Household Diversity in a Palenque Neighborhood: Preliminary Considerations

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Increasingly, archaeologists working in Classic period Maya cities have focused their attention on defining “neighborhoods” as a means to reconcile both a bottom-up and top-down approach. A consideration of Palenque’s urban form and patterns in the clustering of stone structures along built terraces makes the existence of neighborhoods within this densely populated city highly likely. However, neighborhood boundaries and dynamics have yet to be strongly defined and supported by excavation data. In this talk we will share some preliminary data following three field seasons of excavations in select residential groups. We consider lidar imagery revealing spatial proximity, shared topography, and bounded sectors created by waterways coupled with intensive excavations in and around structures and patios to recover artifactual data related to production, consumption, and discard practices. Preliminary data suggests there were considerable differences in the political authority, ritual emphasis, and daily practices across households that were spatially close and occupied contemporaneously. We are left asking, do these differences reflect a hierarchical social organization at the neighborhood level, and/or a difference in the intensity of face-to-face interaction due to spatial proximity and topography? These questions are yet to be resolved but will be explored further in future investigations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Dynamic Frontiers in the Archaeology of Chiapas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36314.0