Central topics of anthropological study from the 1940s through the
1970s, kinship and lineage became largely discredited during the 1980s.
Recent scholarship, however, has indicated that kinship and lineage,
when considered as the products of social activity, can make important
contributions to studies of living and past populations. This paper
explores lineage as a model of social organization distinguished by
specific activities practiced by members of Late Classic Maya social
groups. This model is derived from cross-cultural literature on
lineages, but practices associated with lineage organization are
historically and culturally specific. A suite of archaeological
correlates, based on practices endemic to the Late Classic Maya, is
evaluated against a test case from northwestern Belize. The
implications of a landscape populated by lineages during the Classic
period argue that archaeological investigations of hinterland areas are
an important complement to more traditional studies focused on
nucleated site centers.