Doctoral Dissertation: The Structure and Organization of Rural Settlement: The Rio Amarillo Region of Copan, Honduras throughout the Classic Period

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Under the direction of Dr. Robert Sharer, Mr. Marcello-Anrea Canuto will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. Building on his own and others' past work in the Copan region of Honduras, he will continue a survey of prehistoric Mayan sites. He will also conduct limited excavations and analyze the ceramics, stone implements and other materials collected. He wishes to understand the social organization of this large Mayan site. Archaeologists have focussed significant attention on Copan and research conducted there has played a major role in shaping interpretations of Mayan prehistory. The site is extremely large and includes a major ceremonial center as well as smaller secondary monumental centers and outlying regions. It existed during almost the entire span of Mayan prehistory and documents the cultures rise and decline. Large scale research conducted for many years has provided an extremely large data base and a great deal is known about settlement pattern. Mr. Canuto, as part of a larger research group, has conducted survey for several years in an outlying "rural" region which constituted part of the Copan system and the results of this work are significantly different from those of the larger previous project. For this reason the work is of great interest and potentially can refine generally accepted models.Anthropologists wish to understand not only the rise and subsequent collapse of the Mayan polity but perhaps more importantly gain insight into how, with a simple technology such a large scale complex society was able to function and maintain itself in a lowland tropical environment. They wish to understand the mechanisms which bound large numbers of people together into an effectively cooperating unit. Prior work at Copan suggested that lineages - extensive kinship groups which traced descent down clearly defined genealogical lines - constituted the basic social units. It was believed that such corporate groups exhibited a large degree of autonomy and displayed relatively little internal social differentiation. These, it was postulated, were the basic building blocks of Mayan society. More recent work by Mr. Canuto and his colleagues however suggest a more complicated picture. They believe that significant internal differential within lineages existed and that a series of other types of social and economic ties cut across lineage boundaries. Such speculation is based on the substantial household and material culture differences observed between households and communities. The survey work in this Copan subregion however is incomplete and with NSF support, Mr. Canuto will both fill in spatial blanks and excavate a series of house related deposits. With these data it should be possible to define potential variation more precisely. This research will not only provide new insight into Mayan prehistory but also assist in training a promising young scientist.