Political Cycling and Early Complex Society in Pacific Guatemala

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Michael Love博士和他的同事们将在危地马拉的太平洋海岸进行两次考古发掘。该项目将研究社会日益复杂和政治更加集中对家庭经济和仪式活动的影响。实际上，该项目将研究文明的发展如何影响人们的日常生活。社会的复杂性和文明的发展是人类考古学经久不衰的核心兴趣之一。发展和测试的模型，如何平等主义的猎人和采集者的小团体转变为社会分层的城市居民消费者的驯化食品仍然提供饲料生产和生动的话语之间的学者不同的理论取向。社会复杂性的发展是一个多方面的现象，涉及人口增长、政治集权、社会复杂性的增加和经济的集约化。 传统上，考古学家将目光投向物质文化的炫耀性变化，以表明复杂性，例如纪念性建筑，公共艺术，甚至大规模城市化的出现。 然而，最近，他们还将社会和文化生活中更微妙的变化作为复杂性的基本方面。其中许多变化发生在家庭层面，如家庭经济的重组、家庭仪式的变化、性别关系的变化以及社会空间的新用途。 对家庭经济和仪式活动的考察开辟了许多理论上的可能性，特别是当它们可以在区域调查数据和对纪念性艺术和建筑的传统考察的背景下进行分析时。 中美洲的情况通常被认为是世界上相对较少的几个独特文明发展的例子之一。过去15年对危地马拉和恰帕斯太平洋沿岸的研究表明，该地区对于理解中美洲形成时期（约公元前1500年至公元250年）社会复杂性的发展至关重要。 从恰帕斯州马扎坦地区的早期形成型村庄到Ukarte，Izapa和Abaj Takalik的后期形成型中心，该地区的遗址和政体与中美洲其他任何地方一样大，并且在这一时期拥有其他地方无法比拟的数据集。 出于这个原因，它可以提供一个非常广泛的人类学感兴趣的现象的关键见解。Love和他在La Blanca的同事的研究将提供急需的信息。 集中在大中间形成（900-600 B.C.）在La Blanca遗址，Love的项目将挖掘至少12个住宅，并收集这些家庭的生存实践，经济活动和仪式活动的信息。 收集到的数据将与Love和他的团队从1993年到2000年研究的晚形成期（约公元前600年-公元100年）城市El Umarte收集的数据进行比较。 这一比较将告诉我们，在埃尔乌特州一级政府成立后，国内生活发生了怎样的变化。 这项研究的更广泛影响是，它将为了解文明如何发展和如何影响生活在其中的人们的生活提供关于世界一个区域的重要信息。 该项目将大大增加对一个重要专题的了解，并将为对古代文明发展的科学认识的重大修订提供基础。国际合作和理解也将得到加强，因为危地马拉和美国学生将共同参与该项目，并合作撰写论文，以获得本科和高级学位。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Michael Love and a team of colleagues will conduct two field seasons of archaeological excavations on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. The project will study the impact of increasing social complexity and greater political centralization on the economic and ritual activities of the household. The project will, in effect, study how the development of civilization impacts the daily lives of people. The development of social complexity and civilization is one of the enduring central interests of anthropological archaeology. Developing and testing models of how small groups of egalitarian hunters and gatherers were transformed into socially stratified urban dwelling consumers of domesticated foodstuffs still provides the fodder for productive and lively discourse among scholars of different theoretical orientations. The development of social complexity was a multi-faceted phenomenon, involving population growth, political centralization, increasing social complexity, and economic intensification. Traditionally, archaeologists looked to ostentatious changes in material culture to signal complexity, such as the appearance of monumental architecture, public art, or even large scale urbanism. More recently, however, they have also incorporated more subtle transformations in social and cultural life as basic aspects of complexity. Many of these shifts took place at the household level, such as reorganization of the domestic economy, changes in household ritual, shifts in gender relationships, and new uses of social space. Examination of household economies and ritual activities opens up many theoretical possibilities, especially when they can be analyzed in the context of data from regional survey and the more traditional examination of monumental art and architecture. The Mesoamerican case is generally regarded as one of the relatively few instances in the world in which civilization developed sui generis. Research on the Pacific coast of Guatemala and Chiapas over the past fifteen years has established that zone as critical to understanding the development of social complexity in Mesoamerica during the Formative period (ca 1500 BCE - 250 CE). From the Early Formative villages in the Mazatan region of Chiapas to the Late Formative centers of Ujuxte, Izapa, and Abaj Takalik, this region has sites and polities as large as those anywhere else in Mesoamerica and a dataset unmatched elsewhere for this time period. For that reason, it can provide key insights to a phenomenon of very broad anthropological interest. The research by Love and his colleagues at La Blanca will provide much needed information. Focusing on the large Middle Formative (900-600 B.C.) site of La Blanca, Love's project will excavate at least one dozen residences and collect information on the subsistence practices, economic activities, and ritual activities of those households. The data collected will be compared to those collected from the Late Formative (ca 600 B.C. - A.D. 100) city of El Ujuxte, which Love and his team studied from 1993 to 2000. That comparison will tell us how domestic life changed after the development of a state-level government at El Ujuxte. The broader impacts of the study are that it will contribute significant information on a region of the world vital to understanding how civilizations develop and impact the lives of people who live in them. The project will provide a substantial increase in knowledge about an important topic and will provide the basis for major revisions in the scientific understanding of the development of ancient civilizations. International cooperation and understanding will also be enhanced, as Guatemalan and U.S. students will participate in the project jointly and collaborate in developing theses to obtain undergraduate and advanced degrees.