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

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With National Science Foundation support Dr. Christopher Beekman will conduct one season of archaeological fieldwork in the Jalisco region of Western Mexico. He will focus on sites which relate to the Teuchitlan Tradition which spans a 1,200 year period from ca. 300 BC to 900 AD. Sites are characterized by a distinctive form of public architecture and ceramic models of these features indicate they were used for feasting activities, marriage ceremonies and ritual purposes. Also associated with these structures are specialized workshops (which produced, among other items, obsidian jewelry), and shaft and chamber tombs. Excavations at one such shaft tomb yielded a wide variety of imported offerings suggesting an elite burial. Over the course of its history the Teuchitlan polity varied in both size and in degree of political centralization. Dr. Beekman notes that the emphasis on elites symbols varies as well. During the period of maximum centralization evidence of items associated with an elite class are relatively rare but in other periods when central control appears replaced by factional confrontation such markers are common. Dr. Beekman suggests that inter group competition spurs the emergence of claimants to elite status as individuals vie for political control and followers. Once a structured hierarchy is established such status markers are no longer necessary. This interpretation contradicts commonly accepted theory and therefore has generated considerable interest. With National Science Foundation support this pattern, which to date is based on preliminary evidence, will be examined in detail. In this first stage of the research Dr. Beekman and his colleagues will test excavate a number of sites which sample different time periods and he will then analyze the objects collected. A chronologically sensitive ceramic sequence is necessary to order sites correctly and the pottery excavated from stratigraphically secure contexts will be analyzed to provide time sensitive markers. Although it exhibited the social complexity which characterized many other parts of Middle America, the prehistory of Western Mexico is poorly known. Dr. Beekman's research will not only shed new light on the mechanisms which underlie the development of stratified societies but will also provide data of interest to many archaeologists.