Pre-State Social Transformations in Central Mexico: Formative Archaeology in Apizaco, Tlaxcala

在国家科学基金会的支持下，理查德·莱苏尔博士将带领一个由考古专家和学生组成的团队调查墨西哥中部高地古代文明出现背后的社会过程。人类学考古学家长期以来一直对从社会科学角度探索早期文明的物质产品--金字塔、雕塑或其他幸存下来的文物--感兴趣。一个重要的目标是追踪和解释城市生活和州级政治组织的起源。多年来，国家起源的模型变得更加复杂和复杂，现在很明显，要全面理解任何特定的古代文明，需要研究该问题的不同方面的研究人员之间的协调努力。莱斯勒和他的合作者将通过研究主要社会政治发展中心边缘的农村生活，推动对墨西哥中部古代特奥蒂瓦坎文明的人类学理解。一支由美国和墨西哥考古学家组成的团队将在墨西哥现在的特拉斯卡拉州的阿皮萨科地区进行挖掘。他们将在公元前800年至公元100年期间的村庄遗址工作，发现包括垃圾场在内的一系列国内特征，以前的工作表明，这些特征是古代经济和社会的丰富证据来源。材料分析将是博士生和研究生在培训中的合作努力，包括陶瓷、石器、动物骨骼和植物遗骸方面的专家。研究的重点将是特奥蒂瓦坎城市融合前几个世纪期间经济和社会组织的稳定程度或变化。通过仔细分析材料遗迹将调查的具体主题包括生产和消费的组织、社会不平等的特点、外部势力的税收水平以及艺术品中的当地人物形象。这些研究将揭示研究期间阿皮萨科经济和社会组织的许多细节，但它们也将对研究古代文明具有更大的理论意义。一个重要的悬而未决的问题是，对城市生活的兴起至关重要的社会经济转型的地理范围。在国家出现之前的几个世纪里，社会和经济的变化是狭隘地局限于城市最终出现的特定领域，还是这些变化要广泛得多？这种思考有助于我们回答进一步的问题，比如为什么最早的城市出现在我们发现它们的特定地方？在阿皮萨科这样的外围地区工作不能回答关于墨西哥中部文明兴起的所有问题，但它解决了一些重要的问题。此外，虽然像特奥蒂瓦坎这样的主要中心现在得到了很好的保护，但阿皮萨科地区的较小遗址正在迅速被现代发展摧毁。Lesure的工作将导致对一种快速消失的考古资源的详细和永久的记录。研究环境将为美国和墨西哥学者之间的接触和信息共享以及本科生和研究生的培训提供各种机会。专家将合作回答研究问题，学生将作为分析师和作者积极参与。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Richard Lesure will lead a team of archaeological specialists and students in investigating social processes behind the emergence of ancient civilizations in the highlands of central Mexico. Anthropological archaeologists have long been interested in exploring the material products of early civilization -- the pyramids, sculptures, or other artifacts that survive -- from the perspective of social science. An important goal is tracing and explaining the origins of urban life and state-level political organization. Models of state origins have become more sophisticated and complex over the years, and it is now clear that a holistic understanding of any particular ancient civilization requires coordinated efforts among investigators working on different aspects of the problem.Lesure and his collaborators will advance anthropological understandings of the ancient Teotihuacan civilization of Central Mexico by studying rural life at the margins of the main centers of sociopolitical development. A team of American and Mexican archaeologists will conduct excavations in the Apizaco region of the modern Mexican state of Tlaxcala. They will be working at the sites of villages of the period 800 B.C.to 100 A.D., uncovering a range of domestic features including refuse dumps that previous work indicates are rich sources of evidence on ancient economy and society. Analysis of materials will be a collaborative effort among Ph.D. specialists and graduate students in training, including experts in ceramics, stone tools, animal bones, and botanical remains. Research will focus on the degree of stability or change in economic and social organization during the centuries leading up to the urban coalescence at Teotihuacan. Specific topics to be investigated through the careful analysis of material remains are the organization of production and consumption, the character of social inequalities, levels of taxation by external powers, and local portrayals of people in art. These studies will reveal much about the specifics of economic and social organization in Apizaco during the time period of study, but they will also have larger theoretical implications for the investigation of ancient civilizations. An important unresolved issue is the geographical scale of socioeconomic transformations critical to the rise of urban life. In the centuries before state emergence, were social and economic changes narrowly restricted to the specific areas in which cities ultimately emerged, or were these transformations much more widely spread? That sort of consideration can contribute to our ability to answer further questions, such as why did the earliest cities emerge in the specific places in which we find them?Work in a peripheral area like Apizaco cannot answer all questions concerning the emergence of civilization in central Mexico, but it addresses some important ones. Further, while major centers like Teotihuacan itself are now well protected, smaller sites of the Apizaco region are being rapidly destroyed by modern growth. Lesure's work will result in a detailed and permanent record of a fast-disappearing archaeological resource. The research setting will provide a variety of opportunities for contacts and information sharing between American and Mexican scholars, as well as the training of undergraduate and graduate students. Specialists will work collaboratively in answering research questions, and students will actively participate as analysts and authors.