The transition to the Formative in the relatively high-altitude study region of Tlaxcala, Mexico is later than it was in choice regions for early agriculture elsewhere in Mesoamerica. From 900 BCE, however, population growth and sociopolitical development were rapid. A central claim in the research presented here is that a macroregional perspective is essential for understanding the local Formative sequence. In this volume, the data from excavations at three village sites (Amomoloc, Tetel, and Las Mesitas) and one modest regional center (La Laguna) are examined. The ceramic typology is described in detail. An innovative approach to the classification of figurines is presented, and a Formative chronology for the region is proposed based on seriation of refuse contexts and radiocarbon dates. The work concludes with a macroregional framework to be used in the analysis of subsistence, social relations, and political economy in Volumes 2 and 3, now in preparation.

Series: Monumenta Archaeologica 33

The Soconusco region, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, is the location of some of the earliest pottery-using villages of ancient Mesoamerica. Mobile early inhabitants of the area harvested marsh clams in the estuaries, leaving behind vast mounds of shell. With the introduction of pottery and the establishment of permanent villages (from 1900 B.C.), use of the resource-rich estuary changed. The archaeological manifestation of that new estuary adaptation is a dramatic pattern of inter-site variability in pottery vessel forms. Vessels at sites within the estuary were about seventy percent neckless jars -- "tecomates" -- while vessels at contemporaneous sites a few kilometers inland were seventy percent open dishes. The pattern is well-known, but the the settlement arrangements or subsistence practices that produced it have remained unclear. Archaeological investigations at El Varal, a special-purpose estuary site of the later Early Formative (1250-1000 B.C.) expand possibilities for an anthropological understanding of the archaeological patterns. The goal of this volume is to describe excavations and finds at the site and to propose, based on a variety of analyses, a new understanding of Early Formative assemblage variability.

Series: Monographs 65

Paso de la Amada, an archaeological site in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast of Mexico, was among the earliest sedentary, ceramic-using villages of Mesoamerica. With an occupation that extended across 140 ha in 1600 BC, it was also one of the largest communities of its era. First settled around 1900 BC, the site was abandoned 600 years later during what appears to have been a period of local political turmoil. The decline of Paso de la Amada corresponded with a rupture in local traditions of material culture and local adoption of the Early Olmec style. Stylistically, the material culture of Paso de la Amada corresponds predominantly to the pre-Olmec Mokaya tradition.

Excavations at the site have revealed significant earthen constructions from as early as 1700 BC. Those include the earliest known Mesoamerican ball court and traces of a series of high-status residences. This monograph reports on large-scale excavations in Mounds 1, 12, and 32, as well as soundings in other locations. The volume covers all aspects of excavations and artifacts and includes three lengthy interpretive chapters dealing with the main research questions, which concern subsistence, social inequality, and the organizational history of the site.

Ethnographic accounts of the precontact Yurok of Northwest California serve as a test case for evaluating Jane Collier's (1988) recent models of the constitution of inequality in kin-based societies. This analysis does not support Collier's basic thesis that the nature of the relationship between husbands and their wives' kin determines the degree of social inequality. Nor does it support her contention that each of three contrastive models represents a particular type of society, since two of her three models apply to the Yurok case. However, Collier's models, treated as organizational themes rather than societal types, represent useful analytical tools for understanding the bases of inequality in Yurok society. In addition to the social structural relations explored by Collier, particular material circumstances and cosmological tenets established the contexts in which people negotiated the distribution of power, privilege, and prestige.

In seeking to understand variation and change in past human societies, archaeologists have shown that complex societies develop in a variety of cultural and ecological contexts. Reconstructions of emergent complexity throughout the New World reveal that past peoples constructed and maintained the type of landscapes ideal for supporting larger, more sedentary populations. An excellent case study of built landscapes is the prehistoric chiefdoms of lower Central America, a region bordered to the north by present-day El Salvador and Honduras and to the south by Colombia. By AD 200, prehistoric settlements located in both agriculturally productive and marginal areas became part of a network of paramount chiefdoms spanning lower Central America. These chiefdoms experienced population growth and political expansion up until sixteenth-century European colonization.

In this study, the relationship between environmental conditions and sociopolitical complexity is addressed through examination of plant and animal remains excavated from midden contexts at Sitio Drago (AD 800 to 1900), a Late Ceramic phase village site located on a Caribbean island in western Panama. The analyzed macrobotanical and faunal remains are derived from five excavation units representing human occupations spanning the Pre-Biscuitware (AD 800 to 1200), Biscuitware (AD 1200 to 1450), and Historic (AD 1600 to 1900) Phases. This project is the first integrative analysis of plant and animal remains from western Panama and provides new datasets valuable for regional and global comparisons.

Analyses of plant and animal taxa present in the assemblages suggest that Late Ceramic people at Sitio Drago used continual investments in the landscape to overcome the island’s thin, acidic soils. Differences in ubiquity values, densities, and standard counts confirm that villagers intensified production of tree fruits and maize in fields near residential structures. These managed plant foods appear to have become more important in the overall diet during a phase of population growth, while diversity of plant and animal resources declined. During the same time, as local fisheries are overexploited and depleted, people focused more on trapping and hunting terrestrial animals that are attracted to cleared-edge forest and orchards. This reconstruction of subsistence activities at Sitio Drago provides an example of how people living in areas less agriculturally productive and lacking key material resources can develop a resilient subsistence economy capable of supporting complex society without degrading the environment.

Although the wars waged by Classic Maya kings were carefully documented in stone by ancient Maya scribes, little is known about the internal battles fought on the political field. Maya inscriptions present the court as a body unified behind its king, however there is reason to believe that courtiers under the king possessed their own aspirations, and competed with one another for power and security. During the Late Classic a flourish of new elite residential construction at royal centers and the appearance of new sub-royal titles on public monuments signaled that a burgeoning noble class gained influence in Maya courts. This second tier of elites existed in an exclusive political system primed for competition over power and resources. Hints in the ancient textual record suggest that factions within Maya courts contended with one another to improve their positions. This dissertation seeks to establish the competition within the aristocracy of a Classic Maya polity, and what methods the secondary elite pursued to jockey for power.Unfortunately, the dearth of non-royal elites in art and texts at most Classic Maya sites poses a methodological challenge: how does one study the internal dynamics of Maya courts without explicit historical references? I hope to address this question by analyzing the Late Classic aristocracy of El Zotz, using archaeological evidence to compare the practices of different lineage groups at the site. I focus on three residential complexes built outside the royal palace of El Zotz during the Late Classic, each with elite characteristics. My research seeks to answer two questions: (1) which of the newly constructed Late Classic residential groups around El Zotz housed non-royal elites? And (2) what strategies did the non-royal elites at El Zotz pursue to gain power within the political system? With these questions I identify the politically influential parties in the court of El Zotz beyond the royal family, and the tactics that they used to compete for dominance inside the government structure at the site.

Bird remains from archaeological sites have the potential to inform research on many aspects of prehistoric life. In Mesoamerica, they were a food source, as well as a source of feathers and bone. But they were also components of ritual performance, dedicatory offerings, subjects of iconographic representation, characters in myth, and even deities. Their significance is demonstrated ethnographically, ethnohistorically, and archaeologically. This thesis addresses the role of birds at an Early Formative period ceremonial center on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico. The avian faunal assemblage from the site of Paso de la Amada was analyzed in order to understand how the exploitation and use of birds articulated with the establishment of hereditary inequality at Paso de la Amada and its emergence as a ceremonial center. Results indicate that birds were exploited as a food source as well as for their feathers and bone, and that they played a particularly strong role in ritual performance.