analyses have generated c omparative measures of architectural costs, equating these with a vertical structure of political power and authority within and among societies. The present analysis expands the application of architectural energetics by sub jecting construction labor coasts to an analysis based on concepts central to the Theory of Constraints, which is widely applied in modern operations management. This modeling generates a hypothetical set of behavioral patter ns performed by general laborers within a construction project and explicat es a method which allows further exploration into the question of labor org anization (i.e., allocation and articulation of workers), as well as perhap s other economic organization, in an archaeological context. The case examp le is Structure 10L-22, a large Mayan palace at the site of Copan, Honduras .