Ancient Maya Commoners

Chapter 5. Down on the Farm: Classic Maya "Homesteads" as "Farmsteads"

CHAPTER 5 Down on the Farm: Classic Maya ‘‘Homesteads’’ as ‘‘Farmsteads’’ nicholas dunning Several years ago, while interviewing Maya farmers about indigenous soil terms, I was often asked: ‘‘What is the land like where you live? Is it good for milpa?’’ (Dunning 1992a). Such questions underscore a fundamental aspect of Maya life. Both historically and in the more distant past the large majority of Maya have been farmers, a fact that influences almost all aspects of their worldviews and lives. While this fact is, of course, a truism, we sometimes overlook its importance in our pursuit of a more esoteric understanding of the Maya. In early colonial Yucatán, Maya society was self-divided into two basic classes: almehenob (nobility) and mazehualob (commoners). This simple categorization, however, belies a more complex reality in which therewere clearly subclasses of nobility as well as of commoners, and the boundary between the lower and upper tier of almehen and mazehual respectively was somewhat fluid (Restall 1997:88–92). Both nobility and commoners were generally farmers, but their ownership and access to farmland was unequal, a situation paralleling pre-Hispanic times. As farmers, most Maya have lived lives dependent on (among other things) their ability to understand the nuances of their environment and to successfully cultivate the earth. Over time, Maya farmers transformed the lands on which they toiled, often consciously, sometimes unwittingly. Adaptation to a changeable physical environment and to shifting social circumstances was necessary for sustained well-being. Risk management, on the part of both individual farmers and the corporate groups and communities of which they were a part, was a key aspect of successful adaptation . Corporate groups are viewed here simply as hierarchically organized social units (Hayden and Cannon 1982). The nature of these groups and theirchangeability will be discussed further in the concluding section. For 98 Nicholas Dunning the present, suffice it to say that the nature and structure of these groups appear to have changed through time, at least partially in relation to shifting requirements of agricultural production. In the archaeological record, remnants of the built environment created by the ancient Maya offer many clues concerning both the function and meaning of Maya places (Webster 1998). Following Amos Rapoport (1990), Stephen D. Houston (1998) advises that the meaning of architecture , including houses, needs to be understood as part of the total built environment or cultural landscape. In the case of the Maya of the Classic period, such an understanding would involve a wide range of elements, including centralized areas of monumental architecture, the dwellings of commoners, and the human-modified ‘‘natural’’ environment (Dunning et al. 1999). So where in this totality of landscape do we best come to terms with the lives of Maya commoners? Many have suggested that the archaeological investigation of households offers an insightful entry point into Maya daily life (e.g., Wilk and Ashmore 1988). I would further suggest that from the vantage point of landscape archaeology, approaching Maya homesteads (both houses and house-lots) as farmsteads offers a number of advantages. Homesteads as Farmsteads As William F. Hanks (1990:316) has noted for many contemporary Yucatec Maya: ‘‘The homestead and the milpa . . . [are] two embodiments of a single spatio-temporal system.’’ This ‘‘landedness’’ of Maya reality was likely true in pre-Hispanic times as well (McAnany 1995; Restall 1997). I here define Classic Maya farmsteads as the household, including both its material manifestations and the social group that created and used them, and the totality of their landholdings. Jack D. Eaton (1975) suggested the use of this term in the Río Bec region of the Central Hills physiographic zone to describe distinctly bounded areas that included residential groups and agricultural terraces. However, such clearly demarcated farmsteads are comparatively rare in the archaeological record of the Maya lowlands. Nevertheless, the house-lots (near-residential ‘‘open’’ space) of most urban residences apparently comprised a variety of activity areas, often including areas of significant agricultural production (Tourtellot 1993). Of course, tying all landholdings to particular households in an archaeological context is an impossible task, particularly during times of Down on the Farm 99 relatively low population pressure when field systems likely included spatially distinct and widely distributed ‘‘in-field’’ and ‘‘out-field’’ components (see Ewill and Merrill-Sands 1987; Sanders 1981; Vogt 1969, this volume). However, it is likely that as population levels increased, the distinction between in-field and...