Archaeological Research Facility

The 2022 field season of "City Life at Classic Maya Palenque, Mexico" involved excavations in a densely built up neighborhood in the urban core of this site, most well known for the palaces, temples, and historical monuments of its ruling family, which reached an apogee ca. 600-800 AD. The 2022 excavations are the first season of a multi-season effort to explore a stratified random sample of presumed residential compounds of varied sizes and configurations, identified in our previous analyses as possibly representing different social strata. The first selected compound produced an assemblage from middens adjacent to two structures that reflects everyday life, and includes evidence of wealth in the form of imported obsidian and pieces of discarded white stone luxury objects. Like other known residential compounds of the ruling family and nobles who produced written monuments, the residents of this compound undertook ritual practices, but these appear to be distinct from what has previously been observed, with no evidence of burial in the compound, and possible evidence of feasting not seen in these other locations. This first season of excavation also included recovery through fine-grained excavation methods of soil chemistry samples, samples for micromorphology, and microbotanical samples, still under analysis. It provides a baseline for future excavations that will sample possible residences of less wealth and/or shorter histories of occupation.