The Articulation of Political Strategies and Regional Structure in the Teuchitlan Tradition of Western Mexico 2003 Season

University Of Colorado At Denver-Downtown Campus, Denver CO

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Christopher Beekman and his colleagues will conduct archaeological field and laboratory research at the ancient settlement of Navajas in the highland lake district of western Mexico. The project brings together specialists in archaeology, palynology, phytolith, and macrobotanical remains to carry out a coordinated investigation of a stratified society in ancient Mesoamerica. This is part of a continuing program of NSF funded research directed towards a better understanding of cooperation and competition among elites in West Mexican society from around A.D. 100-900. These issues are being addressed in the Tequila valleys of highland central Jalisco, where a series of transitions back and forth between intensive factional competition, and its apparent suppression in a consolidated polity, offer an opportunity to study the mechanisms by which elite competition and individual aggrandizement are being harnessed and redirected in a way that promotes cooperation and the formation of a state. This is particularly significant because these changes in local strategy relate to larger economic changes in the region, as the increased use of imported goods that accompanies local competition appears to coincide with the formation of long distance trade networks to obtain those goods. Specifically, field research will focus on wide area excavations across multiple structures and open spaces in public architecture at the late settlement of Navajas, which will be used to complement prior NSF funded research at the earlier settlement of Llano Grande. The excavations will provide data regarding labor organization and the construction of the public architecture, and the activities taking place both in public spaces and within the more restricted structures. Laboratory analyses of artifacts and soil samples conducted at several different universities will follow up with three important tasks: to determine the origins of artifacts recovered, to develop a refined chronology, and to test existing proposals that activities within the public architecture may have related to agricultural ritual. Dr. Beekman and his collaborators will focus on the following questions: 1) What changes occurred in the organization of labor and the association of descent groups with sections of the architecture? 2) What activities took place in these public spaces and how did this change between the periods of consolidation and decline of this society? 3) To what degree may these very local strategies by elites have corresponded to regional changes in economic or political networks?