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Medieval Childhood: Archaeological Approaches

Still another set of more egocentrical identities relate to the embodiment of culturally translated, yet biologically conditioned aspects; namely gender and social age. She explores the latter, for example, by analysing the last rites of dead children, by ‘looking at’ children presumably sacrificed, or by assigning meanings to the remnants of child play and their spatial attributions. The six chapters that make up this volume hinge heavily on the archaeological information Traci Ardren has collected herself over the past three decades in peninsular Maya Lowland sites. In today’s national setup, this pre-Hispanic cultural landscape occupies the southeastern segment of Mexico, which to its west, north and east is naturally delimited by coast line. One of the archaeological sites under study is Chunchucmil, a densely settled, bustling city, which during the Early Classic period communicated with coastal traders and Gulf Coast communities, and with the early inland centers of the Puuc area. We learn that the set-up of its urban spaces and the identities of its urban dwellers were conditioned by a culture of mutual dependencies, commerce and trust building, not one of overt oppression and subjugation. Further east in the peninsular crust lie the community of Xuenkal and what was a dynastically ruled inland centre during part of the Early Classic period: Yaxuná. Located only a day’s walk from Chichén Itzá, this town was abandoned during Chichén’s oppressive rule at the end of the first millennium AD. Centuries past the hegemony’s heydays, Yaxuná was resettled by a number of local households, providing food for thought on ancestry, forms and expressions of social memory versus forgetting and oblivion. Although case-study based, ‘Social Identities ...’ goes much beyond the single-site perspective as it borrows from other approximations and aspires to provide a new ‘philosophy’ of conducting identity studies in and around social archaeology. These studies should inspire new thoughts and visions regarding both past and present social imageries within and beyond the Maya area.