5 Maintaining Social Bonds during the Preclassic: An Incipient Urban Landscape

Abstract

In this paper I utilize the perspective of political ecology to guide the study of incipient urbanization in the Preclassic site of Noh K'uh in Chiapas, Mexico. In my analysis of landscape formation and local settlement patterns, I demonstrate how the relationship between people and the environment was particularly intimate within the valley that is home to Noh K'uh. In this case, orientation, architecture, and natural landmarks demonstrate the physical manifestation of political, social, and ritual organization in this Late Preclassic community. By emphasizing the political ecology perspective, I am able to outline how ritual and politics used features of a sacred world to create and organize an incipient urban community in the New World.

Valuing the ubiquitous: Resource availability and landscape value among the Classic period Maya of western Belize

“…Landscapes and their values are culturally mediated (Basso 1996; Sluyter 2003). One important consideration in the value of landscapes and the materials that emerge from them are the cultural associations that render some locations on landscapes more valuable than others due to the importance of natural landscape formations (Ashmore 2009, 2018; Knapp and Ashmore 1999) or landscape modification (e.g., Ashmore 2018; Juarez 2018; Knapp and Ashmore 1999; Pool and Cliggett 2008).…”

Archaeology of Everyday Life

“…Gender, sexuality, and life course archaeologies further illustrate the importance of incorporating the lives of all social groups into analyses (e.g., Battle-Baptiste 2011, Baxter 2005, Gilchrist 2012, Joyce 2008, Robin & Brumfiel 2008, Voss 2008b). Feminist household archaeologists were among the first to show that the contemporary Western division between "domestic/ house/private/female/consumption/passive" and the active public world of male politics and production was not universal.…”

“…Thus, we must Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. consider the important roles that households and domestic life play in the broader world (e.g., Joyce 2008, Robin & Brumfiel 2008, Wall 1994.…”

“…Feminist, Black feminist, gender, and sexuality studies opened the door to understanding the diversity of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and other identities in households and societies (e.g., Battle-Baptiste 2011, Brumfiel 1992, Franklin 2001, Joyce 2008, Meskell & Joyce 2003, Robin & Brumfiel 2008, Voss 2008b). Solely normative household groups populated neither the more recent past nor the ancient pasts: Plural households were more common than traditional scholarship originally perceived.…”