Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Community Organization And Sport Relationships

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Under the supervision of Dr. Takeshi Inomata, Marijke Stoll will explore the intersections between formalized competitive interaction, sociopolitical conflict, and public architecture among Prehispanic societies in southeastern Mexico. Such interaction through for example sporting events can serve valuable social functions which extend well beyond viewer entertainment. They provide a forum to consolidate and strengthen cultural affiliation and integrate broad and often diverse groups of individuals within a regional or national framework. Such regional based competition was integral to community and regional politics among ancient societies. Archaeology as a discipline is well-placed to investigate the social role of sports in the distant past. The Prehispanic ballgame was an important ritualized sport and shared cultural tradition that was played throughout much of ancient Mexico. It was played in large masonry ballcourts, unique structures that were constructed for this single purpose. As a special category of public architecture, ballcourts would have distinguished communities from each other. How ballcourts were distributed across the social landscape was significant - where a ballcourt was emplaced within public space would express the importance of the ballgame to political and daily life. By measuring the centrality of the ballcourt and how accessible it was, it is possible to infer their sociopolitical function at the local and regional levels. The research assesses the degree to which the ballgame was interwoven with local community politics in the Nejapa region of Oaxaca, Mexico. During the dynamic Postclassic (AD 1000 - 1521), a time of internal population expansion, settlement reorganization, and outside pressure from expanding imperial armies, several communities in Nejapa constructed multiple ballcourts. This suggests that residents of Nejapa may have used the ballgame to integrate different social strata, highlight social differences, and resolve or heighten intra- and intercommunity conflicts. The research will test the hypothesis that the ballgame was a key tool used by both local elites and different communities in Nejapa through site reconnaissance, topographical mapping, and geospatial analysis of ballcourt placement and distribution. Specifically, the project focuses on two broad questions. First, how central was the ballcourt to community social organization and who would have been the intended audience for ballgames and other ritual activities performed in and around the court? Second, does the distribution of ballcourts overlap with the distribution of complex civic centers in Nejapa? Systematic study of the ballcourts in Nejapa at the local and regional scales enhances understanding of how a competitive sport became an important sociopolitical institution in Mesoamerica. As the first in-depth study of the ballcourts in Nejapa, this project will be conducted in collaboration with area communities with the goal of documenting, recording and preserving the local cultural heritage for future generations to come. Study results will be disseminated through publications and presentations at scholarly venues, official reports for the Mexican government, and a project website targeted at broader audiences. Data from Nejapa will be added to a much larger geodatabase on ballcourts in Oaxaca that will improve the availability of information as well as permit further statistical and geospatial analyses for future research.