Landesque capital and ideal distribution models: mapping agricultural suitability in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

Terraced agriculture in the Río Frío basin offers a long-term record of how Tairona communities organized productive landscapes during demographic growth and political reorganization. This study asks whether intensification led to increasingly restricted access to the most favorable agricultural sectors or whether settlement remained closely aligned with environmental opportunity. The results show persistent concentration of terraces and settlements in favorable corridors rather than progressive displacement into poorer terrain. Residential terraces do not show a simple increase in size with land quality, and surrounding productive land remained broadly comparable across communities through time. These patterns distinguish the Río Frío trajectory from comparative cases in which growing sociopolitical inequality became materially tied to more restricted occupation of prime sectors. At the same time, the evidence does not justify equating spatial persistence with social equality. The results indicate that intensification and hierarchy developed without evidence for progressive spatial monopolization, while leaving open the possibility that inequality operated through labor, returns, or tenure rather than overt territorial exclusion.