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EVERYDAY ACTION AND THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ANCIENT POLITIES: HOUSEHOLD STRATEGY AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN POSTCLASSIC XALTOCAN, MEXICO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2015

Kristin De Lucia  and
Lisa Overholtzer
Kristin De Lucia*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 109 Davenport Hall, MC-148, 607 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801
Lisa Overholtzer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Wichita State University, 1845 Fairmount, Box 52, Wichita, Kansas 67260-0052
*
E-mail correspondence to: kdeluc2@illinois.edu
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Abstract

Household archaeology conducted at the site of Xaltocan, an important regional center in the northern Basin of Mexico, illustrates how the everyday actions of ordinary people contribute to the rise and decline of ancient polities. Through a study of long-term change and variation from multiple household contexts, this article reconstructs how the economic and political activities of ordinary households were central to the construction and reproduction of political institutions, social structures, and regional systems of exchange from the period of Xaltocan's founding around a.d. 900 through its conquest in a.d. 1395. Along with the other contributors to this volume we emphasize that households are not simply influenced by broader processes of change and development in a trickle-down fashion, but rather that micro- and macro-structures are mutually constituted, with household decisions and actions having both intended and unintended consequences at the macroscale.

Type
Special Section: Households Make History in Ancient Mesoamerica
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , Fall 2014 , pp. 441 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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