Izapa Regional Settlement Project

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Robert Rosenswig will investigate the history of the Izapa state by collecting regional settlement data from the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico. The resulting data will help document the emergence of hierarchical society centered at Izapa by at least the Late Formative period (350-100 BCE), and determine the political nature of the polity's persistence until the Early Postclassic period (CE 1000-1350). The research will contribute theoretically to an understanding of the origins and development of state-level society by documenting the important and poorly understood Izapa polity during its rise, florescence and eventual collapse. The project will implement a survey strategy that compares changes between three environmental zones in the Soconusco. Survey efforts will be complemented with limited test excavations from a site dating to each the Formative, Classic and Postclassic periods. At its most basic level, the proposed research asks: how did our stratified world evolve from the egalitarian hunter-gatherers that constitute most of human history? After over 100,000 years of the existence of modern humans on earth, hierarchical forms of political organization emerged around the world less than ten millennia ago. Power and hierarchy are fundamental issues addressed by many social sciences and archaeologists are in a unique position to explore the origins and development of the institutionalized hierarchy that permeates modern life. In contrast to most regions of Mesoamerica where Classic period states are the primary focus of study, the Soconusco provides a case where early political innovations are currently far better understood than the subsequent rise of the Izapa state. Izapa is surprisingly poorly understood considering that it is one of the largest sites on the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica and it has been well-known since the 1940s when its mounds and sculptures appeared in the pages of the National Geographic Magazine. Despite the high-quality maps of monumental architecture at its core, the full extent of Izapa is unknown. Further, the overall demographic patterns of Izapa's sustaining area are unknown as are the number and distribution of lower-tier centers from any time in the site's long occupation. This project will document these demographic and political patterns, and how they changed over time. The broader impact of this research is to document the political history of Izapa, and thereby increasing awareness of archaeological resources in the region. Izapa is the only site in the Soconusco open for tourism and expanding what is known of its political history will contribute to local as well as Mexican national cultural heritage. One of the most enduring ways in which this will be done is by initiating a program of outreach to local schools through the development of teaching materials. University of Albany graduate student Marx Navarro was born and raised in Tapachula and he will spearhead this endeavor and provide an example of what local school children could aspire to. Two other University of Albany gradate students will base their dissertations research on data collected by this project and two Costa Rican students will participate in the research.