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

在Robert Sharer博士的指导下，Marcello-Anrea Canuto先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。在他自己和其他人过去在洪都拉斯科潘地区工作的基础上，他将继续对史前玛雅遗址进行调查。他还将进行有限的挖掘，并分析收集到的陶瓷、石器和其他材料。他希望了解这个大型玛雅遗址的社会组织。考古学家们把大量的注意力集中在科潘上，在那里进行的研究在塑造对玛雅史前的解释方面发挥了重要作用。该遗址非常大，包括一个主要的仪式中心，以及较小的次要纪念中心和外围地区。它几乎存在于整个玛雅史前时期，记录了玛雅文化的兴衰。多年来的大规模研究提供了极其庞大的数据库，对聚落格局有了深入的了解。Canuto先生作为一个较大的研究小组的成员，在构成Copan系统一部分的边远“农村”地区进行了数年的调查，这项工作的结果与以前较大的项目的结果有很大不同。由于这个原因，这项工作是非常有趣的，并且有可能改进普遍接受的模型。人类学家不仅希望了解玛雅政体的兴起和随后的崩溃，也许更重要的是，他们希望深入了解这样一个规模庞大的复杂社会是如何用一种简单的技术在热带低地环境中运作和维持自身的。他们希望了解将大量的人结合成一个有效合作单位的机制。科潘先前的研究表明，谱系——沿着明确定义的家谱线追溯血统的广泛的亲属群体——构成了基本的社会单位。人们认为，这类企业集团具有很大程度的自主性，内部社会分化程度相对较小。据推测，这些是玛雅社会的基本组成部分。然而，卡努托和他的同事们最近的研究表明，情况更为复杂。他们认为，世系之间存在着显著的内部差异，还有一系列其他类型的社会和经济联系跨越了世系的界限。这种推测是基于在家庭和社区之间观察到的巨大的家庭和物质文化差异。然而，在这个科潘分区的调查工作是不完整的，在国家科学基金会的支持下，卡努托先生将填补空间空白，并挖掘一系列与房屋相关的沉积物。有了这些数据，应该可以更精确地定义潜在的变化。这项研究不仅将提供对玛雅史前的新见解，而且还有助于培养一名有前途的年轻科学家。

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.