FOURTEEN

Arrobas, Fanegas, and Mantas

Identifying Continuity and Change in Early
Colonial Maya Household Production

DARCY LYNN WIEWALL

INTRODUCTION

In 1546 the Yucatán peninsula was officially deemed conquered and claimed for the Spanish Crown (Chamberlain 1948). On the Yucatán peninsula, there were no rich mineral resources that resulted in the Spanish appropriating land; therefore, the Maya were able to maintain control of the means of production. Instead, the Spanish colonists appropriated Yucatec Maya household labor and their products through state-imposed rules of economic exchange in the mechanisms of encomienda, ecclesiastical taxation, and repartimiento (Clendinnen 1987; Farriss 1984; Hunt 1974; Patch 1993; Restall 1997). The colonial economy was built upon the preestablished Maya elite tribute system that revolved around agriculture, animal husbandry, and textile production at a household level (Clendinnen 1987; Farriss 1984; Patch 1993). To a great extent the newly imposed systems were a continuation of an in-place mechanism for channeling goods and labor from peasantry to elite (Clendinnen 1987:38: Patch 1993:26). Even though the quantities of goods and labor extracted from commoners may have been excessive, it has been argued that these demands differed only in degree without requiring serious modifications of either Maya commoners’ work habits or organization (Farriss 1984:56). It has also been suggested that the Spanish State economy operated outside the domain of the domestic unit with little or no effect on household producers and local production systems, thereby explaining the apparent survival of traditional Maya communities and promoting the relative autonomy of Maya commoners during times of political change (Clendinnen 1987; Farriss 1984; Redfield 1941). These interpretations have been emphasized at the expense of achieving a clear understanding of colonial institutions in the wake of Spanish conquest, which invariably affected Maya household producers much more so than scholars purport.

Indigenous communities are not solely relics of a pre-Columbian past but are in fact the products of colonialism mitigated by the ability of households and communities to integrate political change within their own productive capabilities (Wolf 1997). Colonization is a catalyst for change in indigenous societies and has profound effects on household organization, particularly the gender relations of production between women and men (Etienne and Leacock 1980; Gailey 1987; Silverblatt 1987). The assumptions that the organization of household production, division of labor, and gender relations remained static in light of the impact of the Spanish tribute and taxation are unsupported in other cross-cultural comparisons (Kellogg 1995, 1997; Nash 1980; Silverblatt 1980, 1987; see also chapters by Douglass and Gonlin, and Gonlin, this volume).

This chapter sets forth a predictive model for understanding the political-economic relationship between Maya households and the Spanish colonial regime during the Postclassic-Colonial transition in the Maya Lowlands. Here I focus on identifying aspects of Spanish colonial policies that potentially affected household production and consumption strategies, specifically their effects on the division of labor and gender relations in Maya households.

To address these issues four sections will be presented. First, I provide a working definition of the household. I then review data from ethnohistorical sources and evaluate what they tell us about how household production was organized in Postclassic Yucatec culture. I then discuss the three political-economic policies imposed by the Spanish State and Church, which appropriated Maya household labor and products. Finally, I explain how the archaeological record can potentially identify the impact of colonialism on the organization of Maya household production through spatial analysis of houselot components and their associated materials.

Recent archaeological research hints at the real possibility of identifying the degrees of continuity or change in early colonial Maya household economies (Graham 1991; Kepecs 1997, 1998; Masson 1999). If fully developed, investigations such as these promise to elucidate important issues of culture change during this critical, but rarely addressed, transition in Maya history, thereby contributing to an incipient understanding of this period and its effect on the development of colonial society. This is pertinent if we continue to make inferences from ethnohistorical documents to precontact societies without understanding the structure of the political-economic relationship between Maya households and the Spanish colonial regime during the Postclassic-Colonial transition.

WHAT IS A HOUSEHOLD?

As discussed by Douglass and Gonlin in this volume’s introductory chapter, archaeologists understand that in traditional societies households are an elemental social unit (Ashmore and Wilk 1988; Wilk and Netting 1984). Households are a relevant level of analysis for examining broad social change, for it is within these groups that basic needs are met and social roles defined (Bourdieu 1985; Wilk and Netting 1984; Wilk and Rathje 1982). Over the last two decades, the household has become an important unit of analysis among Mesoamerican archaeologists. The main reason for this interest was a new definition of the household as an activity group. A household could be defined on the basis of its functions, including production; consumption; transmission of wealth, property, and rights; reproduction, coresidence; and shared ownership (Ashmore and Wilk 1988; Wilk and Netting 1984). This definition moved the concept of household away from a focus on kinship and residence toward a focus on ecology and political economics. Furthermore, this definition had material implications. By recognizing spatially delimited units in the archaeological record that have parallel sets of structures, features, and artifacts, archaeologists could examine the range of domestic activities. The material evidence of household behaviors could now be linked to interpretations of household activities and their organization. Examining the household as a set of interrelated and changing activities provided a more dynamic behavioral perspective capable of addressing culture change (Rapoport 1990; Wilk 1991; Wilk and Netting 1984).

For the purposes of this chapter, like many authors in this volume, when I refer to the “household,” I am referring to a coresidential group composed of various actors—commoners, farmers, women, and children—wherein membership is defined by shared domestic and economic activities regardless of whether its members are linked by kinship or marriage (e.g., Bender 1967; Gillespie 2000; Kramer 1982). In all societies households produce goods for their own consumption and for social exchange (Wolf 1966). What each household is capable of producing is dependent on its access to resources such as farmland, labor, technology, and forest products (Grossman 1998; Netting 1993; Wilk and Netting 1984). As a unit of analysis, households become important because they represented a level in which individuals articulate directly with economic and ecological processes and a level at which adaptation can be studied (Wilk 1991; Wilk and Rathje 1982). As a culturally ordered space, the household reflects and reinforces the underlying conceptual structures of society and, by extension, the arena in which gender relations are constructed and negotiated (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1985; Giddens 1982; Hendon 1996; Spain 1992). Gender, as a culturally constructed ideology, structures women’s and men’s roles, relationships, access to resources, appropriate gender roles of production, and opportunities for control both within the household and in society as a whole (Gilchrist 1991; Hendon 1996; see also chapters by Gonlin, Gougeon, and Neff, this volume). It is within this social space that actions and behaviors are continually reorganized on short- and long-term bases. The arrangement of these different behaviors and economic tactics form the overall adaptive strategy of the household (Chayanov 1986; Wilk 1991). During times of political change, households will select the best risk-reducing socioeconomic strategies to survive, thereby altering the activities of the members of the household and their gendered roles of production (Wilk 1991; Yanagisako 1979). In the process, existing gender hierarchies may be intensified or new ones imposed (Gailey 1987). Thereby, household organization affects and is affected by relationships beyond the household (Wolf 1966, 1997).

To understand how political change impacts Maya commoner households it is necessary to reconstruct activities on a household level. It is through the comparison of individual household groups that insight into social organization (gender, age, class, ethnicity) and economic and political organization can best be understood (Brumfiel 1992).

DEFINING NORTHERN LOWLAND MAYA COMMONER HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION

Before we can delve into addressing the impacts of Spanish colonial institutions on Maya commoner households, we must first identify what we know about how household production was organized in the Maya Lowlands. I review data from ethnohistorical sources most closely related spatially (northern lowland Maya area) and temporally (Late Postclassic–Early Colonial) to evaluate what they tell us about household production in Postclassic Yucatec culture (Marcus 1995). The purpose of this overview is to elucidate a baseline to discuss what areas of household production may have been most affected by the imposition of Spanish institutions. This overview is limited to ethnohistorical sources, since archaeological data focused on northern Maya commoner household organization during the Late Postclassic or early Colonial period are severely limited (for an exception see Kepecs 1997, 1998).

ETHNOHISTORICAL DATA

The 1569 census of Tixchel and the 1570 census of Cozumel identify a mixture of isolated nuclear-family households and multiple-family households in the northern Maya Lowlands with higher frequencies of multiple-family households (Roys 1957:155; Roys, Scholes, and Adams 1940:14; Scholes and Roys 1968). In either case, the household was the basic socioeconomic unit identified in the earliest colonial accounts. Households were composed on average of five to fifteen individuals residing in one large structure or in several smaller structures clustered within a residential compound (Farriss 1984:134; Roys, Scholes, and Adams 1940:14–22; Scholes and Roys 1968:470–481). Household members included subsistence farmers and craft specialists who produced goods primarily for their own consumption but also for barter and payment of tribute (Clark and Houston 1998; Piña Chan 1978; Roys 1972:34; Tozzer 1941:23, 97). Tribute payments commonly consisted of wild game, turkeys, fish, salt, maize, beans, chile, honey, fruits, and cotton cloth and thread (Piña Chan 1978; Roys 1957, 1972). Maize, cotton, beans, squash, and henequen were grown in adjacent or nearby agricultural fields (milpas) and non-citrus trees were maintained in the forest (Tozzer 1941:195). House gardens (see also Neff, this volume) located in the residential compound provided additional fruits and vegetables, such as chile, avocados, and jicama (Scholes and Roys 1968:170; Tozzer 1941:89, 196, 198). The residential compound was also where a variety of fowl; stingless bees, which were source of honey and wax; and possibly deer and peccary were raised (Pohl and Feldman 1982; Tozzer 1941:127, 201). Households also actively participated in various other activities such as hunting and fishing, gathering forest products, and production of ceramic vessels, lithic tools, textiles, basketry, and honey wine, or balche (Clark and Houston 1998; Noyes 1932; Piña Chan 1978; Roys 1957; Tozzer 1941: 91, 92, 201–205).

The Franciscan friar Diego de Landa (ca. 1566) penned the most descriptive accounts we have of the daily life of Maya commoners (Tozzer 1941). Landa’s descriptions suggest that the organization of household production was characterized by a well-defined division of labor by gender. In particular, he pointed out the reciprocity of labor in many aspects of household production activities, such as agriculture, hunting, fishing, salt gathering, weaving, and spinning (Tozzer 1941:87, 96, 97, 127). These cooperative production activities were commonly divided by gender with a group of women or a group of men working together at their respective tasks; however, in some cases work was done on a community level and both men and women worked together (Tozzer 1941:87, 96, 97, 127).

Women’s roles of production included weaving and spinning; food processing; raising animals in the household, notably fowl for consumption and exchange and birds for their feathers. They also cultivated gardens (Tozzer 1941:89, 91, 127–128, 194). Women also went to market to buy and sell their articles of production (Tozzer 1941:127). Landa characterized Yucatec women as great workers, as well as good managers and housekeepers. Women were responsible in large part for the support of their homes, education of their children, and payment of tribute. To meet these obligations, they often worked at night after completing their housework.

While Landa devoted a paragraph to specifically characterizing the production roles of Maya women, he did not concisely characterize Maya men in the same manner. He identifies men’s roles of production as relating to agriculture, hunting, and fishing. Men practiced a wide variety of professions: although most were cultivators, some were warriors, potters, carpenters, surgeons, and traders (Tozzer 1941:94–97). Men took care of maize and other grains in granaries until ready for sale (Tozzer 1941:96).

Restall’s (1997) investigations of colonial period wills and testaments (ca. 1646–1813) provide a separate line of evidence for the gendered division of household production. Many inheritance items are gender specific, bequeathed to males or females. However, there was a general tendency to provide evenly for one’s spouse and children without excessive prejudice toward either sex (Restall 1997:110).

Maya men bequeathed agricultural land to their sons and all tools relating to agricultural production (machete, ax, digging stick, etc.) were willed to men without exception (Restall 1997:124–130). Men owned and left to their male heirs male items of cloth and clothing. The property that women bequeathed or inherited was focused on the residential compound, or houselot. Men owned the orchards, trees, and vegetable gardens, but they left such property to wives, daughters, or both (Restall 1997:124–130), and women were two times more likely to bequeath a houselot in a will (Restall 1997:124–130). Women inherited twice as many botanical items as men, almost twice as many fowl, and three times as many pigs (Restall 1997:126). In fact, the only mention of pigs and chickens occurs in wills by women. Likewise, the majority of bequeaths of beehives, which were located at the back of the residential compound, went to wives and daughters (Restall 1997:124–130). In other cases, beehives were bequeathed evenly to the two genders. Items related to textile production—looms, yarn, and lengths of cotton cloth—appear in women’s wills and are not mentioned in men’s (Restall 1997:129). Women also owned and left proportionately four times as many cloth-related items as men, and they owned and left a wide range of cloth-related goods pertaining to both sexes. Restall’s interpretation of the wills and testaments argues for a strict division of labor between Maya men and women. Maya men were more likely to work away from the household, maintaining milpas, whereas Maya women tended to work within the confines of the domestic sphere (Restall 1997:124–130).

DISCUSSION OF THE ETHNOHISTORIC DATA

The ethnohistoric data suggest that the basic social unit of Yucatec Maya society was a multiple-family household living in a residential compound. The daily life of the household was characterized by a fairly well-defined division of labor, with men’s activities focused on the milpa, hunting, and fishing and women’s activities focused on textile production, animal husbandry, and the care of their homes and children. However, many economic activities were shared among the members of the community. This gendered division of labor is further supported in the inheritance patterns. Men and women had control over the products of their labor, selling these items at market and bequeathing these items to individuals of their choice.

We should keep in mind the inherent biases in ethnohistoric sources. First, it is doubtful that the ethnohistorical documents fully portray the realities of daily life from a commoner perspective and even less about lives of women and children. Landa and his Maya informants were male members of an elite class, which influenced their perspectives on Maya commoners; thus, these depictions may not be accurate or complete. The basic assumptions regarding the roles of Maya women and men in household production can be seen as idealized societal roles and expectations or reflections and constructions of sixteenth-century Spanish Catholicism (Silverblatt 1991:161). In particular, the productive roles of native women appear as colonial versions of Western stereotypes (Silverblatt 1991:162). The information drawn from wills and testaments dates to a period 100 years after the conquest, providing at least two generations of time during which Spanish patriarchal inheritance patterns undermined traditional patterns of inheritance (Cline 1998). Furthermore, the wills are not representative of the Maya population as a whole, as they are age- and class-biased (Restall 1997:233).

Despite these inherent biases, scholars have interpreted the apparent strict division of labor as indicative of a patriarchal society (e.g., Farriss 1984:135; Restall 1997:123–124; Tozzer 1941) or one based on gender hierarchy—in which one gender (the male gender) is said to dominate oppress, control, or set the agenda of the other (female) gender (Gero and Scattolin 2002:156). Cross-cultural studies have shown that a sexual division of labor does not always result in ranking men’s roles as more powerful than women’s roles (Rosaldo 1974). Furthermore, the explicit assumption that all societies have similar gender relations in which one sex is ideologically or behaviorally more important to the other, as occurs in Western culture, has been shown not to be universal or even meaningful (Hendon 1996).

Joyce (1992:67) views Landa’s descriptive accounts of the productive activities of Maya women and men as one of gender complementarity—in which both men and women hold equal status in the economic and social arenas. Drawing on work by Devereaux (1987) in the Maya community of Zinacantan, Mexico, Joyce sees men’s and women’s labor as a sequence of production, which transforms natural raw materials into culturally defined forms. According to Devereaux, the ideal of male and female complementarity is deeply rooted in Zinacantan society. The gender ideology casts men and women as two necessary parts of a whole. The marriage is viewed as the union of male and female labors: “male labour produces the raw materials, and female labour transforms them into objects of use and consumption” (Devereaux 1987:93). Despite this complementary ideology, Devereaux demonstrates that a paradox exists between the ideology of gender complementarity and the reality of women’s lives, in which their social and economic roles are actively devalued and they operate under a gender hierarchy.

The assumptions that Maya society at conquest was a gender hierarchy with males in positions of power over females have not been proven but are assumed. The degree in which division of labor along sex lines exists in any culture is varied and dynamic and does not indicate a separate but unequal relationship between genders. Gender relations of production are inextricably tied into other complex social and political relations, and we can expect that changes in one area of relations will effect changes in other areas (Etienne and Leacock 1980; Tringham 1991). We should not assume that Spanish males’ perceptions of Maya gender relations are factual, nor should we assume that gender hierarchies in contemporary Maya communities are remnants of a pre-Columbian past., Rather, the issue of gender hierarchy should be considered a problem or a feature of social structure to be explained.

CHANGES IMPOSED ON THE MAYA HOUSEHOLD BY THE SPANISH STATE AND CATHOLIC CHURCH

The central feature of Spanish colonial rule was incorporation of subordinate indigenous people into a world economic system. The Yucatán peninsula lacked rich mineral resources for export and other economic enterprises that could secure a market among Europeans, such as wheat and sugarcane farming, remained small-scale or failed (Clendinnen 1987:42). Consequently, the encomenderos quickly determined that cotton-related goods, beeswax, honey, salt, and domestic animals (in order of economic importance) were the products by which they could produce profits and accumulate wealth. Both the Spanish State and Catholic Church imposed on the Maya household new institutions incorporating existing pre-Columbian tribute and labor systems into three new tribute-based policies that appropriated goods and labor. These new institutions granted the Spanish access to resources in Yucatán by means of the encomienda, ecclesiastical taxation, and repartimiento.

Encomienda

The essential form of the encomienda was relatively simple. The Spanish conquistadores who participated in the “pacification” of the Yucatán peninsula received the customary royal award of encomienda, which granted an individual the right to possess of land, to be exempt from state taxes, and to exact tribute and labor from a specified number of royal tributaries of the conquered population (Chamberlain 1948; Patch 1993:28). The grantee, or encomendero, was expected to maintain a house and family in the nearest Spanish villa, to oversee the material and spiritual well-being of his charges, and to maintain himself in readiness for military service (Chamberlain 1948; Clendinnen 1987:38; Jones 1989:41–42; Patch 1993:28). Maya tributaries were required to provide payment to their designated encomendero in the form of tribute and labor. By the close of 1545, all native towns and villages of the peninsula had been parceled out in encomienda grants (Clendinnen 1987:38).

Under the encomienda system, natives were required to perform all labor and provide all services that their encomenderos demanded of them. Many abuses arose from the imposition of labor and tributes at the will of the encomenderos, and many excesses resulted with serious detriment to the native population. As a result, the Crown required that an official taxation schedule of tributes and services be established to eliminate abuses of the native population, and the official schedule was put into effect in 1548–1549 (Chamberlain 1948:285, 286, 337). The assessment of tribute was to be in conformance with the capacity of each individual pueblo to pay, based on their population, resources, and local production activities (Chamberlain 1948:285). Even though assessments were measured in monetary value, payment was rarely in currency but instead in household goods. The definition of tributary and the quotas per tributary changed at various times and will be discussed below.

Under the new taxation policy, the assessments of 1548–1549 were based on the number of married couples after exemptions of the aged and infirm, members of the native ruling families, and holders of posts in town governments. In 1548, a typical encomienda, or civil tribute payment, required for a married couple included annual payment of one manta (ca. 10 sq. yards) of cotton cloth, one pound of beeswax, one-half fanega (bushel) of maize, one fowl (turkey or chicken), and other household items in smaller amounts such as beans, salt, fish, chiles, cacao, household utensils, and personal service (Cook and Borah 1974:9; Farriss 1984:41; Paso y Troncoso 1939 [1547–1549]; Patch 1993:28, 29; Scholes and Roys 1968:150–153).

A tribute manta consisted of four lengths (piernas) of cotton cloth, each four varas long and three-fourths of a vara wide, making a total of about ten square yards (English measure) per manta (Cook and Borah 1974:9). Maize and bean assessments were made in terms of the number of fanegas of each to be planted annually. A fanega is approximately one bushel in quantity. Beeswax, honey, salt, and fish were assessed in terms of arrobas, an arroba weighing approximately twenty-five pounds and measuring four gallons (Scholes and Roys 1968:151).

The first revision to services and quotas per tributary changed quickly. In 1552–1553, Tomás López Medel arrived on the peninsula and began enforcing the New Laws of 1542, issuing a series of ordinances regulating Indian affairs. First, personal service to encomenderos was deleted from the assessments. Second, the annual quota of tribute in cloth changed from one manta per tributary to three-quarters manta (Chamberlain 1948:337; Cook and Borah 1974:9–10). On average it is estimated that the value of the goods each married couple paid was monetarily equal to 23 to 25 reales (8 reales = 1 peso) annually (Farriss 1984:39; Scholes and Roys 1968:151). The definition of a tributary, however, remained unchanged.

The first change in the definition of a tributary occurred sometime between 1561 and 1583 (Cook and Borah 1974:10). Pinpointing its precise date is difficult because of the lack of available materials, but by 1583 the new definition and a further reduction in the annual quota per tributary was official (Cook and Borah 1974:10n26; Farriss 1984:41). Unmarried women aged twelve to sixty and unmarried men aged fourteen to sixty, including widows and widowers, as well as bachelors and spinsters, were now defined as half-tributaries and were required to pay half the quantity demanded for a full tributary (Cook and Borah 1974:10; Patch 1993:28).

The new annual quota per tributary (Table 14.1) was reduced to include one-half manta of cotton cloth, one fanega of maize, two chickens, and one turkey—the cloth and the fowls payable in two installments and the maize deliverable in the installment due at Christmas (Cook and Borah 1974:11). The quota and the new definition of tributary lasted without further change at least until the end of the seventeenth century (Cook and Borah 1974:11; Patch 1993:28).

Ecclesiastical Taxation

The function of ecclesiastical taxation was similar to the system of encomienda in that it provided goods and labor for the maintenance of the religious establishment. However, obvenciones, as they were later called, differed in significant ways from civil taxation. The initial form of tribute the Franciscan clergy exacted from their Maya parishioners was called limosnas (alms), but they were far from voluntary contributions (Farriss 1984:40; Patch 1993:28). Limosnas, like encomienda, consisted of payments in native products such as cotton, maize, beans, honey, and beeswax per married couple. The quantities demanded of native goods and services were arbitrarily determined between each parish priest and the local Indian officials. Not until the early eighteenth century did the church officially regulate limosnas by setting a uniform and fixed tax schedule under the title of obvenciones (Farriss 1984:40, 85; Patch 1993:29). The quantities discussed below are derived from the per capita obvenciones and parish fees. It should be noted that these figures may not reflect the actual ecclesiastical fees collected by all priests in all pueblos in the late sixteenth century, but it demonstrates an approximation of what was required. In fact, the fixed schedule more than likely reflects reduced quantities of goods collected previously by parish priests. As noted by Robert Patch (1993:29), “the total collected by the Church must have rivaled and possibly surpassed [civil] tribute in importance.”

Table 14.1. Annual taxes owed by an Indian family in colonial Yucatán, 1583 (in reales)

Married couples were required to pay ecclesiastical tribute, or obvención mayores, on an annual basis. They were also required to pay on a weekly basis one egg and one jar of hiquerilla (oil) for each Indian child attending the obligatory catechism classes. In addition to annual tribute, Franciscan missionaries exacted fees from the natives for performance of the sacraments such as baptism, matrimony, and confirmation. The right column of Table 14.1 lists the annual average of ecclesiastical tribute a married couple and their three children would pay over a twenty-year period for performance of these sacraments (Farriss 1984:41).

Repartimiento

The system of repartimiento had several different meanings among regions and over time in colonial Spanish America (Farriss 1984:43–47; Hunt 1974:465–488; Patch 1993:30–32, 268n32; Scholes and Roys 1968:305–307). The repartimiento in Yucatán was a form of advance payment in return for native products. Spaniards advanced money, raw materials, or imported European goods to individual Maya men and Maya communities in return for future repayment of stated quantities of specified local products such as beeswax, honey, and cotton products within a specific time period (Farriss 1984:43–45; Patch 1993:81; Scholes and Roys 1968:305–307). Prices charged for goods sold to the natives were usually in excess of current market values; prices paid for the goods supplied were normally lower than the actual market, and fraudulent weights and measures were used when collecting the goods (Farriss 1984:44; Scholes and Roys 1968:305).

Cotton textiles and thread were the most lucrative products that the Spanish could exploit for exorbitant profit. The most common repartimiento contract negotiated between Spanish and Maya men was the rate of one-half patí per female, but mantas and thread were also contracted. A patí is a piece of cloth slightly larger than one square meter. Each patí required six pounds of raw cotton to be spun and woven, and the women were paid four reales for their labor. In the 1670s, for example, raw cotton was acquired from the Maya at four reales per carga, but the market price was between eight and twelve reales. For each finished patí, profits were between 68 and 132 percent of the invested capital, between 44 and 122 percent for mantas, and between 33 and 100 percent for thread (Patch 1993:86–87). Women’s labor, therefore, transformed raw cotton materials into finished merchandise worth many more times the cost of acquisition.

The encomenderos are credited with the initial organizing of repartimiento on the peninsula; however, by the mid-seventeenth century, repartimiento became the most popular and lucrative illegal method for non-encomenderos, primarily state officials and clergy, for extracting native products (Farriss 1984:43–45; Hunt 1974:465; Patch 1993:81). Repartimiento was defined as business transactions, but in reality, it was a corrupt and exploitive system of extortion, as the producers were forced upon pain of punishment to deliver the required goods (Farriss 1984:44; Patch 1993:32).

DISCUSSION OF THE HISTORICAL DATA

As outlined above, the colonial tribute economy revolved around Maya labor and production in agriculture, cloth-related goods, and animal husbandry on a household level. Imposition of multiple Spanish political-economic policies consequently had the potential to greatly affect the organization of Maya household production, division of labor, and gender relations. A review of the quantities and types of products collected from the first official tax schedule of encomienda is informative.

The Spanish colony of Yucatán, excluding the villas of Valladolid and Salamanca de Bacalar, received 47,813 woven cotton mantas, 26,812 chickens and turkeys, 2,182 arrobas (25 lbs./11 kg units) of beeswax, 2,035 arrobas of honey, 693 fanegas (bushels) of maize, more than 121 fanegas of beans, 223 fanegas of salt, and more than 118 arrobas of fish from 1549 to 1551 (Cook and Borah 1974; Paso y Troncoso 1939:103–181; Pohl and Feldman 1982).

The total civil tribute collected by means of the Yucatán encomiendas is quite incredible, but we must consider the amounts of products collected through other mechanisms to gain a better understanding of the extent of the goods collected. The example of the Franciscan repartimiento of 1700 is enlightening. The friars collected more than 44,000 patíes, more than 15,000 pounds of thread, 1000 mantas, and 68,000 arrobas of beeswax (Patch 1993:83–84). These numbers reflect only the total of repartimiento contracts carried out by the Franciscans and do not include what the encomenderos, secular clergy, and other state officials collected during the same year. If the ecclesiastical repartimiento is any indicator, the amounts of cotton textiles produced are staggering. Clearly, Maya households had to reorganize and increase utilitarian and agricultural production in response to the demands placed on them by the Spanish State and Church.

Of these products, the most striking aspect is that while the agricultural surplus of Maya men mainly fed local Spaniards through urban markets, Maya women’s cloth-related goods, domestic animals, honey, and beeswax products supported the Spanish export market. These goods provided a means by which Spaniards could produce profits, accumulate wealth, and control both legal and illegal exports to other provinces in Spanish America, Cuba, and Spain (Hunt 1974:86; Noyes 1932:313). These data suggest that the products of Maya women’s labor (cloth, thread, honey, fowl) became the cornerstones of the colonial Spanish economy in Yucatán.

Changes in the official definition of a tributary and Spanish required quotas are other areas that raise several questions about the Spanish State’s role in shaping household organization. Ironically, the changes in 1583 in the definition of a tributary may have reduced the amounts couples were required to pay but did not lessen the burden on each household. The inclusion of teenagers and elderly adults as half-tributaries required the households where these individuals resided to increase production. Not only did the Spanish increase the size of the workforce and the amounts of goods they could obtain, but they also influenced changes in the traditional gender relations of production among women, men, teenagers, and elder adults.

THE HOUSELOT MODEL AND ITS ARCHAEOLOGICAL CORRELATES

Can we identify, archaeologically speaking, how Spanish colonial policies affected the organization of Maya household production and consumption activities, division of labor, and gender relations? Moreover, can we identify specifically the different behaviors and economic tactics that households select to be successful?

The social approach to household archaeology, as defined by Johnston and Gonlin (1998:143), views the household as a unit of socioeconomic organization that occupied the house and its surrounding area. This approach is defined as “social” because it is concerned with household organization and economic adaptation. The social approach examines the spatial disposition and formal attributes of objects and buildings thought to have socioeconomic significance (see, e.g., Deal 1985; Killion 1992; Santley and Hirth 1993), as well as remains that are not directly observable but are accessible through analyses such as soil chemistry and paleoethnobotany (see, e.g., Ball and Kelsay 1992; Lentz 1991; Manzanilla and Barba 1990; Robin 1999, 2002b; Terry et al. 2000). This approach is simultaneously concerned with building use, or “function” (i.e., who did what where), and the socioeconomic organization of its occupants. In the Maya region, the social approach to investigation of households is particularly advantageous because the houselot (house and surrounding area) has been determined to be a fundamental spatial unit of analysis (see, e.g., Deal 1985; Hayden and Cannon 1983:160; Johnston and Gonlin 1998; Killion 1992; Manzanilla and Barba 1990; Robin 1999; Santley and Hirth 1993; Neff, this volume).

The houselot model developed by Killion (1990, 1992) provides the opportunity to identify the behavioral processes that produce residential site structures. On the basis of his observations of contemporary farming households in Veracruz, Mexico, Killion identified four spatial components within a houselot: the structural core (living structures and storage buildings), the clear area (diversified activity zone and staging zone), the intermediate area (midden), and the garden area. The houselot area contains a dwelling unit surrounded by a swept patio or clear area maintained free of debris for the economic, social, and ritual activities of the household. The patio area in turn is surrounded by a zone of debris generated by the household and finally by a garden or toft zone of cultivated and wild vegetation. This basic structure forms the “playing surface” for the daily activities of the household (Killion 1992). Within this “lived space,” members of the household participate in activities such as cultivation, animal husbandry, craft production, food preparation, and refuse disposal, which result in material and chemical traces of those activities (Robin and Rothschild 2002). Neff’s (this volume) modeling of the greater household production area has positive implications for Killion’s houselot model as well.

Household form and function are sensitive to variation in people’s access to basic resources (Hayden and Cannon 1983; Santley and Hirth 1993; Wilk and Ashmore 1988). Variations in the relative sizes of the basic spatial components reflect the types and intensity of activities conducted both within and outside of the houselot. A small patio area suggests a sacrifice to maintain a sizable garden area, whereas a small garden may be a result of additional ancillary features such as pigsties and chicken coops, which become more important with outfield milpa cultivation (Killion 1992). Large patios and more formalized refuse disposal may result from the need for ample staging areas for agricultural or other production activities occurring near the community or within the houselot itself (Arnold 1990; Killion 1990). Ethnoarchaeological studies indicate that smaller available work space correlates with more formalized arrangement of activity areas in scheduling and segregation of space within the house-lot (Arnold 1990; Hayden and Cannon 1983). In turn, these work spaces may become designated as activity-restricted, age-segregated, or gender-specific activity areas Kent 1990).

In addition to the basic spatial components of the houselot, the number and variety of ancillary features located in the patio and garden areas, such as wells, chicken coops, pigsties, pilas (water storage tanks), rejolladas (small sinkholes for planting), and linear stone foundations for apiaries, are important clues for determining strategies of diversification and intensification of production within the houselot (Alexander 1999; Fedick 1996; Gómez-Pompa, Flores, and Fernández 1990; Torrones 1994; Wauchope 1938).

Artifact densities and organic residues are also useful measures for identifying the location of activity areas and compound boundaries. Outdoor activity areas have been identified based on chemical and artifactual remains that correlate to the basic four divisions of the houselot model. In the structural core and patio area, entryways and other heavy-traffic sectors tend to be depleted of chemical residues (Manzanilla and Barba 1990; Robin 2002b). The sweeping of the patio produces a pattern of low-weight and small-piece-size refuse in the patio area and high-weight, larger-piece-size refuse in the garden. Studies have identified that the patio area can be differentiated from the garden area by measuring the falloff patterns of average sherd weight and count (Alexander 1999; Deal 1985; Hayden and Cannon 1983; Robin 1999, 2002a, 2002b; Santley and Hirth 1993). Heavily used work areas, such as for stone-tool manufacture and food processing, should be identifiable by the presence of small debris that become embedded in the ground despite sweeping. These areas may have elevated chemical levels, in particular manganese, which is associated with wood ash, and moderate levels of organic residue (Hastorf 1991; Robin 2002b). Chicken coops and pigsties located in garden areas are associated with high phosphate levels and high densities of inorganic debris (Alexander 1999).

Most artifactual materials of interest are found in middens or along structure peripheries. Middens contain the materials necessary for analysis of household socioeconomic organization because they consist of the aggregate detritus generated by all or some of the debris-producing activities once conducted within the household (Boone 1987:336–339; Killion et al. 1989:286). Refuse areas will be high in chemical levels, specifically phosphorous, and organic debris. Garden and orchard areas can be indicated by chemical residues of garden fertilization (see, e.g., Dunning 1989; Smyth, Dore, and Dunning 1995). Paleoethnobotanical remains are a line of evidence that can identify the variability of the range of staple crops, wild and cultivated fruit trees, wild fruits, and wild grasses being exploited and potentially traded (Graham 1987; Marcus 1982; McKillop 1994, 1996; Voorhies 1982).

The houselot model not only describes the spatial variation of socioeconomic activities, but it also has the potential to identify changes in gender relations and the division of labor. The household is the social arena in which gender relations are constructed and negotiated, and the role of features, artifacts, and organic residues within the houselot can provide insight into how gendered relations of production are organized (see, e.g., Costin 1996; Hastorf 1990, 1991; Hendon 1996; Kent 1984, 1990; Spain 1992). All societies have, to some degree, gender-specific work areas, and the separation of work space along gender lines reinforces and naturalizes ideas about gender differences (Kent 1984, 1990; Spain 1992). Women’s and men’s roles and tasks within the houselot influence the organization of space use for activities as well as for storage (Hastorf 1991). The positioning of facilities for production activities is related to the extent to which individuals need committed space for their work. For example, pottery production requires storage, preparation, and work areas (Wright 1991). The positioning of facilities by different genders is also indicative of their status and work demands within households (Bourdieu 1973; Hastorf 1991). The distribution of features, artifacts and organic residues can create spatial patterns within and across residential areas, identifying not only where activities take place in the houselot but also who may have participated in these activities (see, e.g., Brumfiel 1991; Hastorf 1991; Hendon 1997; Robin 2002a; Sweely 1999). The lack of spatial segregation and the interdependency of facilities located within the houselot may represent an integration of household activities and participants, arguing for a less restricted division of labor (Gero and Scattolin 2002; Hendon 1997; Robin 2002a).

The relative proportions of houselot components, the number of ancillary features, and distribution patterns of artifacts, chemical residues, and paleobotanical data are among a few of the archaeological correlates that are useful indicators of variation in household productive and consumption strategies. By identifying and comparing various household activities, we may begin to consider the degree of cooperation and specialization of labor, differential access to different resources, and the choices of individual households on how best to allocate resources. By doing so, we attempt to better understand the complex social and economic relations between households and the larger society.

THE ROLE OF HOUSEHOLD ARCHAEOLOGY IN CONTACT PERIOD SITUATIONS

The impact of colonialism provides important subject matter for archaeologists interested in comparative perspectives of culture change and constructions of identity, gender, class, community, and state (Paynter 2000a, 2000b). Integration of prehistoric and historical archaeological investigations in conjunction with critical evaluation of archival documents can provide insight into native lifeways just prior to and at the time of the arrival of Europeans (Lightfoot 1995). In the Maya area, reliance on the accuracy of Spanish colonial documents has not only hindered understanding of early colonial society but has also biased views of the complexity of pre-Columbian society. Household archaeology provides a means with which to investigate how the impact of Spanish colonial policies affected the organization of Maya household production and consumption activities, division of labor, and gender relations.

I have identified three Spanish policies that affected the organization of Maya household production and consumption: encomienda, ecclesiastical taxation, and repartimiento. To meet the new demands, Maya households had to specifically increase agricultural production (maize, beans, cotton), animal domestication (stingless bees, turkeys, chickens), and cloth-related goods (patíes, mantas, thread). How households responded to an increased demand for tribute products depended on their access to resources. Landholdings and environmental situations were not uniform for the entire Maya population, despite uniformity in the state-required tribute. Consequently, households responded to their situations with an array of different strategies, reflecting a specific household’s situation in place and time and the political economy. Recognizing variations in the situations of households is an absolutely critical element in understanding the political economy (Grossman 1998).

As a household undergoes change, specific behaviors or activities may be abandoned or initiated, or the proportions of different activities may change relative to others. These changes can affect the spatial configuration of the houselot components and their associated features, artifacts, and refuse deposits. Spatial and artifactual variation in houselots can suggest evidence of continuity or change in Maya household economies, but it also has the potential to identify changes in gender relations and the division of labor. As noted above, most of the production changes imposed by the Spanish affected activities that took place within the houselot. For example, as a household incorporated specialized textile production into its definition of necessary tasks, this change must have resulted in reallocations of time and responsibility for women and other household members alike. This specialization increased women’s work and more than likely pulled into the workforce children and elderly adults. Various aspects of the textile production process were more than likely assigned to different people as a way of facilitating the work, resulting in changes in the division of labor and gender relations.

We can expect the use of space within the houselot to vary depending on the types and intensity of activities conducted within and outside the houselot. For example, patio size could increase as the number of activities taking place within the houselot increases. Conversely, a small patio area suggests a need to maintain a sizable garden area, which could provide additional products for consumption, tribute, or barter. In turn, as the importance of a particular activity increases, we can expect space within the houselot to be designated as activity-restricted, age-segregated, and gender-specific activity areas (Kent 1990). For example, as beeswax candle production increases, the positioning of the facilities for the preparation of the beeswax, candle making, and storage may become segregated from other activity areas.

To increase animal domestication, households could select to increase the number of turkeys and stingless bees available for exploitation. Households did incorporate both Old World chickens and pigs into the houselot within two years of colonization (Paso y Troncoso 1939). The increase in domesticate animals could be manifest in the need for enclosed spaces such as chicken coops and pigsties. An increase in the number of apiary structures per houselot suggests an increase in honey and beeswax production. All three ancillary structures would have affected the use of space in the patio and garden areas. The presence of new tools to increase agricultural, textile, and apicultural production would include such items as machetes, metal-tipped digging sticks, metal needles, scissors, combs/cards, and candle-making frames.

Variation in the spatial distribution of artifactual and paleobotanical materials in houselots has the potential to identify changes in gender relations and the division of labor. There is general agreement that textile and food production were activities commonly undertaken by Maya women (Beadry-Corbett and McCafferty 2002; Brumfiel 1991; Joyce 1992). Assuming the accuracy of gender attribution (see, e.g., Conkey and Gero 1991; Pyburn 1999), spindle whorls, charred plant remains, and cooking pots are material correlates of spinning, food processing, and cooking and can be taken indirectly as indices of women’s activities (see, e.g., Hendon 1997; McCafferty and McCafferty 1991). The presence of new ceramic forms that reflect a change in how households prepare and consume food, spatial changes in the location of food processing, variation in types and quantities of plants being processed, and an increase in artifacts related to textile production may reflect changes in household organization and gender relations (Brumfiel 1991; Hastorf 1990, 1991).

Each of the above propositions can be tested through the application of the houselot model. The houselot model of production can identify the range of activities that people participated in and the decisions they made about labor and resource allocations, thereby identifying continuity or change in household production (Killion 1992; Netting 1993; Robin 1999; Wilk 1991; Wilk and Netting 1984). By identifying and comparing the variability in household economic activities and subsistence activities among households, research such as this will provide data to interpret the range of household production strategies in early colonial Maya households.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The purported survival of traditional Maya agrarian communities into the twentieth century (Farriss 1984; Redfield 1941; Restall 1997) and continuities between beliefs and customs today and those in ancient time (see, e.g., Vogt 1969) have provided a foundation for analogical arguments that deny change through time, supporting the assumption that the condition of Maya commoners is diachronically consistent. These views rely, in part, on Spanish secular and ecclesiastical texts (Clendinnen 1987; Farriss 1984), as well as native Mayan-language sources (Restall 1997), which assume an elite-male standpoint on cultural changes in the early colonial period. Historical texts provide limited information on the organization of pre-Colombian production systems and even less on the common Maya (Restall 1997; Tozzer 1941). As a result, the impact of the Spanish State’s development on Maya household organization and gender relations is poorly understood.

The purpose of this chapter was to provide an understanding of the political-economic relationship between Maya households and the Spanish colonial regime during the Postclassic-Colonial transition in the northern Maya Lowlands. I focused on identifying aspects of Spanish colonial policies that potentially affected household production and consumption strategies, specifically how these caused potential shifts in the division of labor and gender relations between Maya women and men.

Preconquest Maya women and men held complementary roles in the production of household goods. Women and men controlled different resources and the resultant products of their labor (e.g., maize and textiles), which provided them with the capacity to actively participate independently in the domestic economy (Tozzer 1941:96, 127). After conquest, the Spanish appropriated Yucatec Maya household labor and their products through the mechanisms of encomienda, ecclesiastical taxation, and repartimiento, thereby involuntarily incorporating the Maya into the developing world economic system. In particular, Maya women bore the brunt of the exploitive mechanisms of Spanish economic policies, primarily because their products and manufactured goods could be acquired at bargain prices and then resold for handsome profit.

The proposed predictive model demonstrates that both state and household decisions resulted in the increased reliance of household labor and production located within the houselot. As the demands for women’s products became increasingly important for the Spanish export economy, household decisions revolved around how best to reallocate time and responsibilities to increase women’s production. New responsibilities for women must have affected what other household members did, and they may have contributed to changes in the balance of power among the household members and how certain tasks were valued. Specifically, the patriarchal Spanish colonial system viewed the male as the representative of the household. As a result, the Spanish dealt directly with Maya males—to collect taxes and tithes and to arrange repartimiento contracts for the control of women’s labor and their textile products—consequently excluding women from economic relationships that were formerly their prerogative (Etienne and Leacock 1980:19; Patch 1993:78). Changes in the definition of a tributary that incorporated teenagers and elderly adults further affected traditional gender relations of production. The imposition of encomienda, ecclesiastical taxation, and repartimiento raises several questions about the Spanish State’s role in shaping Maya household production, the organization within the household, and the resulting new gender relations. Colonization did not change the mode of production, but it did serve to influence changes in traditional gender relations of production.

Indigenous populations are often perceived as passive recipients of the global economy who simply respond to conditions forced on them (Stern 1988; Wolf 1997). We need to address the complex processes by which indigenous modes of production were penetrated, subordinated, transformed, or destroyed as they came into contact with the world economy (Wolf 1997:23). For persons who are not well represented historically—such as indigenous people, commoners, farmers, women, and children—archaeology is their only means to contribute to discussions of culture change (Brumfiel 1992). By giving a strong analytical “voice” to these “other” groups, they are conceived as active participants in culture change (Brumfiel 1992; Wolf 1997:23).

Archaeologists can study the social relations and behavior of household decisions through a site structure analysis of the houselot’s spatial patterning of dwellings, features, artifacts, and organ residues that link material evidence of discrete behaviors to interpretations of household activities and their organization. A social approach to household studies is particularly useful for investigating early colonial Maya commoner households because the focus is not on architectural remains of houses and their function but on the spatial patterning of the houselot, specifically features, artifacts, and chemical and paleoethnobotanical residues and their socioeconomic significance. Houselots are encoded with information about the organization of human behavior and provide units of analysis appropriate for discussions of changing household organization, division of labor, and gender relations (Bourdieu 1985; Giddens 1982; Hodder 1989). Households integrate political change with their own productive capabilities depending on their access to resources and social organization. By identifying and comparing the variety in economic and subsistence activities, we may begin to consider the degree of cooperation and specialization of labor, unequal access to different resources, and the choices of individual households of how best to allocate resources. Variations in household organization can become visible and meaningful and identify the flexibility of households to make choices in the reallocation of labor and resources to adjust to the imposition of tribute by the state (Brumfiel 1991; Gailey 1987; Hastorf 1990; Silverblatt 1987). Understanding the integration of Maya household producers with the development of the Spanish State facilitates a comprehensive view of how state formation affects household production, division of labor, and gender relations and, most important, how households integrate political change within their own productive capabilities as active participants in culture change.

REFERENCES CITED