Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

By Bradley E. Ensor

By contextualizing classes and their kinship behavior within the overall political economy, Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship provides an example of how archaeology can help to explain the formation of disparate classes and kinship patterns within an ancient state-level society.

Bradley E. Ensor provides a new theoretical contribution to Maya ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological research. Rather than operating solely as a symbolic order unobservable to archaeologists, kinship, according to Ensor, forms concrete social relations that structure daily life and can be reflected in the material remains of a society. Ensor argues that the use of cross-culturally identified and confirmed material indicators of postmarital residence and descent group organization enable archaeologists—those with the most direct material evidence on prehispanic Maya social organization—to overturn a traditional reliance on competing and problematic ethnohistorical models.
  Using recent data from an arch aeological project within the Chontalpa Maya region of Tabasco, Mexico, Ensor illustrates how archaeologists can interpret and explain the diversity of kinship behavior and its influence on gender within any given Maya social formation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Nov 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780817386443

Book preview

Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

BRADLEY E. ENSOR

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2013

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Bembo

Cover design by Erin Bradley Dangar/Dangar Design

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ensor, Bradley E., 1966-

    Crafting prehispanic Maya kinship / Bradley E. Ensor.

        p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-8173-1785-0 (trade cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8644-3 (ebook) 1. Mayas—Mexico—Tabasco (State)—Kinship. 2. Mayas—Marriage customs and rites—Mexico—Tabasco (State) 3. Mayas—Mexico—Tabasco (State)—Antiquities. 4. Social groups—Mexico—Tabasco (State) 5. Social archaeology—Mexico—Tabasco (State) 6. Tabasco (Mexico : State)—History. 7. Tabasco (Mexico : State)—Antiquities. I. Title.

    F1435.1.T33E67 2012

    972'.63—dc23

                                    2012020835

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Notes on Terminology

Introduction: Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

1. A Brief History of Ancient Maya Kinship Studies

2. Implications of the Kinship Models

3. Problems with Models on Ancient Maya Kinship

4. Archaeological Approaches to Class, Kinship, and Gender

5. Islas de Los Cerros

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

7. Crafting Archaeological Models on Class-Based Kinship

References Cited

Index

Illustrations

Figures

1. Diagram of the Historical Associations of Major Models for the Ancient Maya

2. Kariera Section and Marriage System

3. Islas de Los Cerros

4. The South Group at Isla Chable

5. El Bellote

6. The Northeast and North-Central Groups at El Bellote

Table

1. Residential mound and platform bases at Islas de Los Cerros

Acknowledgments

This book combines long-term interests in kinship research and Mesoamerican archaeology. The work is a compilation and elaboration of a series of interrelated conference papers (Ensor 2008a, 2011a, 2011b) and ideas originally forming part of another topic presented in Ensor et al. (In press). My general interest in kinship research has been most notably influenced by the perspectives of John H. Moore and William F. Keegan, in addition to the ideas of numerous authors met and unmet. Their insights on kinship-as-socioeconomic-dynamics inspired me to consider methods for applying kinship models for archaeological interpretation and to pursue archaeological contributions to broader kinship theory. The archaeological case study on Islas de Los Cerros, Tabasco, Mexico, brings together data produced in four seasons of fieldwork financed by the Tinker Foundation and the University of Florida in 2001, by Eastern Michigan University in 2004, and by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., in 2005 (FAMSI #05024) and again in 2007 (FAMSI #07019). The Proyecto Arqueológico Islas de Los Cerros was conducted under multiple permits granted by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and benefitted from the support and guidance of those at the Centro INAH Tabasco in Villahermosa, most significantly Rebecca Gonzalez Lauck, Juan Antonio Ferrer, and José Luis Romero Rivera. The project is indebted to the contributions made by Gabriel Tun Ayora, Concepción Herrera Escobar, and others who enjoyed with me the steaming mangroves in one of Mexico's hottest and wettest regions. Finally, although I claim responsibility for any final errors or misinterpretations in this work, I thank an anonymous reviewer and William F. Keegan, along with his graduate students, for their thoughtful, critical comments and suggestions on an earlier draft, which undeniably corrected content and improved my presentation of the arguments.

Notes on Terminology

Maya/Mayan

Non-Maya specialists will observe nonstandard grammatical use of the terms Maya or Mayan. This book follows the traditional usage within Maya scholarship, which does not distinguish between noun and adjective when referring to the people, their cultural associations, and their language family. The term Maya is used . . . as both a noun and an adjective in reference to the Maya people, as in ‘the Maya,’ ‘Maya books,’ ‘Maya writing,’ etc., or to the Maya language proper of Yucatan. When referring specifically to the language family, however, it is customary to use the term Mayan, as both a noun and an adjective, as in ‘the Mayan languages,’ ‘Proto-Mayan,’ etc. (Morley and Brainerd 1983: xvii).

I occasionally use the term Mayanist to refer to any scholars on the Maya, who may or may not be Maya.

Descent Groups

Expert kinship analysts will undoubtedly note that this book dispenses with some nuanced categorizations, particularly in reference to descent groups. For example, traditional earlier 20th-century discussions will make much ado about the differences among lineage (whereby unilineal descent relationships to an identifiable common ancestor must be known), sibs (whereby multiple lineages must share a relationship to a mythical ancestor), clans (whereby membership must include coresiding unilineally related people and their affines), local groups (defined by residence locations), and descent groups (defined only by descent relationships, regardless of residence), etc. The result of such seemingly endless distinctions is massive confusion among nonexperts who would otherwise find that kinship is interesting and relevant to their work. To simplify and make the basic principles meaningful to that targeted broader audience, I follow Fox's lead (1967:50) and refer to lineages and clans as lower- and higher-order unilineal descent groups whether the members' relationships to ancestors are known or mythical, whether the members collectively own resources or not, and whether the members live together or not. Affines, therefore, are not viewed as belonging to their spouses' descent groups, but rather to their own whether they live with those kin or not. When discussing lineages and clans, I attempt to make explicit the potential range of features and functions when generalizing or refer to their specific characteristics and importance in particular cases.

Kinship Terminology

This is a book on kinship without a single traditional kinship diagram. Rather than focusing on relationship nomenclature, the book emphasizes the social organizational, political economic, and socially dynamic aspects of kinship. Nevertheless, kinship terminology systems are discussed but only insofar as to make points about the relationship between social organization, marriage, and kin nomenclature. Furthermore, the discussion of kin terminology is restricted to few categories of relationships (laterally and generationally), which I believe is all that is necessary to make those essential points. Terminology diagrams for most of the systems described herein can be referenced in any introductory text on the subject, indeed in practically any introductory text on cultural anthropology. The following is a guide to the standard term abbreviations used in the text.

M for mother

F for father

Z for sister

B for brother

D for daughter

S for son

By combining these, kinship analysts can describe a wider range of etic relationships (from the perspective of the observer). For example:

MB for mother's brother

MBS for mother's brother's son

MBD for mother's brother's daughter

MZ for mother's sister

MZS for mother's sister's son

MZD for mother's sister's daughter

FB for father's brother

FBS for father's brother's son

FBD for father's brother's daughter

FZ for father's sister

FZS for father's sister's son

FZD for father's sister's daughter

The same codes may be used to describe the emic relationship categories (from the perspective of a cultural participant). For example, in some systems, ego (the person of reference) will refer to both mother and her sisters as mother (M) or to both father and his brothers as father (F). To etically describe the emic classifications, these two examples can be expressed as Mother = M + MZ and Father = F + FB.

Introduction

Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship

This book is about the ways that models (hypotheses) on prehispanic Maya kinship have been crafted by scholars and about the ways that prehispanic Maya societies variably crafted kinship. After more than eight decades of research to identify an ancient Maya system of kinship and social organization, ethnohistorians and ethnographers have failed to reach a consensus. A number of major hypotheses on the nature of prehispanic Maya kinship and social organization have been forwarded and debated: patrilineal descent with patrilocality (also with Omaha and segmentary lineage versions), cognatic kinship, double descent, Kariera kinship, and house societies. With the exception of the house perspective (the most recent), this is not a historical sequence of models, but rather a list of competing hypotheses during practically all post-1950s periods of study. Whereas identifying kinship and social organization in archaeology has its set of challenges in any region, this goal is made all the more difficult for Mayanist archaeologists when ethnologist experts on the subject continue to produce competing models for the 16th century. Whereas investigators of other cultural regions might be surprised to read comments to the effect that archaeologists cannot understand social organization with their data, such comments are now well known in Maya archaeological literature (e.g., A. Chase and D. Chase 1992:7–8, 2004; Hageman 2004), suggesting the topical area has reached a crisis.

Goals and Objectives of the Book

From this departure, the goal of the book is to inspire a fundamental and optimistic change in the direction of research on ancient Maya kinship and social organization. Because this topic has been dominated by the models proposed and debated through ethnohistorical and ethnographical analyses, one of the main objectives is to outline multiple reoccurring problematic assumptions in those studies: that a pan-Maya kinship system existed, that naming systems and kin terminologies can predict a specified type of kinship-based social organization, that kinship is static, and that different social classes in state societies share the same system. The purpose of this critique is not to favor one ethnological model over others, but rather to illustrate that the direct-historical approach to analogy for the prehispanic Maya is the problem. However, direct-historical analogy is not the only means for interpreting kinship in any region, and this book suggests that it is the least useful approach in the case of the ancient Maya. Therefore, a second objective for this book is to bring to the analysis cross-cultural ethnologically confirmed material indicators of kinship behavior used in other regions, but which have largely been ignored in Maya archaeology due to a tradition of assigning preeminence to the direct-historical approach.

Whereas the problematic application of problematic historically derived models results in confusion for archaeologists, the use of cross-cultural indicators of kinship behavior allows archaeology to independently build kinship models from the ground up, so to speak. Thus, a third objective in this book is to demonstrate that archaeology is in a better position to model ancient Maya kinship than are ethnohistory and ethnography. Such an approach allows archaeologists—those with the most direct data on actual patterned behavior among prehispanic Maya populations—to model the diversity of kinship behavior within any given Maya social formation, across the numerous societies of the Maya macroregion, and over time. In other words, this book is a call for Maya archaeologists to produce their own models on kinship for the prehispanic periods that could expand and enrich our understanding of change within that era. Additionally, with an equal status as ethnohistory and ethnography, Maya archaeology could contribute better understandings of how kinship and society changed from the prehispanic era, to the postconquest era, and to the present.

For a case study demonstrating this potential, I use recent data from an archaeological project within the Chontalpa Maya region of Tabasco, Mexico. Islas de Los Cerros (Islands of the Mounds) was a large Late Classic period coastal settlement occupying five islands and the peninsular site of El Bellote downriver from the interior capital of Comalcalco. Although there are some drawbacks to this selection, Islas de Los Cerros still provides an ideal case study for the third objective as multiple social classes and kin groups are easily recognized (Ensor et al. In press). When applying cross-culturally confirmed material indicators of kinship behavior, social classes are observed to have different patterns. By contextualizing the classes and their kinship behaviors within the overall political economy, the case study also provides an example of how archaeology can explain the formation of disparate classes and kinship patterns within a given state society.

Finally, the fourth objective of this book is to bring the subject of ancient Maya kinship more up to date with political economic perspectives on class, kinship, and gender. For the past four decades, political economic perspectives are largely responsible for reinvigorating kinship research in anthropology (see Peletz 1995). The framework has brought to light the interrelations between kinship relationships and resources, labor, social organization, intergroup relationships, gender, and ideology. Despite the significance of this understanding of kinship in broader anthropological theory, it is absent in the previous literature on precolumbian Maya kinship. The book also extends the political economic analysis of class and kinship to the topic of gender, which is largely absent in the previous body of literature on ancient Maya kinship. Although the implications of class on gender has certainly been addressed in Maya archaeology (e.g., Inomata et al. 2002:325–326; Josserand 2007; Joyce 1992), kinship has played either a minor role, or a vague role, in those perspectives. Thus, kinship and gender have largely been approached as separate realms of study within Maya archaeology. Yet social anthropological theory, and particularly feminist anthropologies, have long recognized that the intersection of class and kinship has enormous implications on gender construction and conditions. Through the political economic perspective developed in social anthropology, this book illustrates how archaeologists can observe and explain class, kinship, and gender relationships.

Why Are Kinship Models Important to Understanding the Ancient Maya?

In reviewing the literature on prehispanic Maya kinship for this book, I was left with the impression that the majority of studies have not explicitly addressed this question. Scholars have long pursued the elusive Maya kinship system, and most discussions of social organization touch on that research in one way or another, illustrating a collectively implied importance of the topic. Recently, however, archaeologists have cast doubts on their abilities to identify kinship with material remains, whereas others have mischaracterized kinship as merely symbolic and irrelevant to anthropological inquiry on socioeconomic relations. Yet, for the past four decades, outside of Maya archaeology, social anthropologists and archaeologists had been pursuing modern approaches to kinship that, based on my literature review, went unnoticed by researchers of ancient Maya kinship (see Chapter 2).

For much of its history, the goal of research on this topic was merely to identify the ancient Maya kinship system. For early pioneering studies, this would seem acceptable enough with the eventual use of the models for cross-cultural comparison. However, even after a substantial amount of data had been gathered on the topic, much of the literature from the 1960s to the 1980s involved debates where the goal was to identify which model is best supported by evidence. Few studies actually expressed a purpose for understanding ancient Maya kinship. When this does occur, it can usually be found in archaeological literature where the explicit rationale was to better understand social organization (e.g., Haviland 1968; Michels 1979; Sanders 1981, 1989). Yet even less common was the use of models on kinship for larger explanatory purposes.

Three examples of exceptions to this pattern can be distinguished. In Fox's (1987) study, a segmentary lineage model was used to explain the regional expansion of the Chontal in the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods. An understanding of patrilocal social organization of households forming patio groups (plazuelas) was instrumental in Haviland's (1972) method for estimating prehispanic Maya populations. Sanders (1992) used kinship models to explain incipient state formation at Copan, which contributed to broader theory on state formation. Whether in agreement with these studies' conclusions or not, they illustrate attempts to use kinship models for