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Houses, housing, and inquality in the distant past

When people talk about the relationship of residences--the places where people live--to social inequality and other aspects of society today, they talk about "housing." But when archaeologists talk about residences, we usually talk about "houses," and not "housing." This distinction is on my mind because I just finished reading Mathew Desmond's outstanding book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016). This is the best book I have read in a long time and there is much to talk about. Go read the book, it's really fantastic; I'll devote a blog post to the book before long. But first I want to use the book as a stimulus to explore the differences between they way archaeologists talk about houses in the past and the way sociologists (and others) talk about housing in the present. One of the questions on my mind is methodological: how can archaeologists get at issues of housing and inequality in our studies of ancient urban houses?

Houses in the past

Aztec commoner house

When archaeologists talk about residences in the past, the focus is on the house, or the physical structure in which people live. We are concerned with how these were built: what were the construction materials and where did they come from? What kind of techniques were used by the builders? How big were houses? How much effort and materials were needed to build a house? Can we estimate the number of people (or at least the number of households) who lived in a specific house? Our focus on these things is natural, given the kind of fragmentary evidence we have about houses in the past.

Size variation in Aztec houses at 2 settlements

Archaeologists have found that the size of houses can be a good measure of inequality in the past. This information can be used for social class analysis (Olson and Smith 2016), or for the study of continuous wealth inequality using measures like the Gini index, based on the assumption that house size was an index of household wealth ( Smith et al. 2014). For the first, time, archaeologists are beginning to accumulate enough cases of inequality in house size, measured with the Gini index, to draw some conclusions about past inequality (Kohler et al. 2017; Kohler and Smith 2018). As more archaeologists quantify their data on houses and settlements, our understanding  of levels of past inequality will continue to improve.

While this is a productive development in the archaeology of social inequality, reading Matthew Desmond's book Evicted makes me wonder if we can do better by using the concept of housing.

Housing today

The study of how housing relates to social inequality today goes far beyond the topics of architecture and house size. Major questions include: Who builds housing units? Who owns them? How do residents get access to housing? And can residents who rent create a stable pattern that avoids frequent moves? These are the issues explored in Evicted through detailed case-study ethnography, coupled with scholarly documentation of patterns in the endnotes. Can archaeologists get at any of this?

My typology of premodern urban house types

When archaeologists use the term "housing," the word is usually used informally and not analytically. That is, we may use the word, but just to talk about the standard issues of ancient house form and size outlined above. I was rooting around for a relevant scholarly definition of "housing," getting frustrated that writers on housing today don't see the need to define the term. Maybe "everybody knows" what it means, but still, it is sloppy practice to not define one's terms. Then I checked my own paper on the topic (Smith 2014a) to see how I defined the term. Oops! No definition! I am guilty here too. In that paper I talk about types of urban house units in the premodern world, but "housing" is not used as a formal concept.

Housing in the past?

Standardized housing in Mexico today

Can archaeologists approach the question of who built housing in cases where we lack written documents? I think that the analysis of standardization in housing can allow us to make reasonable inferences on whether housing was built by the state or another formal institution (e.g., a temple community), or by residents themselves. But standardization of architectural forms is a tricky question. Today, some housing is obviously standardized--such as contemporary Mexican ex-urban developments or mid-twentieth century socialist housing in Europe--and other housing is clearly informal, which usually means non-standardized.

First, precisely what is or is not standardized? It can be the size of a dwelling, principles of layout, materials used, construction methods. Second, who is doing the standardizing? Individual self-builders? While this often leads to variability in house form, when builders deliberately stick to a cultural norm, as in much vernacular architecture, the result can be standardized forms. Or is standardization created by professional builders and architects? By the state? Or by the capitalist market and zoning regulations (as in urban and suburban developments today)?

It turns out that standardized housing is a complex topic, one that is not very well researched in the fields of housing and architecture (and almost never by archaeologists). Drawing on my model of premodern urban planning (Smith 2007), an archaeologist might associate standardization of housing over an entire city, or city sector, with the actions of the state (e.g., Olynthus or Teotihuacan). Standardized housing on the scale of a neighborhood might be created by the state or by professional builders working for clients. And nonstandardized housing suggests auto-construction by house owners (Turner 1991; Ward 1973).

Another domain where archaeologists can begin to approach issues of housing and inequality, parallel to scholars of the modern world, is residential stability.  In another paper (Smith 2014b), I cited contemporary social-science research showing that urban residential stability is associated with higher standards of living, lower levels of crime, and other measures of community well-being (one thread of this research is referred to as social disorganization theory). I drew on sociologists such as Robert Sampson (2012). I argued that similar dynamics (linking residential stability to positive community outcomes) probably characterized premodern cities as well. I presented some evidence from my studies of Aztec communities showing that the houses I excavated in wealthier communities tended to be occupied continuously over long periods, whereas the houses in less well-off communities showed more discontinuity in occupation. I develop this argument in my (award-winning!) popular book, At Home with the Aztecs (Smith 2016). I wish I had been able to read Desmond's Evicted before writing my book. It is the most eloquent (and empirically compelling) discussion of the negative effects of the lack of residential stability, caused by evictions.

Each bar is a house. Yautepec houses had more stability than at Calxitlahuaca

But these efforts are just a beginning. Archaeologists need to take a closer look at research on contemporary cities and housing, and devise creative ways to put that knowledge to work in explaining the past. And scholars of contemporary housing might pay attention to some of the better archaeological research to get an idea of the longevity of patterns and the historical depth of systems of social inequality. But a point I make in Smith (2010) is that unless archaeologists analyze our data in ways that foster comparison and conceptual advance, it won't be comparable at all to the modern world, and any such comparisons will be facile and superficial.

References

Desmond, Matthew  (2016)  Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Broadway Books, New York.

Kohler, Timothy and Michael E. Smith (editors)  (2018)  Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences. University of Arizona Press (in press), Tucson.

Kohler, Timothy A., Michael E. Smith, Amy Bogaard, Gary M. Feinman, Christina E. Peterson, Aleen Betzenhauser, Matthew C. Pailes, Elizabeth C. Stone, Anna Marie Prentiss, Timothy Dennehy, Laura Ellyson, Linda M. Nicholas, Ronald K. Faulseit, Amy Styring, Jade Whitlam, Mattia Fochesato, Thomas A. Foor and Samuel Bowles  (2017)  Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than in North and Mesoamerica. Nature (in press).

Olson, Jan Marie and Michael E. Smith  (2016)  Material Expressions of Wealth and Social Class at Aztec-Period Sites in Morelos, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 27(1):133-147.

Sampson, Robert J.  (2012)  Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Smith, Michael E.  (2007)  Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning. Journal of Planning History 6(1):3-47.

Smith, Michael E.  (2010)  Sprawl, Squatters, and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20:229-253.

Smith, Michael E.  (2014a)  Housing in Premodern Cities: Patterns of Social and Spatial Variation. International Journal of Architectural Research 8(3):207-222.

Smith, Michael E.  (2014b)  Peasant Mobility, Local Migration, and Premodern Urbanization. World Archaeology 46(4):516-533.

Smith, Michael E.  (2016)  At Home with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers their Domestic Life. Routledge, New York.

Smith, Michael E., Timothy Dennehy, April Kamp-Whittaker, Emily Colon and Rebecca Harkness  (2014)  Quantitative Measures of Wealth Inequality in Ancient Central Mexican Communities. Advances in Archaeological Practice 2(4):311-323.

Turner, John F. C.  (1991)  Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. Marion Boyars, London.

Ward, Colin  (1973)  We House, You are Housed, They are Homeless (chapter 6). In Anarchy in Action, pp. 67-73. George Allen and Unwin, London.

Teotihuacan in the news: 1966 and 2016

I was looking for some biograhical material on Rene Millon, director of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project. I came across this story, from Popular Mechanics magazine in July 1966:

This was from the early days of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project, when they were in the middle of making surface artifact collections and digging test excavations.  And now, 50 years later, here is another press item from Teotihuacan:

Wow, knowledge really does advance through time. Back in 1966 no one had any idea they would find rabbit bones at Teotihuacan, and asking questions about animal keeping and diet like this were out of the question. Our analytical methods, as well as our stock of excavated archaeological contexts, are now far beyond what they were in 1966. This rabbit study, by a couple of archaeologists who started out as anthropology majors at Arizona State University, shows the kind of detailed questions we can now ask about the past (see bibliography below).

But as an archaeologist and scholar, I like to try to stand above the weeds now and then and take a broad perspective on the past. Archaeology is not just about mapping a site or figuring out what people ate for dinner. We need to take facts like these--established from rigorous fieldwork and laboratory analyses--and put together a broad view of life, society, and cities in the past. When we do this, it turns out that many things are not all that different from life, society, and cities today. This insight is the basis for the "Wide Urban World."

And when you turn to your turkey dinner for the Thanksgiving holiday this week, don't just think back to the Native Americans and Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving meal. Think, instead, about the Mayas and Teotihuacanos of ancient Mesoamerica, the ones who first domesticated the turkey in the first place.

Bibliography:

Somerville, Andrew D., Nawa Sugiyama, Linda R. Manzanilla, and Margaret J. Schoeninger
2016    Animal Management at the Ancient Metropolis of Teotihuacan, Mexico: Stable Isotopoe Analysis of Leporid (Cottontail and Jackrabbit) Bone Mineral. PLOS-One 11 (8): e0159982.

2016    Leporid management and specialized food production at Teotihuacan: stable isotope data from cottontail and jackrabbit bone collagen. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences  (online first).

Pyramids of Teotihuacan in the 19th century

Religion and early cities in Mesoamerica

When you hear "religion" and "early cities" in the title of a work, watch out! Chances are, you are about to read a speculative account about the mystical symbolism of ancient cities. This is a popular topic in some circles. The basic argument is that all ancient cities were highly sacred places, and that this religious symbolism was the reason people moved into cities. Religion shaped peoples' lives, perhaps even more than everyday activities. At its most extreme, this reasoning slips into the silly notion that ancient people worried about death and the afterlife more than they thought about their daily life. Egypt is the most common target of this silliness, although the Classic Maya and other ancient societies have also been implicated. Give me a break! Ancient peoples were no more obsessed with death and the afterlife than you or I.

Now, there is a more respectable line of thought on ancient religious symbolism and cities, but it too is often slips into speculation and even nonsense. Associated with the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, it goes like this. Ancient peoples believed that life on earth was a direct parallel of the cosmos. When cities were built, especially political capitals, they were more successful if they were planned and laid out as models of the cosmos. Since the cosmos are laid out in a four-directional plan (north-east-south-west, with a center point), then cities should follow an orthogonal layout, with a center point where the north-south and east-west axes met. This model does fit some early urban traditions--most notably in China, India, and
Southeast Asia. For early cities in these regions, we have written texts and images that clearly illustrate how cities and buildings were laid out to mimic the organization of the cosmos. Such cities and buildings are often called "cosmograms."

The idealized Chinese city above was a kind of cosmogram, but the Aztec city next to it (actually the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan) was NOT a cosmogram. How do we know? Because we have written and pictorial records that describe the symbolism of the Chinese city, how it was laid out in imitation of the cosmos, and how emperors picked the sacred place to build their new capital city (see below).

For some reason I have yet to figure out, this idea of cosmograms has been so attractive to some scholars that they go out of their way to find cosmograms all over the place. For China or India, this is fine. But when they start talking about cosmograms in ancient Mesoamerica, they are arguing more from personal bias than from evidence. There are NO WRITTEN RECORDS claiming that Aztec or Maya cities, for example, were cosmograms. But that hasn't stopped these scholars from claiming to have found cosmograms. If you haven't guessed, this kind of speculation dolled up as scholarship drives me up the wall. Ten yeas ago I published two critiques of this kind of reasoning (Smith 2003, 2005), but it still persists in some quarters.

So perhaps I can be excused if I got worried at the title of a new book from David Carballo of Boston University: Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico. Would this be the same old kind of speculative account, claiming that ancient people went around pondering the mystical symbolism of their cities? Thankfully, the answer is NO. Carballo finds ways to address the relationship between cities and religion that is based on evidence, and uses contemporary social concepts such as collective action theory rather than the worn-out universal claims of Eliade and his followers.

Rather than worrying too much over the content of religious symbolism, Carballo looks at rituals: actions that people carried out in specific places, that left material traces:

I am less interested in attempting to define religion in an overarching sense and more interested in examining what religion did and the spatiality and temporality of its performance, within the context of urbanization.   (p. 19)

Hear, hear, this is the kind of approach we need more of in Mesoamerican archaeology. For Carballo, ceremonies in formal plazas generated social cohesion in urban populations, contributing to the success of urban life in the centuries leading up to the great Classic-period urban center of Teotihuacan. Carballo does not ignore the content of ancient religious ideas, and his discussion is reasoned and evidence-based:

Issues of greatest collective concern -- such as creation, existential dualisms, and fertility cycles -- fostered cohesion and, in continuing to feature prominently in indigenous religion, have proved the most resilient. In contrast, group divisions along the lines of lineage, status, and community were fostered through other means and saw much greater turnover through time.  (p. 201)

This is an excellent book, and I recommend it for anyone interested in the Mesoamerican past and anyone interested in new ways to look at how religion and urbanization were intertwined in the early states.

Carballo, David M.
2015    Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico. Oxford University Press, New York.

Smith, Michael E.
2003    Can We Read Cosmology in Ancient Maya City Plans? Comment on Ashmore and Sabloff. Latin American Antiquity 14: 221-228.

2005    Did the Maya Build Architectural Cosmograms? Latin American Antiquity 16: 217-224.