Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

6. Class, Kinship, and Gender at Islas de Los Cerros

6 Class, Kinship, and Gender at Islas de los Cerros Chapter 3 concluded that the best means for modeling prehispanic Maya kinship, by class and with an added gendered perspective, is through the archaeological methods described in Chapter 4. In the present chapter, those techniques are applied to Islas de los Cerros. The coastal site complex is ideal because residential mound distributions reflect kinship behavior. However , given that all extant features date only to the late Classic period, they lend themselves only to a synchronic analysis. although a previous preliminary study on social classes at Islas de los Cerros led to the interpretation of three classes (ensor et al. In press), the analysis of production-related tools/ features and consumption-related artifacts advocated here results in the identification of four social classes, each with distinct roles in the tributary political economy. When using the methods for identifying kinship behavior, it becomes clear that the variability in residence, descent, and descent group strategies was structured by class. Furthermore, when examining the tools/ features that were “engendered” for analytical purposes,class-patterned consequences of kinship to men’s and women’s social experiences also becomes apparent. The variation in kinship and gender at Islas de los Cerros is explained by contextualizing each class and its role within the regional political economy. social Classes The political economic analysis of social relations of production,as described in Chapter 4,leads to the observation of four social classes at Islas de los Cerros .Given that Islas de los Cerros was a major tributary of Comalcalco (ensor 2003c), all of the social classes participated in tributary social relations 96 / Chapter 6 with that capital. However, varying forms of the tributary mode of production defined and linked these classes in multiple ways. Resource-Deprived Commoners The bulk of the residential mounds and platforms at the five insular sites are interpreted as a class of commoners, who lacked control over their means of production and were dependent on obtaining redistributed processed food for consumption in exchange for corvée labor overseen by a resourceowning class of elites—a specific form of tributary social relations of production .The surface collections and excavations at the insular sites have demonstrated that the vast majority of the residential mounds and platforms had very few to no artifacts that can be characterized as tools (e.g.,obsidian,chert, or modified shell).This indicates that craft production and many other tasks commonly associated with domestic production elsewhere were not associated with domestic work at these residences. The same group of residential features also has an amazing paucity of vertebrate and invertebrate remains (the majority had none whatsoever), which suggests that the processing of these local resources was also not a domestic activity.This finding is very interesting .although abundant in the local environment, the majority of residences at Islas de los Cerros did not have domestic control over those resources .They were processed elsewhere or by others.additionally,no ground stone metate or mano fragments have been found on the surfaces or in excavations at any of these residences, which also suggests that nixtamal, assuming it did enter these residential areas, was processed elsewhere or by others. Most of the late Classic period production-oriented artifacts that were present at this grouping of residential features were pottery sherds having forms associated with cooking and limited storage functions (principally ollas and jars, with occasional tecomates and comales) (ensor 2002, 2003c). excavations at one of the residences within this class identified a small kitchen feature : a small clay platform containing a hearth (ensor and Tun ayora 2004). These findings led to the conclusion that the majority of insular residences belonged to a social class in which domestic production was largely restricted to limited forms of food storage and cooking, and that the members of this class had no access to means of production (ensor et al.In press).as indicated in the next section, this class must have relied on corvée labor for survival. Resource-Owning Commoners a second social class at Islas de los Cerros is identified on the basis of having control over means of production for both domestic consumption and surplus tributary production. This is a different form of tributary social rela- Class, Kinship, and Gender at Islas de los Cerros / 97 tions of production when compared with the first class described in the previous section. additionally, the analysis suggests...