Political Cycling and Early Complex Society in Pacific Guatemala

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，迈克尔·洛夫（Michael Love）博士和他的一组同事将在危地马拉太平洋沿岸进行两个季节的考古发掘。该项目将研究日益增加的社会复杂性和更大的政治集中化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。社会复杂性和文明的发展是人类学考古学长久以来的核心兴趣之一。开发和测试小群体的平等主义猎人和采集者如何转变为社会分层的城市住宅消费者的模型，仍然为不同理论取向的学者之间富有成效和生动的讨论提供了素材。社会复杂性的发展是一个多方面的现象，涉及人口增长、政治集中化、社会复杂性增加和经济集约化。传统上，考古学家关注物质文化中引人注目的变化，以表明其复杂性，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，它们也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一级，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研究开辟了许多理论可能性，特别是当它们可以在区域调查数据和更传统的纪念性艺术和建筑研究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少数的独立发展文明的例子之一。在过去的15年里，对危地马拉和恰帕斯太平洋沿岸的研究已经确定，该地区对于理解形成时期（约公元前1500年-公元250年）中美洲社会复杂性的发展至关重要。从恰帕斯Mazatan地区早期形成的村庄，到ujute、Izapa和Abaj Takalik的后期形成中心，该地区的遗址和政治规模与中美洲其他任何地方一样大，并且拥有同期其他地方无法比拟的数据集。出于这个原因，它可以为一个非常广泛的人类学兴趣现象提供关键的见解。勒夫和他在拉布兰卡的同事们的研究将提供急需的信息。洛夫的项目将集中在La Blanca的大型中期形成（公元前900-600年）遗址，挖掘至少12个住宅，并收集有关这些家庭的生存实践、经济活动和仪式活动的信息。洛夫和他的团队从1993年到2000年对埃尔乌尤特城的形成后期（约公元前600年-公元100年）收集的数据进行了比较。这种比较将告诉我们，在埃尔乌尤特建立一个国家级政府后，家庭生活发生了怎样的变化。这项研究的更广泛影响是，它将提供有关世界上一个地区的重要信息，这对了解文明如何发展和影响生活在其中的人们的生活至关重要。该项目将大大增加对这一重要课题的认识，并将为重大修订对古代文明发展的科学认识提供基础。国际合作和理解也将得到加强，因为危地马拉和美国的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.