The Negotiation of Status: New Insights into a Late Classic Household at Las Ruinas de Arenal, Belize

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There has been a long history of settlement and household archaeology in the Belize River valley that has added significantly to our understanding of everyday people in the Maya lowlands. This research has allowed us to examine questions related to broader cultural norms and traditions, as well as better understand the distribution of settlement across the varied landscape of this region. In this paper, I present new data from a Late Classic household group at Las Ruinas de Arenal, Belize. This non-elite household was built just southeast of the site’s Preclassic ballcourt and E Group complex. Preliminary data from a combination of horizontal and vertical excavation both on and off the platform suggests that the location of this household, as well as the production activities of its occupants, played a role in the negotiation of a more privileged status within the larger Las Ruinas de Arenal community. Through the invocation of social memory and broader timescales of connection with historic places and peoples, the notion of status can be complicated beyond synchronic socio-political or economic relations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41587.0