Land, Labor, and Community Life at the Great Estate: The Archaeological Investigation of Hacienda del Rincón de Guadalupe, Mexico.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The hacienda was an economic, social, and political institution engaged in a complex interplay with the broader cultural landscape of Mexico, transforming local environments and drastically reshaping communities. Haciendas were socially complex and were hierarchically organized according to both class and racial boundaries. Often, a dominant landowner (hacendado) occupied the highest rung of the social ladder with various classes of workers comprising the rest, many of whom were bound to the hacienda via debt. This paper presents results from an ongoing archaeological investigation of Hacienda del Rincón de Guadalupe, a colonial mining hacienda located in the municipality of Apaxco, Mexico. Drawing from both the archaeological record and surviving historical sources, we examine the interactions between land, labor, and community life at the colonial estate. We consider how the hacienda both shaped and was shaped by its constituent parts as well as responded to the broader social, political, and economic landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow