Pre-State Social Transformations in Central Mexico: Formative Archaeology in Apizaco, Tlaxcala

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Richard Lesure博士将带领一个由考古专家和学生组成的团队，调查墨西哥中部高地古代文明出现背后的社会过程。长期以来，人类学考古学家一直有兴趣从社会科学的角度探索早期文明的物质产物——金字塔、雕塑或其他留存下来的人工制品。一个重要的目标是追溯和解释城市生活和州级政治组织的起源。多年来，国家起源的模型变得越来越复杂和复杂，现在很明显，对任何特定古代文明的整体理解都需要研究这个问题不同方面的研究者之间的协调努力。莱索尔和他的合作者将通过研究社会政治发展主要中心边缘的农村生活，推进对墨西哥中部古代特奥蒂瓦坎文明的人类学理解。一支由美国和墨西哥考古学家组成的团队将在现代墨西哥特拉斯卡拉州的阿皮扎科地区进行挖掘。他们将在公元前800年至公元100年的村庄遗址工作，发现一系列的家庭特征，包括垃圾倾倒场，之前的工作表明这是古代经济和社会的丰富证据来源。材料分析将是博士专家和研究生之间的合作，包括陶瓷、石器、动物骨骼和植物遗骸方面的专家。研究将集中在特奥蒂瓦坎城市合并前的几个世纪中经济和社会组织的稳定或变化程度。通过对材料遗骸的仔细分析来调查的具体主题是生产和消费的组织，社会不平等的特征，外部力量的税收水平，以及艺术中人物的当地形象。这些研究将揭示阿皮萨科在研究期间的经济和社会组织的许多细节，但它们也将对古代文明的研究产生更大的理论影响。一个重要的尚未解决的问题是社会经济转型的地理规模，这对城市生活的兴起至关重要。在国家出现之前的几个世纪里，社会和经济变革是局限于最终出现城市的特定地区，还是这些变革更为广泛地传播？这种思考有助于我们回答进一步的问题，比如为什么最早的城市会出现在我们发现它们的特定地方？在像阿皮扎科这样的外围地区工作，不能回答所有关于墨西哥中部文明出现的问题，但它解决了一些重要的问题。此外，虽然像特奥蒂瓦坎这样的主要中心现在得到了很好的保护，但阿皮萨科地区较小的遗址正在被现代发展迅速破坏。莱休尔的工作将为这一迅速消失的考古资源提供详细而永久的记录。该研究环境将为美国和墨西哥学者之间的联系和信息共享提供各种机会，并为本科生和研究生的培训提供机会。专家将合作回答研究问题，学生将作为分析师和作者积极参与。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Richard Lesure will lead a team of archaeological specialists and students in investigating social processes behind the emergence of ancient civilizations in the highlands of central Mexico. Anthropological archaeologists have long been interested in exploring the material products of early civilization -- the pyramids, sculptures, or other artifacts that survive -- from the perspective of social science. An important goal is tracing and explaining the origins of urban life and state-level political organization. Models of state origins have become more sophisticated and complex over the years, and it is now clear that a holistic understanding of any particular ancient civilization requires coordinated efforts among investigators working on different aspects of the problem.Lesure and his collaborators will advance anthropological understandings of the ancient Teotihuacan civilization of Central Mexico by studying rural life at the margins of the main centers of sociopolitical development. A team of American and Mexican archaeologists will conduct excavations in the Apizaco region of the modern Mexican state of Tlaxcala. They will be working at the sites of villages of the period 800 B.C.to 100 A.D., uncovering a range of domestic features including refuse dumps that previous work indicates are rich sources of evidence on ancient economy and society. Analysis of materials will be a collaborative effort among Ph.D. specialists and graduate students in training, including experts in ceramics, stone tools, animal bones, and botanical remains. Research will focus on the degree of stability or change in economic and social organization during the centuries leading up to the urban coalescence at Teotihuacan. Specific topics to be investigated through the careful analysis of material remains are the organization of production and consumption, the character of social inequalities, levels of taxation by external powers, and local portrayals of people in art. These studies will reveal much about the specifics of economic and social organization in Apizaco during the time period of study, but they will also have larger theoretical implications for the investigation of ancient civilizations. An important unresolved issue is the geographical scale of socioeconomic transformations critical to the rise of urban life. In the centuries before state emergence, were social and economic changes narrowly restricted to the specific areas in which cities ultimately emerged, or were these transformations much more widely spread? That sort of consideration can contribute to our ability to answer further questions, such as why did the earliest cities emerge in the specific places in which we find them?Work in a peripheral area like Apizaco cannot answer all questions concerning the emergence of civilization in central Mexico, but it addresses some important ones. Further, while major centers like Teotihuacan itself are now well protected, smaller sites of the Apizaco region are being rapidly destroyed by modern growth. Lesure's work will result in a detailed and permanent record of a fast-disappearing archaeological resource. The research setting will provide a variety of opportunities for contacts and information sharing between American and Mexican scholars, as well as the training of undergraduate and graduate students. Specialists will work collaboratively in answering research questions, and students will actively participate as analysts and authors.