Beyond the buildings: Formation processes of ancient Maya houselots and methods for the study of non-architectural space

The success of activity areas research in domestic contexts has highlighted the need for archaeologists working in the tropics to explore both indoor and outdoor spaces. The preservation of houselot boundaries at ancient Chunchucmil, Yucatán, Mexico, provides an ideal environment to explore methods for the investigation of broad spaces beyond buildings, to test ethnoarchaeological models of activity areas and refuse disposal, and to demonstrate the importance of open spaces to understanding ancient economic organization. The results of methodological experiments reported in this paper favor the use of systematic subsurface sampling (as opposed to surface collections) for characterizing specific uses of space around houses. Formation processes dictate that soil chemistry, paleoethnobotany, and other laboratory techniques should supplement excavations. Our explorations of three houselots suggest that ethnoarchaeological models of the use of space in contemporary houselots serve as successful templates for interpreting the use of space in ancient times. Post-abandonment deposition within houselots, however, can confuse these interpretations. This paper therefore reports a new ethnoarchaeological study that helps illuminate the nature of post-abandonment discard. After resolving critical issues of methodology and formation processes, this paper assesses the economic contribution of houselot activities. Given Chunchucmil’s agricultural marginality, such home economics played an important role in the subsistence needs of this urban center.     

Raman microprobe analysis of stucco samples from the buildings of Maya Classic Copan

Micro-Raman spectroscopy has been applied to painted stucco samples from three buildings at the Maya site of Copan, Honduras. The buildings, Clavel (AD 450–550), Ani (AD550–650) and Structure 10L-22 (AD730,) date from three phases of the Classic Period (AD400–820) acropolis construction. The red pigment has been identified as haematite and the stucco as a mixture of calcite particles dispersed throughout a calcite based lime wash stucco. The physical structure of the stucco changed through time, indicating a refining of production techniques over this period. By combining Micro-Raman spectroscopy with other micro-ATR infrared spectroscopy and environmental scanning electron microscopy a detailed investigation of the materials and production techniques used to decorate these buildings has been made. Differences in the mineralogy of the red pigment used on each building indicate a different geological pigment source for each period.     

Childhood narratives: adult reflections on encounters with difference in everyday spaces

Research on children and young people commonly focuses on the present experiences of childhood. Yet Philo, C. [2003. “‘To Go Back up the Side Hill’: Memories, Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood.” Children's Geographies 1 (1): 7–24] has argued that we might also access the ‘worlds’ of children and childhood through the memories or recollections of adults, given that we have all been children once. In response, this paper explores the narratives of adults reflecting on their childhood experiences and in particular, on the formation of their attitudes towards difference. The paper offers a means of understanding how adults reflect on their childhood encounters with difference, how their attitudes towards difference are developed over time and the extent to which these childhood narratives are carried into adult lives. This is not to suggest that early experiences are deterministic. Rather, individuals can reflect on their own lives and encounters and choose to change or react to wider social relations in new ways such that they produce and embody new dispositions.     

Tourists as colonizers in Quintana Roo,Mexico

Spatial appropriation is an age‐old strategy for domination by one group over another. In the context of national states, territorial expansion is a common manifestation of this. Spain's colonization process began in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico in the sixteenth century but remained incomplete in this area. Independent Mexico's struggle for control over the Mayan landscape of the Yucatan continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is my contention that the assault has continued in recent times. Today, it is not the conventional notion of nation state colonialism but a much more subtle invasion brought about by the ability of tourists from richer nations to travel south. Using the paradigm of settler colonization, this article proposes that relationships of power underlying this new infiltration parallel those of conventional colonialism, and that the tourist is, in fact, an unwitting colonizer. The case of Quintana Roo, Mexico illustrates how the tourist can be seen as a pawn in a larger political project. Exposure of this predatory nature of tourism reveals processes that have implications for other Native regions of the Americas and beyond that are suffering similar “invasions.”     

Evidence from Escalera al Cielo: Abandonment of a Terminal Classic Puuc Maya hill complex in Yucatán,Mexico

Abstract

Excavations at the hilltop site of Escalera al Cielo, located in the Puuc Maya region of Yucatán, Mexico, have uncovered evidence of a planned abandonment at the end of the Terminal Classic period (a.d. 800–950). Six buildings investigated among three residential groups contain rich floor assemblages similar to those known from only a few rapidly abandoned sites in the Maya area. Through an analysis of de facto refuse—most of which was recovered in locations of storage and provisional discard—and midden refuse, this paper illustrates how the assemblages represent an example of household-level abandonment with anticipated return. We also consider Escalera al Cielo in light of our present understanding of the political and environmental history of the Puuc region during the late 9th century a.d.     

Defining Difference from China's Margins

Uniformities and discontinuities in Chinese culture have long animated anthropological debates. The books reviewed here reflect an emerging scholarly consensus about the diversity of China, expressed not only in religions and populations marginal to more mainstream Chinese culture, but among the Han Chinese themselves. Much of the discussion of China's diversity hinges on identity, a social phenomenon freighted with rhetoric and sentiment and inflected by the forces of local and national politics.     

Identifying integrative built environments in the archaeological record: An application of New Urban Design Theory to ancient urban spaces

Ancient Maya settlement patterns have long been described as dispersed. Instances of low-density or dispersed urbanism among agrarian-based societies are common in tropical civilizations, and are of particular interest due to their expressed problem of social integration. Traditionally, archaeologists have focused on classic hallmarks of state integration, including force, infrastructural control, large-scale ritual, and kinship; thus, reflecting the polar extremes of integration. Current models accord a more multi-scalar and dynamic nature to state and urban organization, and the need to pursue diachronic perspectives that consider more subtle and varied degrees of integration. With regard to settlement, examining the total patch of occupation on a landscape, how it developed, how it was divided up, and in turn brought together, is of interest. In this study I apply criteria developed in New Urban Design Theory, a body of thought and practice concerned with modern-day issues of dispersed and low density settlement, to evaluate an architectural complex at the Classic Maya centre of Buenavista del Cayo, Belize, believed to have functioned as an integrative space within the civic entity.     

Metallurgical ceramics from Mayapán,Yucatán,Mexico

Recent excavations at the Postclassic (AD 1050–1440) Maya site of Mayapán, Mexico, have uncovered a variety of metal objects, metal production debris, and ceramic objects that appear to be linked to metallurgical activities at the site. Our present study investigates a corpus of small ceramic objects to determine if these objects was used in metallurgical processes such as lost-wax casting. A variety of analytical techniques was utilized, including x-ray fluorescence, electron probe, petrography, and reflected light microscopy. Metal residues were detected on the surfaces of several objects, and copper prills were identified within the ceramic fabric, suggesting that the ceramics were exposed to liquid metal during remelting and/or casting events. A comparison of the microstructures of these metallurgical ceramics to typical ceramics from Mayapán demonstrates that the fabrics are very different, and suggests that the metallurgical ceramics were specifically engineered to function in the high temperature environment required for metallurgy. The distribution of metal and metallurgical ceramics across the site of Mayapán suggests that metal production activities may have been more widely distributed and practiced than earlier thought.     

Die departement geskiedenis/The history department

Abstract

This article traces changing interpretations of the nature of Coloured identity and the history of the Coloured community in South Africa in both popular thinking as well as the academy. It explores some of the main contestations that have arisen between rival schools of thought, particularly their stance on the popular perception that Colouredness is an inherent racial condition derived from miscegenation. This essay identifies four distinct paradigms in historical writing on the Coloured people. Firstly, there is the essentialist school which regards Colouredness as a product of miscegenation and represents the conventional understanding of the identity. Secondly, instrumentalists view Coloured identity as an artificial creation of the white ruling class who used it as a ploy to divide and rule the black majority. This explanation, which first emerged in academic writing in the early 1980s, held sway in anti-apartheid circles. Opposing these interpretations are what may be termed the social constructionists who from the early 1990s stressed the complexities of identity formation and the agency of Coloured people in the making of their own identities. Most recently the rudiments of a fourth approach, of applying postmodern theory, especially the concept of creolisation, to Coloured identity have appeared.