How Many Families Did Mayan and Aztecs Households Have

Households and Daily Life in Mesoamerica

We are sincerely grateful to Dr. David Grand. Carballo, Associate Professor, Section of Archaeology, Boston Academy, Massachusetts (U.s.a.) for this intriguing article, peculiarly written for us, on how archaeological studies today are providing more and more evidence for the variety of household types - and social system - in ancient Mesoamerica.

Pic 1: Model of an apartment compound at Teotihuacan; Museo de América, Madrid (Click on image to enlarge)

Like us, all ancient Mesoamericans had some place to call dwelling house. Given the strong cultural contacts betwixt different parts of Mesoamerica, there is a groovy deal that people shared in how they conceived of and constructed domestic space. Nonetheless households too varied based on regional traditions, ecology conditions, societal system, and changes in these through time. For example, rural Mesoamericans often resided in clusters of houses made mostly from perishable materials such as wood or adobe that decay more than chop-chop and therefore can be harder for archaeologists to detect. These were typically organized effectually a patio and were spaced some altitude from their neighbors, with fields or gardens betwixt them. In contrast, city dwellers often resided in rectangular compounds or fifty-fifty multi-family unit apartment blocks that were made of more durable materials, such as stone or concrete. In some cities - like Teotihuacan (pic ane), Tenochtitlan, and Mayapan - residences were tightly packed together. Rulers of Aztec and Maya cites often resided in large palaces, sometimes having i in the capital city and other imperial retreats in the countryside. Studies of households therefore capture much of the of import social and cultural variability in ancient Mesoamerican societies.

Pic ii: Model of traditional Maya houses, whose resilient form and construction techniques take endured for 2,000 years; Museo de América, Madrid (Click on epitome to enlarge)

Archaeologists distinguish the terms house (a physical structure) and household (a social group). It is much easier for us to define houses through excavations, since we uncover the remains of their walls, floors, storage pits, hearths, or associated artifacts. It is more than hard for us to define the social group that called such buildings, or groups of them, home. Fortunately we accept a wealth of historical information to draw on from the early colonial catamenia, beginning in the sixteenth century, besides equally from descendent communities in Mesoamerica (pic 2).

Moving picture 3: Types of houses documented by Sahagún's informants from the Aztec city of Tlatelolco, in the 16th century Florentine Codex. Construction materials range from unproblematic pole-and-thatch structures to multi-room palaces made of stone masonry (Click on image to enlarge)

Equally is the case with many aspects of Mesoamerica, our best historical sources come from the Aztec core of central Mexico, since this became the center of the viceroyalty of New Kingdom of spain and was documented extensively by Spaniards, Nahuatl speaking Aztecs, and mixed Spanish-Native mestizos. Among the many elements of Aztec life documented by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún are types of houses, ranging from simple perishable structures to majestic palaces (film 3). One unproblematic type of house made of pole-and-thatch covered in clay (or wattle-and-daub) was chosen a xacalli in the Aztec language Nahuatl (pronounced sha-cal-li and meaning "earthen house"). This word became jacal in Spanish and is likely the origin of the English word shack. We too take Nahuatl terms for the patio-groups that archaeologists excavate, marking them as important social units. These include cemithualtia ("those who share a patio") and in quiahuatl, in ithualli ("the exit, the patio"). The linguistic correspondence between shared domestic architecture and social groups provides a basis for connecting archaeological houses to the social groups who once occupied them.

Flick iv: Final Formative menses patio group from the site of Tetimpa, Puebla. The site was covered past the eruption of Popocatepetl, in background, during the kickoff century AD (Click on image to enlarge)

We see the remains of houses like to xacalli appear in the archaeological tape as soon as Mesoamericans became settled village farmers, beginning in the Early on Formative (or Preclassic) period, ca. 1500 – 900 BCE. Already at this early time some families lived in much fancier houses, providing evidence of the development of social inequality. This was the case at the Olmec town of San Lorenzo, Veracruz, where rulers lived in a large residence containing sculpted columns, elaborate drains, and floors covered in red hematite, giving the structure its name, the "Red Palace." Families of common course in Olmec society and those living in more rural parts of Mesoamerica during the Formative menstruum ofttimes resided in pole-and-thatch houses as office of patio groups. Sometimes the foundations of these structures were built of stone or raised on a platform, demonstrating more subtle distinctions in household status. In the example of the village of Tetimpa, Puebla, an eruption of the Popocatepetl ("Smoking Mountain") volcano in the mid get-go century CE covered many patio groups with lapilli (tephra), preserving their foundations and parts of their superstructures for archaeological study (picture 4). Intensive assay past Patricia Plunket and Gabriela Uruñuela shows that, as was truthful for most Mesoamericans, the inhabitants of Tetimpa buried household members under the floors of their house platforms. Their patio groups featured altars in the center of the patio for domestic rituals to the gods, ancestors, and spirit of the volcano.

Pic 5: Floor plan of the Tlamimilolpa flat chemical compound at Teotihuacan. Redrawn and modified from Linné (2003) (Click on image to overstate)

The eruption of Popocatepetl had the effect of driving migrants to the due north and east away from affected areas. Many of those who went northward settled at Teotihuacan, contributing to its ascension as the largest Mesoamerican city during the Archetype flow (ca. ane-550 CE). Here, the Teotihuacanos adult a type of residential architecture that was unique in Mesoamerica. Known past archaeologists as the apartment chemical compound, these residential units housed nigh all of the city's population, estimated to accept been over 100,000 residents. Apartment compounds retained patios with key altars as organizing features, but were inhabited by multiple families living in room blocks bounded by large exterior walls (moving picture five). Teotihuacan may be one of the few cases, or the simply, in the premodern world where nigh all the residents of a large city lived in apartments. At that place is evidence of abundant arts and crafts activities in every apartment chemical compound that has been studied archaeologically, probable providing a clue to their function: past group dozens of people together in communal compounds, Teotihuacanos divided labor tasks among extended families, creating a strong domestic economy that could be effectively taxed past the Teotihuacan state. It seems that in most cases Teotihuacan's apartment compounds were patrilocal, and women would move in with their husband's family later wedlock. But in a neighborhood of merchants with ties to the Gulf of Mexico this design seems to have been reversed, and local women from Teotihuacan maintained the household while men moved goods between the fundamental highlands and Gulf lowlands.

Motion-picture show 6: "Scribe's Firm" from group 9N8 of the Maya city of Copán, Honduras, featuring elaborate sculpture on façade and hieroglyphic bench in interior (Click on prototype to enlarge)

The Archetype period Maya (250-900 CE) did not live in apartments but had a diversity of domestic arrangements. In some cities with powerful kings, such as Copan, Honduras, the palace was a central feature of the ceremonial center and nobles beneath the rex lived in elaborate compounds around the site centre. Their houses were decorated with sculpture and hieroglyphs (pic vi), while smaller houses in the same residential group housed servants or other individuals of common status linked to the noble lord.

Movie vii: Terms for architectural components of a Yucatec Maya business firm matching parts of the trunk (Click on image to enlarge)

We are also fortunate to take a Maya village that, like Tetimpa, was preserved by a volcanic eruption. The site of Cerén, El Salvador, has well-preserved patio groups separated by agricultural fields, some of which even had the lower stalks of the crops growing on them preserved. Years of analysis by Payson Sheets and colleagues demonstrate that even rural Maya could live in decorated houses. It also shows that families wisely stored their sharp obsidian blades in the thatch of their roofs, where they would exist safely away from children or bare feet. Ethnographic work among Maya communities illustrates how houses, like other structures, are conceived of by Mesoamericans as animate buildings, with physical attributes similar a body and requiring to exist ritually "fed" through offerings. Picture 7 illustrates some architectural terms for a Yucatec Maya house and its relation to parts of the torso, including a "head," "back," and "butt."

Moving picture 8: Depiction in the Codex Mendoza (fol. 60, detail) of Aztec boys beingness taught by their fathers how to collect wood and fish, and of Aztec girls being taught by their mothers how to grind corn, brand tortillas, and weave (Click on epitome to overstate)

Aztec society during the Belatedly Postclassic and early on Colonial periods (ca. 1450-1550 CE) provides fantabulous examples of what sorts of domestic activities children were engaged in. Girls and boys were taught by their mothers, fathers, and extended family members how to intendance for their physical houses and provide for the people who comprised their households. This included chores such as sweeping or collecting wood (pic 8) only besides play involving miniature versions of domestic artifacts that archaeologists find during excavations. Aztec kinship was bilaterial and residence was bilocal, pregnant that children reckoned their family on their mother's and father's side and a newly married couple could motility in with the bride's or groom's family. At that place was a tendency for patrilocality (residing with the male'due south family) but the flexibility for matrilocality (female person's family unit) for economic or other reasons. There was also a strong tendency for ultimogeniture, meaning that the youngest child would look afterwards his or her parents in onetime age and would then inherit the house to showtime a new generation. These rules kept families and households going, forming the bases for Mesoamerican societies.

Bibliography
• Carballo, David Grand.
2012 Households in Ancient Mesoamerica: Domestic Social Organization, Status, Economies, and Rituals. In The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archæology, edited by Deborah Nichols and Christopher Pool, pp. 684-696. Oxford University Press, New York
• Cyphers, Ann, and Anna Di Castro
2009 Early Olmec Architecture and Imagery. InThe Art of Urbanism. How Mesoamerican Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Compages and Imagery, edited past Leonardo López Luján and William Fash, pp 21-52. Dumbarton Oaks and Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
• Manzanilla, Linda R.
2009 Corporate Life in Apartment and Barrio compounds at Teotihuacan, Central Mexico: Craft Specialization, Hierarchy, and Ethnicity. In Domestic Life in Prehispanic Capitals: A Written report of Specialization, Bureaucracy, and Ethnicity, edited by Linda R. Manzanilla, L., and Claude Chapdelaine, pp. 21-42. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Plunket, Patricia, and Gabriela Uruñuela
1998 Preclassic Household Patterns Preserved under Volcanic Ash at Tetimpa, Puebla. Latin American Antiquity 9: 287-309
• Robichaux, David L.
1997 Residence Rules and Ultimogeniture in Tlaxcala and Mesoamerica. Ethnology 36: 149-171
• Sheets, Payson (editor)
2002 Earlier the Volcano Erupted: The Ancient Cerén Village in Key America. University of Texas Press, Austin
• Smith, Michael E.
2016 At Dwelling house with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers Their Domestic Life. Routledge, New York
• Spence, Michael W., Christine D. White, Evelyn C. Rattray, and Fred J. Longstaffe
2005 Past Lives in Different Places: The Origins and Relationships of Teotihuacan's Foreign Residents. In Settlement, Subsistence, and Social Complexity: Essays Honoring the Legacy of Jeffrey R. Parsons, edited by Richard E. Blanton, pp. 155-197. Cotsen Institue of Archaeology, Academy of California, Los Angeles.

Picture sources:-
• Pix 1 & 2: photos past Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pix three, 5 & seven: images courtesy of David Carballo
• Pic iv: photograph courtesy of Patricia Plunket and Gabriela Uruñuela
• Film half dozen: photograph by and courtesy of David Carballo
• Pic 8: Epitome from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London.

This article was uploaded to the Mexicolore website on Jul 01st 2017

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Here's what others have said:

i At four.24pm on Th December 26 2019, Ixtlilxochitl wrote:

Palaces and two storey houses, apartment complexes, patios and all of that mustve had windows, correct? How did Mesoamericans keep bugs from flying in if they didnt accept glass?

Mexicolore replies: Please refer to these 2 articles:-
• https://world wide web.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/why-did-aztec-houses-accept-no-windows
• https://world wide web.mexicolore.co.uk/maya/inquire-experts/why-did-maya-houses-have-no-windows-2
Basically, without glass it's far too difficult to make and install wooden shutters to put over windows, so generally no windows. No windows helps go on the air cool (or warm). Narrow slits allowed occupants to meet OUT only kept busy-trunk eyes from looking IN. Plain bugs didn't worry them!

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Source: https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/households-and-daily-life-in-mesoamerica

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