Biological+Evidence+of+Social+Stratification+in+the+Monte+Alban+Society

SCOTT DENNEY Evidence of social stratification in Monte Albáns burials.
===Monte Albán is a site that occupies a large portion of a mountain on the outskirts of the modern city of Oaxaca, Mexico, it is located at the junction of three arms of the valley of Oaxaca and has been excavated since as early as the 1920's. According to Richardson and Norelli's report the knowledge of prehistoric social organization has come from the material culture, ideology, and energy expenditure as opposed to the human skeletal material. There study of the site of Monte Albán has tried to investigate the aspects of prehistoric social organizations. Through there studies they were looking to explain the life of the living from there burials. They chose Monte Albán as a location because the sites showed both skeletal material as well as evidence of social stratification, also the skeletal material needed to be from at least two of the social stratas.===  ===The site of Monte Albán was occupied from 500 B.C. until approximately 650 A.D. This span of time was broken down into phases and periods that will be used to discuss different times as well as different burials. The period discussed in the works of Richardson and Norelli was the Classic period that spanned nearly 500 years. At this time the population reached around 30,000 people and we start to see a marked difference in the stratas of people. Things like monumental architectures, tomb burials, funerary customs, and exotic ceramics are just a few of the indicators that pointed to a marked difference in the social organizations.===

Due to the evidence of Monte Albán being a major center of civilization in Mesoamerica it is no wonder that the evidence of social stratification carried over into there mortuary practices.
===The studies of Richardson and Norelli focused on 321 individuals, many of these individuals were only represented by a few bones. They were initially split into two categories either tomb burials or grave burial, with the assumption that the grave burials were probably of a lower class as they could not afford the tomb burials preferred by the higher classes. The tombs and graves were studied for there material goods as well as the skeletal remains it is noted that while there is a large degree of variation in the amount and quality of grave goods found in the tomb group there is consistently more than what is found in the grave group. It is also noted that there appear to be more than two classes and that burial in tomb itself is not necessarily an indication of higher status.=== ===While biocultural data was used to determine the status of an individual, i.e. males are of higher statues. No direct link could be found between biological evidence and status. What was found was that the one link between the individuals burial type and the biological evidence was the age at internment. Tomb samples contained drastically fewer subadults than older individuals than the burial groups. According to Richardson and Norelli this suggest that age was a very important status marker. This information was in agreement with the studies of the Aztec and Mixtec done by Carrasco and Spores respectively. The lack of biological differences observed in the burials also suggest that there was little separation of the classes. If there was greater separation of the classes it would be expected that there would be less biological diversity in the sample populations. It is also noted in the article that of all the samples 11 of the burial group skulls were observed to have undergone some sort of early brain surgery while no samples form the tomb group showed these markings. It is unclear what significance this has on the sample as a whole. The findings also represented a difference in the classes where sex is concerned. It appears that the the females were at least partial excluded from the burial ceremonies. While is exclusion is seen in both the higher and lower classes it is seen that the females were more excluded in the higher classes.===