Constructing Rural Complexity: Intra-household Relations of Community and Inequality at Chunhuayum, Yucatán, Mexico.

Author(s): Céline Lamb

Year: 2017

Summary

The concept of rural complexity acknowledges that social, political, and economic complexity is not limited to large urban centers (Iannone and Connell 2003; Schwartz and Falconer 1994). Like urbanites, hinterland residents are involved in diverse and shifting interactions through which they form, maintain, and reinvent relations of commonality and social differentiation. Chunhuayum, a small settlement located in the Northern Lowlands and occupied from the Late Preclassic through the Late Classic, presents an excellent case study to address ancient Maya complexity from a hinterland perspective and at the micro-scales (household and communities) of human interaction, due to its separation from larger centers, its lack of monumental architecture, and its internal heterogeneity. Using recently collected data concerning settlement patterns, domestic architecture and household assemblages, I infer: 1) the degree to which households were integrated into a cohesive community, 2) local inequalities, and 3) the material and social practices that may have expressed, (re)produced, and structured understandings of commonality and distinction over time. Reframing discussions of complexity to focus on the micro-levels of human interaction within a lower-order rural settlement, this research contributes to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of ancient Maya social complexity.

Cite this Record

Constructing Rural Complexity: Intra-household Relations of Community and Inequality at Chunhuayum, Yucatán, Mexico.. Céline Lamb. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 429424)

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Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -107.271; min lat: 12.383 ; max long: -86.353; max lat: 23.08 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17481