Cuauhtémoc Vidal-Guzmán

This project will study social persistence during a period of sociopolitical turmoil at the archaeological site of Etlatongo in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Drawing on theories of collective memory and materiality approaches, this project will evaluate how households at Etlatongo enacted a wide variety of domestic practices that allowed them to contingently endure and adjust to the dramatic social transformations happening throughout Mesoamerica following the Late Classic to Postclassic transition (ca. 800-1000 CE). Additionally, this project will investigate how these household practices created moral reciprocal relationships that constituted strong social bonds among different community members. To do so, broad-scale horizontal excavations at three domestic spaces will be carried out in order to collect data relating to changes and continuities in the material record that suggest how household practices changed selectively as people renegotiated, abandoned past traditions, or innovated new ones. In this way, this project will expand current understandings of how responses to sociopolitical collapse across the globe had manifold outcomes that cannot be attributed to monolithic social processes.