Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Mobility As A Response To Social And Economic Factors

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores indigenous Yucatec Maya responses to and experiences of Colonial and Republican rule, and the variability of social and economic organization beyond the hacienda. The majority of archaeological investigations in Yucatán, México have highlighted Pre-Columbian Maya sites and Colonial haciendas. By contrast the relationships between indigenous landowners (caciques) and their subject populations on sites of more modest architectural scale, such as ranchos, has been understudied from an archaeological perspective. Morgan-Smith's research examines landowner-laborer relationships among Maya-speakers on the cusp of historical political shifts, addressing the critical issue of how socioeconomic status and tenancy on indigenous-owned landed estates factor into household abandonment, and relationships with sites of oppression in the present. The processes involved in landowner-worker interactions continue in many regions of the world today and this research thus has current relevance. Within this context, this research addresses the following broader questions: How are social and economic relationships between the landowners and laborers materialized in household contexts? How do differential patterns of tenancy and inequality inform the understanding of debt peonage on indigenous-owned landed estates? The proposed research is designed to address gaps in the current literature on household abandonment and the nascent field of Yucatec historical archaeology using a mixed-methods approach. Morgan-Smith's archaeological research explores the material expression of household abandonment from Rancho Kiuic, a rural 18th- 20th century landed estate in the Puuc region of Yucatán, México. Occupied by generations of Maya-speaking landowners and laborers through the late-Colonial and Republican eras. The Rancho represents a site type with that has seen little archaeological or ethnohistoric investigation. Using household-level excavation data, oral histories of the descendant community, and archival research, this project examines the relationships between the Rancho?s owners and the laboring population through house-lot abandonment contexts. Archaeological excavation will establish occupation lengths within, and material inequities between, house-lots of the landowning and laboring families. Oral history interviews and archival research will be employed to identify resources, opportunities, and historical processes that may have drawn the population to or away from the Rancho. Using network analysis, the resulting archaeological, archival, and oral history data will be evaluated to understand how complex socioeconomic relationships impacted decisions to leave the community, produced the material manifestations of household abandonment, and continue to shape the descendants? interactions with the landscape today. The advantage of this approach is that it gives the oral history and archival data ? which are often treated as parallel or comparative in historical archaeology - the analytical consideration of material data sets. At the same time, this project furthers ongoing collaborative relationships with the descendant community Xobenhaltun, of Rancho Kiuic, who maintain their ties through use of the site's cemetery. Specifically, community members will participate in the project as consultants and contributors to histories of their experiences at Rancho Kiuic. Involving the descendant community in dialogue about their pasts in their native language permits more meaningful engagement with communities in the archaeological process. Furthermore, this research provides field, lab, and oral history training for both graduate and undergraduate Anthropology student volunteers.