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Roadwork: Long-Distance Causeways at Uci, Yucatan, Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2021

Scott R. Hutson Open the ORCID record for Scott R. Hutson [Opens in a new window]  and
Jacob A. Welch
Scott R. Hutson*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, 211 Lafferty Hall, Lexington, KY40506-0025,USA
Jacob A. Welch
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yale University, 10 Sachem St., New Haven, CT06511, USA
*
(scotthutson@uky.edu, corresponding author)
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Abstract

A multiyear field project focused on long-distance causeways between Uci and Cansahcab in Yucatan, Mexico, supports their use for processions and pilgrimages, their role in the creation of multisite polities, and their involvement in the constitution of local authority. Yet details of the causeways’ construction suggest that people contested this authority. Work was central to these dynamics and comes in the form of labor as practice, investments in the maintenance of relations with other-than-human beings, and the ways that causeways produced embodied experiences that were ideal for their use in pilgrimages.

Un proyecto de múltiples años enfocado en las calzadas de larga distancia entre Uci y Cansahcab, Yucatán, México, contribuye a un entendimiento de su uso para peregrinacines y otras actividades, su papel en la creación de alianzas entre muchos sitios, su complicidad en constituir autoridad local y cómo la gente contestaron tal autoridad. Trabajo fue fundamental a estas dinámicas y toma la forma de mano de obra, inversión en el mantenimiento de relaciones con seres no-humanos, y las maneras en que calzadas produjeron experiencias sensoriales en su uso para peregrinación.

Keywords

pilgrimagelaborpracticearchaeology of the sensesMayapolitical authorityintersite integrationcausewaysPeregrinajemano de obrateoría prácticaarqueología sensorialMaya antiguoautoridad políticaintegración de asentamientocalzadas
Type
Article
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 310 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology

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