Sedentism and Social Competition: Archaic and Formative Archaeology in Apizaco, Tlaxcala

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Richard Lesure博士将在位于约80公里的墨西哥特拉斯卡拉州进行一个考古和地貌调查的实地季节。墨西哥城东部。从考古学的角度来看，该地区之所以出名，是因为它获得了足够的权力和集中的社会组织来抵抗阿兹特克帝国主义，并最终在阿兹特克征服中与西班牙征服者结盟。因此，该地区见证了复杂的高度组织化社会的发展。Lesure博士希望了解这种发展的早期阶段，并在此过程中深入了解导致久坐不动的因素。初步数据表明，该地区曾经存在一个大型的史前湖泊，由于湖泊可以提供重要的生存资源，因此有必要作为重建过去环境的第一步。为此，勒苏尔博士和他的同事将从相关沉积物中挖掘或提取岩心。然后，该小组将调查考古遗址，并选择几个进行测试挖掘。这样收集的数据将使他们能够为该地区建立一个坚实的文化年表，并且通过对动物和植物遗骸的分析，可以深入了解生存活动。人类在史前的大部分时间都是游牧狩猎采集者，但在过去的一万年里，全球各地的人们逐渐转向定居生活。由于这种现象在许多不同的地区独立发生，科学家们认为它反映了一个基本的潜在过程，而不是历史上的偶然事件，他们希望了解其中的潜在原理。多年来，人们一直认为，定居主义仅仅是采用农业和久坐不动的生活方式的结果，而粮食生产的出现似乎往往与此密切相关。然而，这种关系并不简单，因为农业前的定居行为在考古学和历史上都有记载。人们提出了两种模型来解释定居主义的起源，它们援引了非常不同的因果机制。一种是基于维持生计的生产力，侧重于改变人与环境的关系。另一种设想是社会竞争的过程，并认为这一过程至少是由个人和群体之间的地位竞争推动的。Lesure博士认为，这两种模型在特拉斯卡拉地区会有明显不同的特征，因此为此类研究提供了一个很好的研究场所。这个项目之所以重要，有几个原因。它将为许多考古学家提供感兴趣的数据。它还将揭示导致复杂社会兴起的过程。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Richard Lesure will conduct one field season of archaeological and geomorphological survey in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala which is located ca. 80 km. East of Mexico City. From an archaeological perspective, the region is famous because it acquired a sufficient degree of power and centralized social organization to resist Aztec imperialism and eventually allied itself with the Spanish conquistadors in the Aztec conquest. Thus the area bears testimony to the development of complex highly organized society. Dr. Lesure wishes to understand the early phases of this development and in the process gain insight into the factors which lead to a sedentary existence. Preliminary data suggest that a large prehistoric lake once existed in this region and because lakes can provide significant subsistence resources, it is necessary as a first step to reconstruct the past environment. Dr. Lesure and his colleagues will excavate or extract cores from relevant sediments for this purpose. The team will then survey for archaeological sites and select several for test excavation. The data thus collected should permit them to establish a solid cultural chronology for the region and also, through analysis of faunal and floral remains provide insight into subsistence activities.Humans spent much of prehistory as nomadic hunter-gatherers, but during the last 10,000 years people across the globe have shifted to increasingly sedentary lives. Because this occurred independently in many different areas, scientists assume that it reflects a basic underlying process rather than historical happenstance and they wish to understand the underlying principles involved. For many years it was believed that sedentism was simply a consequence of the adoption of agriculture and sedentary lifeways and the emergence of food production seem often to have been closely related. However the relationship is not a simple one because preagricultural sedentism has been documented both archaeologically and historically. Two models have been proposed to explain the origins of sedentism and they invoke very different causal mechanisms. One is based on subsistence productivity and focuses on changing human-environmental relationships. The other envisions a process of social competition and argues that the process is at least fueled by competition for status among individuals and groups. Dr. Lesure believes that the two models would have clearly different signatures in the Tlaxcala region which thus offers an excellent research venue for such a study.This project is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will also shed new light on the processes which led to the rise of complex society.