Childhood and Material Culture at Hacienda San Pedro Cholul During Yucatán’s Gilded Age

ABSTRACT

The study of childhood is a constantly growing thematic area in sociocultural and biological anthropology and archaeology. Archaeologists and anthropologists from Mexico and, in particular, in Yucatán have been regular contributors to this emerging field. In this regard, this paper will address the study of Yucatecan childhood from the material culture used by children of hacienda San Pedro Cholul. The daily lives of these children, who inhabited a henequen hacienda in Yucatán during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, will be examined through their material culture such as toys, clothing, historical documents and pictures. This evidence also enables us to discuss the role that children played in the socialization of the productive process and issues of child labour during Yucatán’s Gilded Age (1873–1925).

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood
• material culture
• toys
• child labour
• henequen
• haciendas
• San Pedro Cholul
• Yucatán

Acknowledgements

Thank to Martha Hernández for her help during the translation of this article. I am also grateful for the time and attention that Paul Van Wandelen and Dr. Margaret Shrimpton took to help make this a better manuscript. Thanks are also due to Edward Montañez and his crew from Fototeca Pedro Guerra, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, for letting me illustrate my work with those amazing images. Finally, I wish to thank the two anonymous referees for their comments that greatly improved my work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Héctor Hernández Álvarez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7473-6382

Notes on contributor

Héctor Hernández Álvarez, Archaeologist, holds a Ph.D. in Mesoamerican Studies from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He received an M.A. in Anthropological Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in 2005. He is a Professor-Researcher at the Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán and a Member of the National Researchers System (SNI), CONACyT, México. His research interests include Maya household archaeology, gender studies, ethnoarchaeology and Yucatán’s historical archaeology. He currently directs Project San Pedro Cholul: geoarchaeology, history and industrialization of a Yucatec henequen hacienda at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Notes

1 Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (www.inegi.org)

2 In the context of this study, a toy is an object that has been manufactured specifically for the use of children in their games, while playthings were those objects modified by children for play purposes. ‘Toys are given significance and meaning by the children who play with them’ (Crawford 2009, 58).

3 Makeshift toys are designed, made, named and used solely by children, especially those who do not have access to commercially manufactured toys (Brookshaw 2009, 369).