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WALKING RURAL IN TZACAUIL, YUCATAN, MEXICO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2022

Chelsea Fisher Open the ORCID record for Chelsea Fisher [Opens in a new window]
Chelsea Fisher*
Affiliation:
Environmental Studies Program, Washington and Lee University, 018 Tucker Hall, Lexington, Virginia 24450, USA
*
E-mail correspondence to: cfisher@wlu.edu
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Abstract

How were so-called rural Maya settlements experienced by the people who lived in them? In this article, I focus on the archaeology of walking in the small site of Tzacauil, Yucatan (outlying the much larger site of Yaxuna), to explore how experiences of rurality were historically and socially contingent. Walking produces and reproduces embodied understandings of place—and, as such, can yield a more dynamic conceptualization of rurality. In Formative Tzacauil (ca. 300 b.c.–a.d. 250), grounded walking, incorporated with and sensitive to terrain, coexisted alongside groundless walking on artificial surfaces (i.e., sacbes and built walkways) imposed onto terrain. I argue that an understanding of everyday walking in Formative Tzacauil was not unlike that of urbanizing Yaxuna. I propose that only in Classic Tzacauil (ca. a.d. 550–1100) did walking become categorically different from Yaxuna, and I discuss how that shift opens new avenues for inquiry into rurality as an embodied experience of place that was always subject to change.

Type
Special Section: Rethinking Rurality in Ancient Maya Studies
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 148 - 161
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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