Ancient Households of the Americas
Conceptualizing What Households Do
Publication Year: 2012
Published by: University Press of Colorado
Cover
Contents
Download PDF (50.9 KB)
pp. vii-viii
Figures
Download PDF (56.5 KB)
pp. ix-xii
Tables
Download PDF (50.9 KB)
pp. xiii-xiv
Preface
Download PDF (55.0 KB)
pp. xv-xvi
The idea for this volume originated over a decade ago, in 1999–2000, when John Douglass was finishing a year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside. During that time, he organized a session for the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in New ...
Acknowledgments
Download PDF (57.4 KB)
pp. xvii-xx
First and foremost, we thank all of the contributors to this volume, who have made it a success. They have waited patiently for the publication of their work and we sincerely appreciate their tolerance. Darrin Pratt of the University Press of Colorado embraced this project from the beginning and has been a source of ...
1. The Household as Analytical Unit
Download PDF (459.3 KB)
pp. 1-44
The study of that small, but universal, component of society, the household, is now a global pursuit. Scientists who work in all parts of the world are addressing diverse research concerns for various times and places (see, e.g., Beck 2007; Carballo 2011; Christie and Sarro 2006; Falconer 1994; Fortier et al. 1989; Hendon ...
Section 1. Household Production Organization
2. Occupation Span and the Organization of Residential Activities
Download PDF (1.6 MB)
pp. 47-78
The anthropological study of households was revitalized during the 1980s when researchers began to examine household organization from a behavioral perspective (Netting, Wilk, and Arnould 1984a; see also Douglass and Gonlin, this volume). Archaeology was well equipped to meet the challenge posed by this ...
3. Production and Consumption in the Countryside
Download PDF (561.4 KB)
pp. 79-116
Producer households are the backbone of agrarian societies and make up the bulk of the domestic economy, an observation that holds through time and space.1 Anthropologists routinely investigate the nature of production, its organization, what goods or services are produced and by whom, and whether the...
4. Iroquoian Households
Download PDF (2.4 MB)
pp. 117-140
In the seventeenth century the Mohawks were the easternmost of five Iroquois nations strung in an east-west line across what is now the state of New York. West of them resided the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, from east to west. They were the five nations of the League of the Iroquois, a weak confederation...
5. Activity Areas and Households in the Late Mississippian Southeast United States
Download PDF (1.3 MB)
pp. 141-162
The topics of household archaeology, activity area analysis, and gender research are combined here to explore production at the household level. Prehistoric Late Mississippian households in the southeast United States comprised men, women, and children performing activities within and around their domestic structures. Outside of the much-debated realm of specialized production of elite...
6. The Social Evolution of Potters’ Households in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico, 1965–1997
Download PDF (1022.3 KB)
pp. 163-188
This chapter provides two answers to the question, What do households do? First, their members participate in craft activities, and second, the social composition of these craft households evolves and changes through time. One type of craft activity that households practice is pottery making, but what happens to...
7. Pots and Agriculture
Download PDF (1.6 MB)
pp. 189-218
Household ceramic production is of keen interest to scholars, both in prehistory and in contemporary contexts (D. Arnold 1985, this volume; P. Arnold 1991; Bernardini 2000; Cordell 1997; González Fernández, this volume; Hagstrum 2001; Hill 1994; Mills and Crown 1995; Roux 2003; Spielmann, Mobley-Tanaka, ...
Section 2. Households as Primary Producers
8. Hohokam Household Organization, Sedentism, and Irrigation in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona
Download PDF (4.1 MB)
pp. 221-268
Studies of Hohokam households have most often focused on identifying and describing them as elements of the distinctive social structure that emerged in the low desert areas of the Southwest. Such studies have generally taken a static view that emphasizes continuity through time and space. Recent anthropological...
9. Understanding Households on Their Own Terms
Download PDF (518.0 KB)
pp. 269-298
This chapter applies the ethnographic model by Wilk and Netting (1984) of household economic organization, which predicts how households will internally organize production given differences in household sizes, to an archaeological study of household variability at K’axob, Belize. In presenting this study, I...
10. Late Classic Period Terrace Agriculture in the Lowland Maya Area
Download PDF (1.7 MB)
pp. 299-322
The subject of this chapter is the organization of Late Classic period (ca. AD 550–800) ancient lowland Maya terrace agricultural activity. Agricultural terraces are embankments, typically constructed of stone but at times made of wood or augmented by living plants, placed perpendicular to hill slopes or drainages...
Section 3. Inter- and Intrahousehold Organization of Production
11. Fluctuating Community Organization
Download PDF (2.8 MB)
pp. 325-352
In many Formative Mesoamerican communities multifamily corporate groups emerged following the transition to sedentism (Flannery 2002). When surface remains of artifacts and architecture are detectable, aspects of social organization can be inferred. However, in some regions, recovering evidence of household and community organization is difficult because of the perishable nature of...
12. Relationships among Households in the Prehispanic Community of Mesitas in San Agustín, Colombia
Download PDF (495.1 KB)
pp. 353-380
In the Alto Magdalena region, in southwestern Colombia, the development of communities at the core of small polities back to around 1000 BC have been traced in regional settlement-pattern surveys. Since that time, groups of households began to cluster together around places that were to become the central mounded funerary sites of the San Agustín chiefdoms during the regional Classic...
13. Interhousehold versus Intracommunity Comparisons
Download PDF (540.6 KB)
pp. 381-406
Most prehistoric agro-pastoral households farmed, herded domesticated animals, witnessed or perhaps hosted rituals, produced and consumed trade goods, and made a variety of utilitarian implements. This range of activities made up the domestic economy, which can be divided into production (control of food and craft goods, subsuming farming, herding, storage, processing, and manufacturing),...
14. Arrobas, Fanegas, and Mantas
Download PDF (172.1 KB)
pp. 407-436
In 1546 the Yucatán peninsula was officially deemed conquered and claimed for the Spanish Crown (Chamberlain 1948). On the Yucatán peninsula, there were no rich mineral resources that resulted in the Spanish appropriating land; therefore, the Maya were able to maintain control of the means of production. Instead, the Spanish colonists appropriated Yucatec Maya household labor and their products...
Contributors
Download PDF (42.0 KB)
pp. 437-438
Index
Download PDF (73.2 KB)
pp. 439-448
E-ISBN-13: 9781607321743
E-ISBN-10: 1607321742
Print-ISBN-13: 9781607321736
Print-ISBN-10: 1607321734
Page Count: 472
Illustrations: 6 b&w photos, 72 line drawings, 13 maps, 31 tables
Publication Year: 2012
