The Zaragoza-Oyameles Regional Obsidian Survey, Puebla, Mexico

University Of Vermont & State Agricultural College, Burlington VT

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Charles Knight will conduct three field seasons of archaeological survey of the Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian source area in northeast Puebla, Mexico. Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass that was the principal material used for all cutting, scraping and drilling activities throughout Mesoamerica for millennia. Consumer data from sites in the southern Gulf lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico, and neighboring regions, indicate that from the Late Formative to Late Classic period (ca. 400 B.C. - A.D. 900), obsidian from the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area dominated regional site assemblages. How the extraction and production systems were organized at the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area, how these subsystems were linked to regional and interregional obsidian economies, and, ultimately, what was the nature of their role in regional sociopolitical behaviors remains virtually unknown, since no systematic archaeological data on obsidian material extraction and initial commodity production has been collected from this source area. The research is significant because it provides insight into the economics and the role which scarce, valued and localized resources play in developing and maintaining social integration. These same factors come into play today in many regions of the developing world and an archaeological study such as this one allows one to examine their interaction in an extended chronological context. Most models of obsidian economies are built on the assumption that patterns of obsidian distribution and consumption at individual sites accurately characterize those occurring at extraction and production loci. However, the few studies that have begun to investigate obsidian extraction and production at source areas in Mesoamerica, and elsewhere, indicate that a great variety of extraction strategies were utilized through time, suggesting that the organizational behaviors represented at quarry sites do not necessarily mirror those reconstructed from obsidian consumption and distribution contexts. Therefore, the proposed research will concentrate on an area of the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area where quarrying activities have previously been identified in order to test several hypotheses of commodity exchange that have been central to reconstructions of the evolution of complex societies in Mesoamerica. Questions to be investigated are: How was obsidian extraction organized? Where did the initial production of obsidian commodities take place? and Who organized and benefited from these activities? A model of direct commercial administration over quarry activities and the commodities produced will be contrasted against models of indirect commercial administration, and independent extraction and production based on individual or community-wide identities. Systematic survey and surface collections will investigate these questions by identifying and recording the location, size and type of habitation and production sites, and extraction activities conducted within the source area, and will correlate these activities to diachronic changes in obsidian extraction and commodity production technologies. Parameters of scale, intensity, and uniformity will be used to gauge types of extraction methods encountered vis-à-vis regional and interregional economic sociopolitical behavior. Broader impacts include the training of U.S. archaeology students in field and analytical techniques. The proposed project also has a component of inter-disciplinary research with Geology that will foster an important cross-fertilization of methods and theory in both disciplines. Finally, data from the proposed project will be integrated with that from the nearby center of Cantona, where Mexican archaeologist Dr. Ángel Garcia Cook has been working for many years. The research project will compliment Garcia Cook's more intensive site-level study benefiting the aims of both research programs and providing a deeper understanding of the role of obsidian in the Formative through Classic period political economy of western Mesoamerica.