7 Inside and Outside: Residential Burial at Formative Period Chalcatzingo, Mexico

At Chalcatzingo, Mexico, an early regional center, the common location for burials was under house floors, but some high‐status burials occurred in more open spaces. These latter were also residential burials, interred within the landed domain of social units. Although both “inside” and “outside” burials drew on claims of ancestral continuity, it is important to explore the differences they entailed. Investigating how repeated mortuary practices at Chalcatzingo evoked referential networks—endowing those practices with intelligibility and enabling identity formation over time—can broaden understandings of residential burial practices and bridge various classificatory separations imposed by archaeologists, including those between public and private mortuary spaces.