Discordant Relationships: Household and Community at Callar Creek, Belize

Summary

From the Late Preclassic to the Late Classic period (400 BCE to 900 CE), the Mopan Valley of Belize was a complex political landscape and an arena of intense political competition. During this time, the Valley witnessed the sequential rise of three, closely-spaced, major centers – centers likely in direct competition with one another – as well as the establishment and abandonment of minor centers and settlement clusters. The Mopan Valley Archaeology Project recently completed excavations and analyses of the minor center of Callar Creek. Located approximately halfway between the contemporaneous major centers of Buenavista and Xunantunich, Callar Creek was likely the home and administrative center for a low-level elite family. This paper will examine the relationships between members of the Callar Creek household and those living in both larger centers and small settlements. Excavations elsewhere in the Valley have suggested that individuals living at both major and minor centers actively cultivated relationships with those in adjacent hinterland settlements. Those living at Callar Creek, however, appear not to have engaged directly with those living in nearby settlements, and the Callar Creek household appears to have prospered while the surrounding households declined and were abandoned.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• From Households to Communities: Bridging Scales in Search of Conflict, Coalescence, and Communitas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage