Living together in Río Bec houses: Coresidence, rank, and alliance

Abstract

In an attempt to interpret Classic Maya elite and commoner residential patterns beyond usual assumptions about filiation, family cycle, and household economic adaptation, we explore the specific ways people were "living together," in the sense of the coresidence concept, in Maya societies conceived of as ranked societies, or "house societies," as created by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Beyond kinship and economic organization, residential patterns can be understood as part of long-term strategies designed by inhabitants to integrate their social unit into the politico-religious city. The residential system of the Río Bec zone, where a major research project was carried out from 2002 to 2010, offers a series of well-defined architectural solutions, some of them common to most central lowlands cities, while others are innovative as forerunners of the northern lowlands large multiroom palaces. This paper analyzes Late and Terminal Classic period Río Bec domestic architecture in order to outline the material correlates of coresidence, growth, ranking, and alliance within and between Classic Maya social groupings. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014.