| Abstract: |
Rosemary Joyce examines the use of objects to materialize memory, the basis for the identity and perpetuity of the house. She begins with several ethnographic case studies: Schneiders study of the Yapese, a major focus for his critique of classificatory approaches to kinship
Parmentiers analysis of the physical marking of social relationships in the landscape
and Kroebers original ethnography of the Yurok, one of the exemplars of Lévi-Strausss original explication of house societies. She draws on these ethnographic cases to demonstrate that, like the curation of skeletal remains as a form of ancestral veneration, the caching of valuable objects within the houses or their associated tombs, some of them curated for centuries prior to their deposition, is an archaeological correlate of the ethnographic practice of retaining heirlooms and creating histories for them. In the case of the prehispanic Maya, valuable goods, usually costume ornaments, were not simply wealth objects cached to be taken out of circulation for ritual purposes, as these are usually interpreted. Instead, they were curated heirlooms, virtually all of which were deposited long after they were first made as markers of house prestige. Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions added to identify the owners of these objects allow a tentative start to writing the biography of Maya noble houses through the valuables that preserved the house in social memory, from their manufacture to their final deposition centuries later. Her discussion highlights important material domains of the house and its manifest utility for linking interdisciplinary research on culture and society.
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