Copan and Ceren

Abstract

The volcanic eruption that buried Cerén, El Salvador, ata.d.590 preserved an extraordinary array of artifacts and features in or near their original positions. Household inventories are virtually complete, and activities can be reconstructed in almost ethnographic detail. It is therefore tempting to think that Cerén will automatically make less-well-preserved contexts at similar sites more explicable. This proposition is tested by comparing Cerén with a well-excavated set of household remains from seven small rural sites in the Copan Valley, Honduras, which have been much more heavily transformed by cultural and natural processes. Comparison is especially attractive because both the Cerén and Copan sites were small domestic places with similar social, residential, and economic functions. Both sets of sites also share a common basic cultural tradition on the southern periphery of Mesoamerica, and are in reasonably similar upland environmental settings.

Living Together in Río Bec Houses: Coresidence, Rank, and Alliance

“…One of the most difficult issues raised for Classic Maya society and urbanism bears on the way that social groups of any given entity related to its politico-religious system or, as Fox and colleagues (1996:796; see also Fash 1994:191; Gillespie 2000a:478; McAnany 1995:125; Marcus 2003:86) put it, “how various communities or parts of communities were articulated into larger political wholes.” During the 1990s and early 2000s, while debates focused on political systems and their integration capacity (Chase and Chase 1996; Fox et al 1996; Iannone 2002; Lucero 2003; Marcus 1998; Martin and Grube 2000; Rice 2004), less attention was given to their social basis and components, until more recently when regional projects began investigating intermediate social units situated between the community or polity level and the household level (Canuto and Jaeger 2000; Elson and Covey 2006; Freter 2004; Gonlin 2004; Hutson et al 2004; Iannone and Connel 2003; Lohse and Valdez 2004; Robin 2003; Schwartz and Falconer 1994). There exists also a renewed interest in the forms of Maya urbanism relative to other early Mesoamerican cities (Arnauld 2008; Arnauld and Michelet 2004; Ciudad Ruiz et al 2001; Manzanilla and Chapdelaine 2009; Marcus and Sabloff 2008; Mastache et al 2008; Ponce de Leon et al 2006; Sanders et al 2003), within which a structure of neighborhoods (or so-called barrios ) is acknowledged by some (see Arnauld et al 2012; Marcus 2000, 2004; Pyburn 1998; Robin 2003:330–333; Webster et al 2000). Our specific approach concentrates on domestic architecture, set within a background of settlement pattern data (Nondédéo et al 2013), in an attempt to explore the coresidence concept and its inferences for highly hierarchical Classic Maya societies and their urban forms.…”

Using Refuse Disposal Patterns to Infer Olmec Site Structure in the San Lorenzo Region, Veracruz, Mexico

“…Similar spatial patterns have been reported within and outside Mesoamerica (see Johnston and Gonlin 1998:165-171; Kuijt 1989:213-215; Oetelaar 1993; Santley and Kneebone 1993). Moreover, in sites where special purpose structures, such as dormitories and kitchens exist, studies of provisional discard may be fruitful in identifying building function and discrete activity location (Webster et al 1997). This method for inferring the location of perished structures may prove useful in areas such as the Maya lowlands where many structures were presumably ground-level residences and their stone foundations (or other building materials), if any, were likely scavenged for other constructions (e.g., Moore and Gasco 1990;Webster et al 2000).…”

Agrarian Features, Farmsteads, and Homesteads in the Río Bec Nuclear Zone, Mexico

“…The archaeological, geomorphological, and botanical studies of pre-Columbian Maya agriculture focus upon techniques, forms, and structures of landscaping, spatial patterns of land use, and ecological impact delineating models of agricultural intensification and diversification (Fedick 1996a; Gómez Pompa et al 2003; Johnston 2003; Killion 1992; Liendo Stuardo 2002; Ross 2011; Turner 1983). Some multidisciplinary studies have sought to analyze the global land-use pattern on the ground, taking into account not just spaces, soils, and water resources, but also land improvements, farming techniques, and even the nature of cultigens (Chase and Chase 1998; Dunning et al 1997; Fedick 1994, 1996b; Webster et al 2000:153–174). The large-scale spatial approaches that attempt to outline the field system organization, however, often fall short of their goal.…”