Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Soconusco Formative Project

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Richard Burger, Mr. Robert Rosenswig will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will continue his archaeological settlement survey in the Cuauhtemoc zone of the Soconusco, located on the southern Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico. The region is particularly significant as it includes some of the first sedentary communities in Mesoamerica and the earliest evidence of emergent social complexity and political hierarchy between approximately 1550 and 650 BC. The Soconusco also has the best evidence in Mesoamerica of direct interaction with the Gulf Coast Olmec - the first civilization the region. A pedestrian survey will systematically cover 50 sq km and map changing political organization across the landscape. This survey will take advantage of existing trenches dug for banana irrigation to provide accurate subsurface information over a large area. With reliable surface-subsurface correspondence, the distribution of settlements will be documented with a degree of confidence not often possible with regional surface survey. Power and hierarchy are arguably the most fundamental issues addressed by anthropology and most other social sciences. Explaining the emergence of sociopolitical hierarchy over centuries and millennia is a job ideally suited to archaeology. Social scientists study the structure and dynamics of unequal power relations in contemporary contexts. However, these scholars are generally limited to a temporal breadth of decades, or with the help of historical documents a few centuries. Archaeologists are in a unique position to explore the origins of the institutionalized hierarchy that permeates every aspect of modern life. Mr. Rosenswig's research will track the development of sociopolitical complexity in the Cuauhtemoc survey zone over nearly a millennia and will help to determine the nature of relations between local elites and their Olmec counterparts who resided in Mexico's Gulf Coast. Did sociopolitical complexity in the Soconusco coalesce as a result of contact with the Gulf Coast Olmec of Tabasco and Veracruz? Did the Gulf Coast Olmec actually make incursions into the Soconusco? Alternatively, is the impact of the Gulf Coast over-emphasized in models of Formative Mesoamerican society? These competing hypotheses revolve around the nature of an "Olmec Horizon" and strive to understand Early and Middle Formative society and the nature of relations between distant regions of Mesoamerica. Taking advantage of modern irrigation ditches and lack of later period occupation, the proposed survey will provide reliable demographic changes at a regional scale. The results of this study will further our understanding of the relationship between local and interregional processes during the emergence of sociopolitical complexity in the Soconusco. This research is also significant cross-culturally as Mesoamerica is one of only a handful of areas in the world where sociopolitical complexity emerged independently and the Soconusco contains some of the earliest societies where this occurred. Mr. Rosenswig's research will document the manner in which incipient sociopolitical complexity emerged and will also assist in training a promising young scientist.