Under the supervision of Dr. Scott Fedick, Darcy Wiewall will analyze data gathered during her archaeological excavations at the Maya site of Lamanai in Northern Belize. Lamanai is notable for having produced the first fruitful information on Maya/Spanish interaction in the southern Maya lowlands. In the Late Postclassic period the community was a small, but flourishing political and economic polity in the central Maya lowlands. Circa 1546, Lamanai was incorporated into the Spanish colonial encomienda system, which required individual households to pay specified amounts of traditional and non-traditional goods. Wiewall's excavations focused on recovery of multiple lines of data that will assess the extent to which household organization, production, and consumption strategies and their corresponding gender relations of production shifted between the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1450-1546) and Spanish Colonial Periods (A.D. 1546-1650). (132).
To understand how the impact of Spanish state formation altered Maya commoner households one can reconstruct household socio-economic activities through application of the house lot model. The house lot is composed of the dwelling, associated buildings and the immediate surrounding area where household activities were carried out and were traces of material and organic by-products of those activities remain. As a household under goes change, specific behaviors or activities may be abandoned or initiated, or the proportions of different activities may change relative to others. Documenting changes in house lot configurations and activities (food preparation, craftwork, gardening, etc.) across space will contribute to understanding the range of activities in which people participated and the decisions they made about labor and resource allocations. Likewise, through comparing individual household groups we gain insight into social organization (gender, age, class, ethnicity) and economic and political organization. (143)
This project examines four house lots and compares the activities performed within this space. A set of archaeological correlates were developed to distinguish a Late Postclassic from a Colonial house lot and thereby the extent of changes in household organization, production, and consumption strategies. Because many productive activities that differentiate households socio-economically from one another take place in areas adjacent to the dwelling this project was geared toward recovery and analysis of non-observable remains accessible through soil chemistry (phosphate) and paleoethnobotanical samples. (82)
This project will have a broader impact by enhancing the level of public understanding of science both in Belize and the United States. Public outreach associated with the project has focused on the community of Indian Church, located adjacent to Lamanai. The Co-PI has implemented a program for local women to receive training and skills as archaeological laboratory assistants. This training will prepare them for future employment with other archaeologists and other researchers conducting investigations in the area. These new skills will open up opportunities for employment with the Belize Institute of Archaeology. Outreach also includes tours of the site and laboratory facilities for the local community and submission of field reports to the community library. The research findings will be disseminated through class lecture, local archaeology interest groups, professional meetings, and scholarly publications. Furthermore, the award will assist in graduate student training.
