commoners (Other Keyword)
1-4 (4 Records)
In this paper I will discuss recent archaeological investigations at the Floodplain North settlement cluster, located within the Rancho San Lorenzo Survey Area in Belize’s Mopan River valley. My research investigates the adaptive responses of non-elite Maya to Terminal Classic (AD 780-900) socioeconomic and political transformations. Preliminary analysis indicates occupation continued at Floodplain North after the Terminal Classic collapse and the abandonment of nearby settlements. Materials...
Marine Fossils and Domestic Ritual in Maya Commoner Households: Two Neighborhoods in the Classic Maya City of Palenque (2016)
Marine fossils carried an important symbolic load for elites in the Classic Maya city of Palenque. Recent excavations demonstrate that marine fossils were intentionally employed in a variety of ways by commoners in hinterland domestic contexts as well. Despite a shared symbology, such use varied across the landscape: inhabitants of different neighborhoods had different practices surrounding these materials. The special significance of marine fossils in commoner households is particularly evident...
Rising from the Ashes: Power and Autonomy at Ceren, El Salvador (2016)
On the side of a road in El Salvador in 1978, the life of Payson Sheets and the remains of the Classic Period Maya settlement of Cerén fatefully intersected. When Sheets first understood the actual antiquity of the site buried by volcanic ash to be 1,400 years old, what could not have been known was the decades of research that would ensue, nor the wide-ranging impacts that such findings would have for household archaeology, commoner studies, and archaeological method and theory. Sheets has...
Sierra Red Ceramics, Identity, and Foodways in the Middle and Late Formative Chiapa de Corzo Polity, Chiapas, Mexico. (2016)
Data from a surface survey of 105 sq km in and around the site of Chiapa de Corzo indicate that over the course of the Late Formative, serving vessels of Sierra Red, a style that originated in the Maya Lowlands, were widely adopted across the Chiapa de Corzo polity. At the capital early Sierra Red serving vessels largely conformed to the size of serving vessels from the Maya Lowlands. In the hinterland, however, the Sierra Red vessels people were using had dimensions that conformed more tightly...