Scott R. Hutson

University of Kentucky | UKY · Department of Anthropology

Phosphate analysis and trace metals analysis were used to determine activities that took place on plaster floors in domestic contexts at the ancient Maya site of Chunchucmil, Yucatan. Research on activities and the use of space contributes to an understanding of social relations within household groups as well as unforeseen patterns that structure...

As time passes, phosphorus (P) in soils tends to become more tightly bound with minerals. Phosphate fractionation enables the measurement of loosely versus tightly bound P. Archaeologists have used P fractionation as a chronometric technique: older soils should have greater proportions of P tightly bound with minerals. Research at Chunchucmil, a la...

In this paper we explore how Maya identities have been (mis)represented in the context of heritage tourism across the Mundo Maya and underscore the cultural heterogeneity and historical diversity of Maya speaking people. Our focus is the Yucatán peninsula, where we look at terms used to define social categories and ethnic groups through time. We th...

A partir de l'analogie entre marche et carnaval - d'une lecture du carnavalesque (Bakhtin) de la promiscuite sociale du marche -, l'A. examine la dynamique sociale des marches azteques en les replacant dans leurs contextes theorique et ethnohistorique, afin de clarifier la nature de cette dynamique dans le cadre englobant de la societe azteque et d...

Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthrop...

Settlement scaling theory predicts that higher site densities lead to increased social interactions that, in turn, boost productivity. The scaling relationship between population and land area holds for several ancient societies, but as demonstrated by the sample of 48 sites in this study, it does not hold for the Northern Maya Lowlands. Removing s...

Angamuco and Chunchucmil are two of the few Mesoamerican cities with relatively complete street maps. These maps provide a rare opportunity to study how the bulk of the population moved through cities, how people worked together to organize a network of paths and open spaces, what kind of interactions these features afforded, and how they contribut...

This paper uses new data from lidar mapping to explore variation in the size of ancient Maya houselots. The amount of space available to households has important implications for subsistence, craft activities, social relations, and more. Comparisons of houselot data from three large cities (Coba, Mayapan, and Chunchucmil) and one rural area (southw...

New World households engaged in multiple forms of exchange: markets, redistribution, gifting, debt, reciprocity, and more. Determining the degree of prominence of each of these forms in ancient economies gives clues to the economic basis of leadership and the daily lives of households. A major method for inferring forms of exchange from household a...

A multiyear field project focused on long-distance causeways between Uci and Cansahcab in Yucatan, Mexico, supports their use for processions and pilgrimages, their role in the creation of multisite polities, and their involvement in the constitution of local authority. Yet details of the causeways’ construction suggest that people contested this a...

A particular type of miniature ceramic vessel locally known as “veneneras” is occasionally found during archaeological excavations in the Maya Area. To date, only one study of a collection of such containers successfully identified organic residues through coupled chromatography–mass spectrometry methods. That study identified traces of nicotine li...

This paper reports on heritage initiatives associated with a 12-year-long archaeology project in Yucatan, Mexico. Our work has involved both surprises and setbacks and in the spirit of adding to the repository of useful knowledge, we present these in a frank and transparent manner. Our findings are significant for a number of reasons. First, we sho...

New Urbanists advocate for, among other things, spaces in cities where people of various backgrounds can interact. Yet not all interactions lead to the strong social bonds that make diverse communities more durable. The archaeological record provides rich examples of diverse communities that flourished. This article examines an ancient Maya city—Ch...

Religion was inseparable from daily life in the ancient Maya world, in part because activities like farming and building required contractual arrangements with sacred, other-than-human entities. Furthermore, ritual and politics were inseparable since most rulers could not derive authority from exclusive control of material resources. This chapter e...

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Despite the success of lidar in making ancient features visible in certain tropical environments, researchers often have difficulty using lidar to identify small, low, non-linear features. This study juxtaposes lidar data with data gathered from pedestrian survey along the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway, located in the Northern Maya lowlands, to assess the...

In recent years, a growing body of research has focused on the importance of water management for ancient Maya societies, and more generally on the cultural and economic significance of water as a resource. But how did this change across the centuries as cycles of drought and sea level rise, together with the growing Maya footprint on the landscape...

The Maya. The Romans. The great dynasties of ancient China. It is generally believed that these once mighty empires eventually crumbled and disappeared. A recent trend in archaeology, however, focusing on what happened during and after the decline of once powerful societies has found social resilience and transformation instead of collapse. In Beyo...

This paper looks at how materiality in a specific sense (e.g., aspects of raw materials) contributes to materiality in a broader sense (e.g., the mutually constitutive relations between people and things). We embark from the point that common materials, such as stone and perishable containers (baskets, gourds), shape people's social interactions an...

Foias Antonia E. & Emery Kitty F. (ed.). Motul de San José: politics, history, and economy in a Classic Maya polity. xiv+536 pages, 100 illustrations, 38 tables. 2012. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 978-0-8130-4193-2 hardback $79.95. - Volume 87 Issue 336 - Scott R. Hutson

Lines of evidence for ancient exchange plazas may include trade routes and trade artifacts, urban open space near public structures, and rock alignments denoting market stalls, but regular patterns in soil chemical concentrations also point to marketplace use. We applied geochemical and geospatial analysis of the floors of the main Plaza of Group B...

During the emergence of regional hierarchy around the site of Uci in northwest Yucatan, Mexico, ordinary people affected power relations in at least two ways. First, in the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods, Uci had the largest ceremonial center and the largest population within a 20 km radius. Uci also physically linked itself to smaller s...

Cooperation & Collective Action: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by CarballoDavid M., 2013. Boulder (CO): University Press of Colorado; ISBN 978-1-60732-197-2 hardback £62.50 & US$75; x + 319 pp., 29 figs., 15 tables - Volume 24 Issue 1 - Scott R. Hutson

First Impressions on Political Complexity and Women's Status Theorizing Gender Heterarchy and Gender Space, Power, and Identity Dynamic Frontiers and State Expansion Conclusion References

This article discusses two aspects of heritage – entanglement and transformation – that became clear during a recent cultural heritage project in Yucatan, Mexico. Regarding entanglement, heritage becomes relevant only when coupled with other concerns, ranging from politics to livelihood to personal biographies. An unpredictable array of entanglemen...

This paper applies structuration theory and semiotics to interpret the results of a recently completed total coverage pedestrian survey to the east of Yaxuna, Yucatan. Data from this survey suggest that a social group centered at the site of Tzacauil vied for political clout in the Late Preclassic period through the construction of a triadic acropo...

In this paper we illustrate the distinctive settlement patterns of the city of Chunchucmil during its largest occupation in the middle of the Classic period (a.d. 400–650). The unusually dense urban settlement showcased a network of boundary walls and chichbes surrounding residential groups and narrow streets winding between the tightly bounded hou...

This volume investigates how the structure and use of space developed and changed in cities, and examines the role of different societal groups in shaping urbanism. Culturally and chronologically diverse case studies provide a basis to examine recent theoretical and methodological shifts in the archaeology of ancient cities. The book's primary goal...

Chunchucmil, centro urbano del noroeste de Yucatán, fue uno de los sitios mayas más extensos y densamente poblados del Clásico Temprano, aunque no tiene textos glíficos ni pirámides enormes. Diez temporadas de mapeo han revelado que el sitio tuvo un patrón de asentamiento complejo que se puede dividr en varias zonas, basándose en datos tales como:...

In their 1995 Latin American Antiquity article, Haviland and Haviland argued that the people who produced much of the graffiti of Tikal were depicting visions from altered states of consciousness. In this paper, I argue that there is room for alternative interpretations. Comparison with children's drawings from across the world suggests that childr...

This chapter addresses one of the more interesting conundrums faced by the Pakbeh Regional Economy Program (PREP), which investigated the predominantly Early Classic lowland Maya site of Chunchucmil, Yucatán. Why, when it was the most accessible stone-cutting medium, was the number of artifacts made out of chert so low in all contexts, including do...

In 1971, William Rathje provided one of the first systematic models of long-distance exchange for the lowland Maya. Beginning from a then prominent cultural ecology paradigm that held that complex societies emerged only in areas with environmental heterogeneity, Rathje attempted to explain how the ancient Maya produced an illustrious civilization i...

Ideas of Landscape: an Introduction, by JohnsonMatthew, 2007. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Limited; ISBN-13 978-1-4051-0160-8; paperback £21.99 & US$34.50; xxii+242 pp., 34 b/w figs. - Volume 18 Issue 3 - Scott R. Hutson

Classic Period lowland Maya urban centers often lack sharp boundaries due to progressive dispersal of residential settlement. This dispersal gives rise to questions about the concept of site and the notion of community affiliation. Research on settlement patterns at Chunchucmil, an urban center in nw Yucatan, Mexico, dating to the 5th and 6th centu...

People's experience of space and hence of landscape depends on how they interpret the world around them (Brück 1998; B. Knapp and Ashmore 1999). Through the process of living and dwelling, people continually create, transform, experience , and imbue their surroundings with meaning, which in turn influences the behavior of those who inhabit those su...

The success of activity areas research in domestic contexts has highlighted the need for archaeologists working in the tropics to explore both indoor and outdoor spaces. The preservation of houselot boundaries at ancient Chunchucmil, Yucatán, Mexico, provides an ideal environment to explore methods for the investigation of broad spaces beyond build...

Since the 1980s, archaeologists have challenged the idea that prehistoric actions were guided primarily by practicality and expedience. Rubbish disposal, a superficially mundane activity, provides a critical case for exploring the depth to which cultural logics penetrate. Ethnoarchaeological research on discard behaviour in Mesoamerican houselots h...

Prudence M. Rice, Maya Political Science: Time Astronomy and the Cosmos (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004), pp. xxii+352, $60.00, $24.95 pb. - - Volume 38 Issue 1 - SCOTT R. HUTSON

The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program is studying the vexing questions of economic life among the ancient Maya in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico. The region constitutes an ideal laboratory in which to investigate these questions, as it has very limited agricultural potential and fewer options for intensification than are found in the southern and centr...

This paper presents results of excavations from three house lots at Chunchucmil, a Classic-period site in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico. Each of the three house lots contains multiple residential structures organized around patios with temples on the east side of the patio. The boundaries of the house lots are clearly marked by low walls that e...

The third edition of this classic introduction to archaeological theory and method has been fully updated to address the burgeoning of theoretical debate throughout the discipline. Ian Hodder and Scott Hutson argue that archaeologists must bring to bear a variety of perspectives in the complex and uncertain task of constructing meaning from the pas...

The third edition of this classic introduction to archaeological theory and method has been fully updated to address the rapid development of theoretical debate throughout the discipline. Ian Hodder and Scott Hutson argue that archaeologists must consider a variety of perspectives in the complex and uncertain task of "translating the meaning of pas...

Citation is one of many practices affected by the sociopolitics of archaeology. Examination of citation practices in American Antiquity, the Journal of Field Archaeology, Ancient Mesoamerica, and Southeastern Archaeology yields mixed results with regard to equity issues for women. In American Antiquity, the Journal of Field Archaeology, and Ancient...

This article examines the creation, renovation and negotiation of built space at Monte Albán, Oaxaca, Mexico, from 500 BC to AD 700, in order to document power relations and the construction of identity at the ancient site. Specifically, I detect strategies of domination in the deployment of monumental constructions in residential areas of the site...

In "The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism," VanPool and VanPool (1999) attempt to demonstrate that the sometimes hostile debate between processualist and postprocessualist archaeologies disguises substantive intellectual similarities. The most important similarity is their conformity to a refined definition of science. This definition is based...

At raves, young men and women dance to electronic music from dusk to dawn. Previous scholarship treats the rave as a hypertext of pleasure and disappearance. However, such a postmodern view does not attend to the poignant and meaningful spiritual experiences reported by those who go to raves. This article examines claims about altered states of con...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley. Photocopy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 498-550).