This dissertation examines the everyday lives of ancient Maya farmers to illustrate how interpreting the complexities of the daily lives of ordinary commoners is essential for understanding organization and power relations in past complex societies. My case study focuses on the excavation of two settlements, Chan Nòohol and Dos Chombitos Cik'in, located in the vicinity of the Maya civic-center of Xunantunich. The settlements were occupied for a relatively short time between 660 and 790 A.D., a period roughly contemporaneous with Xunantunich's political fluorescence. They represent clusters of farming households which had as dramatic an effect on the social landscape between 660 and 790 A.D. as did Xunantunich's political florescence. In terms of archaeological method, this dissertation shows how research designed to recover remains from both structures and the areas around them can yield more comprehensive data on household and community life than the traditional structure-based excavations. This more detailed data, in turn, is interpreted to produce a “thick description” of peoples everyday lives. A focus on everyday life facilitates examination of how peoples identities and perceptions of the world emerge from their routine pursuits, the localities of their lives, and from ideas influenced by their larger world system. In terms of archaeological theory, by focusing on farmers, both women and men, this dissertation shows how these people played active roles in the successes and failures of Maya civilization through their labor, agricultural produce, social interactions, and belief systems. Reviewed in light of larger issues in social theory, this archaeological case study questions aspects of dominant social theoretical models by authors such as Marx and Giddens, among others, which undervalue or overlook the contributions of “other” social groups, particularly farmers mid women. It highlights how archaeologists can and must expose implicit assumptions about the past in social theory, assumptions which in many cases dominate our beliefs about what is “natural” or “traditional” about human existence. Archaeology has a crucial position vis-à-vis contemporary social theory to re-assess the relations of all people in the past. Prehistorians are currently capable of resurrecting the lost voices of neglected social groups.
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