Marilyn Masson
SUNY: University at Albany, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Download our Open Access new book on Mayapan! Bilingual English/Spanish "Settlement, Society, and Economy at Mayapan,... moreDownload our Open Access new book on Mayapan! Bilingual English/Spanish "Settlement, Society, and Economy at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico" from the University of Pittsburg site: https://sites.pitt.edu/~ccapubs/books/m027.htmledit
<p>Chapter 5 examines eight rural houselots, homes of farmers, in the vicinity of the Postclassic Maya capital city of Mayapán, Yucatán. Four houselots date to the Terminal Classic Period, when the area was a marginally located... more
<p>Chapter 5 examines eight rural houselots, homes of farmers, in the vicinity of the Postclassic Maya capital city of Mayapán, Yucatán. Four houselots date to the Terminal Classic Period, when the area was a marginally located vicinity surrounding a small central town. Four houselots date to the Postclassic Period, representing peripheral localities beyond Mayapán's walled urban zone. Comparisons of Postclassic Mayapán urban commoner activity differentiation and wealth are made to the rural houselots of both periods. Rural houselots differed in their relative affluence, some reflecting similar patterns to the late urban contexts. Although all were generally at the low end of the wealth continuum, rural farmers were fully dependent on regional trade for the most common items used in daily life, especially pottery vessels.</p>
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This article presents a compositional analysis of metal artifacts from the Postclassic period (a.d. 1100–1450) city of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. We document metallurgical production at R-183, an elite residential group and one of the most... more
This article presents a compositional analysis of metal artifacts from the Postclassic period (a.d. 1100–1450) city of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. We document metallurgical production at R-183, an elite residential group and one of the most significant archaeological contexts associated with metalworking at Mayapan. Salvage excavations in 1998 recovered a small cache containing 282 copper bells, two miniature ceramic vessels filled with metal, and production debris including loose casting sprues and miscast bells. Metallographic analysis of a small copper bell and wire fragments from the cache reveals lost-wax casting production techniques. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) of metal artifacts provides insight into the range of metals used by the R-183 metalworkers, which included copper-lead, copper-tin, and copper-arsenic alloys, and how these alloys compare to assemblages recovered from other contexts at the city. Our findings strongly suggest the use of remelting and casting te...
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Resumen Introduction Materials and Methods Results Conclusions List of Figures Sources Cited
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Mortuary rituals at the mission church of Yacman, a sixteenth-century rural Maya community, reflect locally specific variants of cultural hybridity relevant to the comparative study of the archaeology of agency and social change in early... more
Mortuary rituals at the mission church of Yacman, a sixteenth-century rural Maya community, reflect locally specific variants of cultural hybridity relevant to the comparative study of the archaeology of agency and social change in early Colonial settings of Mesoamerica. Burial practices in this church reveal early adoption of Christian norms, followed by a return to more traditional Pre-Columbian family mausoleum-like interments. At the same time, these Maya mission residents, like many of their contemporaries in the region, co-opted the Christian church as a new community nucleus and as a resting place for ancestors. These findings, with additional evidence for hybridity from domestic contexts, reveal strategic expressions of Colonial Maya identity at Yacman, a modest and remote rural settlement that exercised options to experience social change on its own terms, far from the supervisory gaze of Spanish friars.
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Indigenous pottery traditions and other material aspects of daily life in Yucatan were slow to change during the early colonial period. This conservativism reflects a gradual rate of social change at the community scale as Maya peoples... more
Indigenous pottery traditions and other material aspects of daily life in Yucatan were slow to change during the early colonial period. This conservativism reflects a gradual rate of social change at the community scale as Maya peoples contended with a Franciscan missionization program imposed on them from the mid-16th to 17th centuries. Ceramic assemblages from the rural visita sites of Hunacti, Yacman, and Tichac reveal divergent—and parallel—trajectories of household economies and footprints of social identity during the first century of Spanish rule. The quantity, kind, and distribution of indigenous pottery at these sites refines interpretations of late precontact, contact, and colonial-era ceramic traditions and the broader socioeconomic contexts that affected them. This study joins a robust literature from other places in the Americas that consider the complex manifestations of hybridity and ambivalence in colonial encounters.
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Abstract This article presents evidence from a mass grave at the Itzmal Ch’en administrative group, an outlying ceremonial center at the Postclassic period Maya political center of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. The grave contains the remains... more
Abstract This article presents evidence from a mass grave at the Itzmal Ch’en administrative group, an outlying ceremonial center at the Postclassic period Maya political center of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. The grave contains the remains of at least 20 individuals, likely the group’s elite patrons. The remains were subject to extensive postmortem treatment that included butchering, burning, and scattering, along with ritual paraphernalia and midden debris. The deposit is significant in the context of the city’s prolonged sociopolitical collapse, as radiocarbon evidence suggests that the deposit predates the final abandonment of the city. The shallow grave is instead associated with an ethnohistorically-documented period of internal conflict from between CE 1302 and 1400. More broadly, we evaluate the Itzmal Ch’en mass grave as a rare form of mortuary deposit in the Maya region, an example of desecration and ritual violence. The abandoned ceremonial plaza and grave site would have represented a macabre monument to a period of violent conflict in the city’s history that would have been visible to the city’s remaining occupants for the last half century prior to Mayapan’s final abandonment.
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Mayapan was a large and highly nucleated city located in the northwestern Yucatan Peninsula that served as a primate regional capital between 1200 and 1450 C.E. Increasing militarism is evident in the northern Maya lowlands starting in... more
Mayapan was a large and highly nucleated city located in the northwestern Yucatan Peninsula that served as a primate regional capital between 1200 and 1450 C.E. Increasing militarism is evident in the northern Maya lowlands starting in the Terminal Classic Period (850–1000 C.E.) and ethnohistorical, archaeological, and osteological data from Mayapan point to a later cycle of increasing hostilities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries C.E., prior to the city’s collapse and abandonment between 1441 and 1461 C.E. A large defensive wall was constructed to protect the urban core and a large residential population from external threats. We examine dietary change/stability through time using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of 77 individuals from a variety of elite and commoner contexts within the city wall. Our results indicate that diet was remarkably stable through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, despite a suite of episodic shortages, warfare, and violence between 1290 and 1400 C.E. We attribute this stability to a unique array of food production strategies practiced at Mayapan that combined maize-based food production, animal husbandry, hunting, and options for food exchange with towns located across the northern peninsula. Stored food surpluses, or the option to import them, evidently provided a sufficient buffer to recurrent environmental crises and related events of warfare and rebellion for over two centuries.
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The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation... more
The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene.
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to be heterogeneous and internally divided, but capable of responses to global forces so innovative that they challenge the very notion of center and periphery. Nevertheless, cultural efflorescence only partially disguises irrevocable... more
to be heterogeneous and internally divided, but capable of responses to global forces so innovative that they challenge the very notion of center and periphery. Nevertheless, cultural efflorescence only partially disguises irrevocable economic transformation. Migrants are proud of their continued commitment to their rural communities—but their big new houses eat up prime farmland, and the farm tools they hang on their walls are as purely decorative as the Otavaleno weavings they sell to foreigners. As Colloredo-Mansfeld reveals in a telling epilogue, Otavalo's young elite are as ignorant of the poverty in their own communities as any middle-class American might be. Read this book, then, as a model for studying the interrelationship between change and continuity, culture and economics. Or just buy it because you've been to Otavalo, or to tourist markets elsewhere: it's a fun and informative read for any traveler who's wondered about those hip young poncho salesmen speaking Quichua into their cell phones.
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In the twentieth century, an emphasis on generating big models to explain cross-cultural similarities and differences, particularly with respect to environmental factors, culminated in some essentialist views that negatively characterized... more
In the twentieth century, an emphasis on generating big models to explain cross-cultural similarities and differences, particularly with respect to environmental factors, culminated in some essentialist views that negatively characterized the complexity and stability of Maya area civilization and economic foundations. These assumptions about Maya "Others"-as those who are doomed to fail and as weak contrasts to central Mexican contemporariesstill prevail in recent literature. They are dismissive of historical accounts as well as decades of concerted archaeological research. It is time to consider these new data that attest to the stability, resiliency, and commercial sophistication of Maya places and peoples through time. Local historical contingencies gave rise to considerable variation in economic strategies for production and exchange and webs of interdependency provided safeguards for linked cities, towns, and rural places. [Maya, commerce, tropical civilizations, sustainability, spatio-temporal comparisons]
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Indigenous pottery traditions and other material aspects of daily life in Yucatan were slow to change during the early colonial period. This conservativism reflects a gradual rate of social change at the community scale as Maya peoples... more
Indigenous pottery traditions and other material aspects of daily life in Yucatan were slow to change during the early colonial period. This conservativism reflects a gradual rate of social change at the community scale as Maya peoples contended with a Franciscan missionization program imposed on them from the mid-16th to 17th centuries. Ceramic assemblages from the rural visita sites of Hunacti, Yacman, and Tichac reveal divergent-and parallel-trajectories of household economies and footprints of social identity during the first century of Spanish rule. The quantity, kind, and distribution of indigenous pottery at these sites refines interpretations of late precontact, contact, and colonialera ceramic traditions and the broader socioeconomic contexts that affected them. This study joins a robust literature from other places in the Americas that consider the complex manifestations of hybridity and ambivalence in colonial encounters.
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Mortuary rituals at the mission church of Yacman, a sixteenth-century rural Maya community, reflect locally specific variants of cultural hybridity relevant to the comparative study of the archaeology of agency and social change in early... more
Mortuary rituals at the mission church of Yacman, a sixteenth-century rural Maya community, reflect locally specific variants of cultural hybridity relevant to the comparative study of the archaeology of agency and social change in early Colonial settings of Mesoamerica. Burial practices in this church reveal early adoption of Christian norms, followed by a return to more traditional Pre-Columbian family mausoleum-like interments. At the same time, these Maya mission residents, like many of their contemporaries in the region, co-opted the Christian church as a new community nucleus and as a resting place for ancestors. These findings, with additional evidence for hybridity from domestic contexts, reveal strategic expressions of Colonial Maya identity at Yacman, a modest and remote rural settlement that exercised options to experience social change on its own terms, far from the supervisory gaze of Spanish friars.
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Investigations at the Myers, Elkins, and Ten Broeck properties in historical Albany, NY. Project focused on archaeological questions of daily life of African American abolitionists of the mid-1800s, excavating spaces to the rear of the... more
Investigations at the Myers, Elkins, and Ten Broeck properties in historical Albany, NY. Project focused on archaeological questions of daily life of African American abolitionists of the mid-1800s, excavating spaces to the rear of the Myers and Elkins residential locations. The project also investigated the daily lives of enslaved persons of the early 1800s, from the perspective of deposits associated with two rear outbuildings at the Ten Broeck mansion. Research was part of a University at Albany SUNY archaeological field school in 2017 and 2018 in collaboration with the New York State Museum and local agencies (The Underground Railroad History Project (Myers, Elkins sites) and the Albany County Historical Society (Ten Broeck Mansion).
Report to INAH of 2001-2004 seasons of survey, surface collection, test-pitting and horizontal excavation of residential zone of Mayapan (in Spanish).
The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation... more
The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene. Key-words: North America, Palaeoindian, Archaic, terminal Pleistocene, Early Holocene, cultural transitions cupations. Wilson points, typical of Archaic designs, pre-date established Early Archaic occupations in the south central US by 2500 years (Collins 1995; Prewitt 1985). Addition-ally, the Wilson occupation burial (WL-2) is one of the oldest and most complete human skeletons in the Western Hemisphere (Steele & Powell 1992). Unlike most Late Pleistocene
Exploring the long-term use of accounting practices and currencies by literate and numerate authorities contributes new information regarding the complexity of the political economy of ancient Maya society. Two forms of indirect, yet... more
Exploring the long-term use of accounting practices and currencies by literate and numerate authorities contributes new information regarding the complexity of the political economy of ancient Maya society. Two forms of indirect, yet compelling, lines of evidence for accounting practices and currencies are presented in this article. First, we identify potential accounting devices (counting sticks and tokens) found in the tombs of royal scribes and nobles, based on the contextual associations and depicted uses of similar objects in Maya art such as polychrome vases and murals. Second, we argue that the long-term use and significant standardization of specific shell objects suggests their role as all-purpose monies, in addition to their complementary status as counting devices or numerical symbols. This paper addresses the intricate relationships between symbolism, value and multiple modes of exchange that have long been of interest to cross-cultural studies in anthropology.
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... These historic references are briefly summarized below. Historic evidence for animal use in Maya ritual ... Radiocarbon dates suggest that Area 1 was inhab-ited within close temporal proximity to this area's use for ritual... more
... These historic references are briefly summarized below. Historic evidence for animal use in Maya ritual ... Radiocarbon dates suggest that Area 1 was inhab-ited within close temporal proximity to this area's use for ritual purposes (Masson 1999). ...
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Page 1. PROYECTO LOS FUNDAMENTOS DEL PODER ECONÓMICO DE MAYAPÁN TEMPORADA 2008 Informe para el Consejo Nacional de Arqueología de México y Propuesta para el Proyecto Riqueza, Estatus Social y Ocupación en Mayapán. Temporada 2009 ...
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... and economic organization, the issue of &amp;#x27;&amp;#x27;elite&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; (prestige goods) versus &amp;#x27;&amp;#x27;nonelite&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; pottery directly af ... less stratified or... more
... and economic organization, the issue of &amp;#x27;&amp;#x27;elite&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; (prestige goods) versus &amp;#x27;&amp;#x27;nonelite&amp;#x27;&amp;#x27; pottery directly af ... less stratified or less centralized than their Classic period Maya counterparts, their ... Despite this general characterization, con-siderable variation existed across the Late Preclassic ...
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The spatial contexts of effigy censer and figurine molds at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico suggest a tightly controlled industry in which elite representatives of state government and religious orders exerted oversight over production and... more
The spatial contexts of effigy censer and figurine molds at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico suggest a tightly controlled industry in which elite representatives of state government and religious orders exerted oversight over production and distribution. Attached artisans at Mayapan made these and other restricted goods for residents of palaces and patrons of the city's public buildings. The study of effigy ceramic production reveals that, like earlier, Classic period Maya kingdoms, Postclassic elites also sponsored the crafting of symbolically charged goods. This finding expands understanding of Postclassic period economic organization, which is best-known for its expansive regional market exchange. The limited distribution of effigy censers and figurines further attests their primary use in the context of state-sponsored ceremonies and, to a lesser extent, high-status mortuary settings. Unlike other places and times in Mesoamerica, neither figurines nor effigy censers are representati...
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This archives media files associated with the <em>Digital Companion to 'Animal Consumption at the Monumental Center of Mayapán'</em> project published by Open Context.The included JSON file... more
This archives media files associated with the <em>Digital Companion to 'Animal Consumption at the Monumental Center of Mayapán'</em> project published by Open Context.The included JSON file "zenodo-oc-files.json" describes links between the various files in this archival deposit and their associated Open Context media resources (identified by URI). These linked Open Context media resource items provide additional context and descriptive metadata for the files archived here.<br><strong>Brief Description of this Project</strong><br>Content related to a chapter in 'The Archaeology of Mesoamerican Animals'
Dental modification represents one interesting aspect of corporeal adornment in human history that directly reflects personal social identity. Tooth filing choices distinguished certain individuals at the urban, Maya political capital of... more
Dental modification represents one interesting aspect of corporeal adornment in human history that directly reflects personal social identity. Tooth filing choices distinguished certain individuals at the urban, Maya political capital of Mayapan from 1150 to 1450 ad, along with cranial modification, nose and ear piercings, tattoos and body paint. Here we examine how filing teeth, considered a beautification practice for women at Spanish Contact in the sixteenth century, is distributed across a skeletal sample of males, females, elites and commoners in this city. We evaluate the normative claim of the Colonial period and determine that while predominantly females filed their teeth, most women chose not to. Sculptural art further reveals that male personages associated with the city's feathered serpent priesthood exhibited filed teeth, and we explore the symbolic meaning of filed tooth shape. Assessing the practice in terms of associated archaeological contexts, chronology and bon...
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Patterns of animal use in central political and religious buildings at the Postclassic Maya political capital of Mayapán reveal the value of staple and exotic faunal resources that linked the foundations of daily subsistence to rites... more
Patterns of animal use in central political and religious buildings at the Postclassic Maya political capital of Mayapán reveal the value of staple and exotic faunal resources that linked the foundations of daily subsistence to rites practiced by the most prestigious and powerful members of the city. We review evidence for the widespread use of white-tailed deer and turkey at individual buildings and architectural groups of site center and nearby dwellings, and also variable patterns of the use of dog, brocket deer, and iguana, along with a range of other more uncommon fauna. We provide an archaeological perspective that complements rich Contact-period accounts of use of animals in rituals of sacrifice and other ceremonious events. The inclusion of deer bones as mortuary offerings and the representation of ani- mals in sculptural form provide further indicators of the symbolic value of animal resources to the city’s economy, politics, and religion.
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Abstract The complexity of the organization of craft production mirrors multiple aspects of the larger political economies of premodern states. At the late Maya urban center of Mayapán, variation in the social contexts of crafting within... more
Abstract The complexity of the organization of craft production mirrors multiple aspects of the larger political economies of premodern states. At the late Maya urban center of Mayapán, variation in the social contexts of crafting within a single settlement defies simple classificatory models that once held sway in the literature of nonWestern state societies. Most surplus crafters were independent and affluent commoners; notable exceptions include artisans working under direct elite supervision or elites who were directly engaged in crafting. Although household workshops concentrated around the city’s epicenter, others were dispersed across the site in unassuming residential neighborhoods or near outlying monumental groups. We consider the significance of pronounced household and regional economic interdependencies founded on well-developed surplus crafting practices, imported raw materials, market exchange, and tribute obligations at Mayapán. As for other premodern states, craft production also gave rise to greater opportunities for wealth differentiation within the commoner class. Producers in this urban political capital contributed in significant ways to a stable political economy by supplying goods that were required at all levels of the social hierarchy.
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In this paper, we analyze the distribution of Late Postclassic (A.D. 1250–1500) architecture and associated artifacts of the Maya site of Caye Coco, Belize. Artifact density and distribution suggest that different buildings served... more
In this paper, we analyze the distribution of Late Postclassic (A.D. 1250–1500) architecture and associated artifacts of the Maya site of Caye Coco, Belize. Artifact density and distribution suggest that different buildings served different functions and reflect a range of domestic and non-domestic activities at the island. An assessment of the labor investment required to build the seventeen structures at Caye Coco provides evidence of the degree of social hierarchy at this site, as many more people would have been required to build its elite residences than could have lived in them. The shift in the focus of architectural construction to the island at Progresso Lagoon in the Late Postclassic contrasts with the predominance of construction on the west shore during the Terminal Classic period. This trend reflects the emergence of a new political center among the lagoon settlements. It also may suggest an increased concern with aquatic transportation of trade goods during the Postcla...
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The influence of climate change on civil conflict and societal instability in the premodern world is a subject of much debate, in part because of the limited temporal or disciplinary scope of case studies. We present a transdisciplinary... more
The influence of climate change on civil conflict and societal instability in the premodern world is a subject of much debate, in part because of the limited temporal or disciplinary scope of case studies. We present a transdisciplinary case study that combines archeological, historical, and paleoclimate datasets to explore the dynamic, shifting relationships among climate change, civil conflict, and political collapse at Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Maya capital of the Yucatán Peninsula in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE. Multiple data sources indicate that civil conflict increased significantly and generalized linear modeling correlates strife in the city with drought conditions between 1400 and 1450 cal. CE. We argue that prolonged drought escalated rival factional tensions, but subsequent adaptations reveal regional-scale resiliency, ensuring that Maya political and economic structures endured until European contact in the early sixteenth century CE.
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Open Access - please download it from the University of Pittsburg's website (Center for Comparative Archaeology), so the press can track its interest metrics. Our Latest book on Mayapan! Here:
https://sites.pitt.edu/~ccapubs/books/m027.html
https://sites.pitt.edu/~ccapubs/books/m027.html