Long Term Social Stability in the Tres-Zapotes Region

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，克里斯托弗·A.普尔和迈克尔·L. Loughlin将指导一项区域考古调查，以调查墨西哥韦拉克鲁斯州南部由Tres Zapotes领导的政体具有非凡弹性的原因。从“阿拉伯之春”到海地地震，再到全球气候变化，当代的事件强调了政治需要适应其环境中的社会和自然干扰。考古学有一种独特的能力，可以提供一个关于人类社会长期复原力的比较视角。虽然学术界和大众的注意力都集中在崩溃现象上，但理解为什么一些政治和制度比其他政治和制度更具弹性与理解什么崩溃以及为什么崩溃一样重要。Tres Zapotes在公元前1000年至公元300年之间是奥尔梅克和epi-Olmec文化的地区政治首都。当其他奥尔梅克中心在公元前400年左右崩溃时，特雷斯萨波特斯又发展繁荣了700年，然后才经历了长期的衰落。在此期间，不断发展的特雷斯萨波特斯政体经历了周期性火山爆发，不断变化的环境条件和竞争日益激烈的政治格局的挑战。普尔博士之前由国家科学基金会资助的调查表明，特雷斯萨波特斯政体恢复力的一个关键因素是它从君主制统治转变为一种由首都多个相互竞争的派别共同治理的制度。目前的项目侧重于特雷斯萨波特斯如何在其领土内实施治理，以及该领土是如何创建和维护的。这需要区域范围的人口分布、市政礼仪建筑规划、手工艺生产组织和环境开发等方面的数据，目前的项目将传统的考古调查和地表采集方法与激光雷达和多光谱卫星图像等先进遥感技术相结合，调查特雷斯萨波特斯与内地人口之间的关系。此外，该项目还寻找早期职业的证据，可以追溯到公元前8000-2000年。为了更好地了解人类是如何适应潮湿的热带环境，最终导致了特雷斯萨波特斯政体的产生。该项目的学术价值在于它融合了政治经济和景观视角来评估政治弹性模型-这是一个具有相当大的人类学和实践重要性的问题。该研究的更广泛影响包括对墨西哥和美国学生进行实地和分析技术培训，遥感数据的解释，通过对Tres Zapotes博物馆的项目实验室进行必要的扩建，加强当地的研究基础设施。该项目将通过以下方式促进公众教育：（1）提供博物馆展览材料;（2）让博物馆参观者观察实验室活动;（3）为该地区的学校和民间组织举办公开讲座。该项目的信息将通过专业出版物、研究生论文和论文以及项目网页广泛传播。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Christopher A. Pool and Dr. Michael L. Loughlin will direct a regional archeological survey to investigate causes for the remarkable resilience of the polity headed by Tres Zapotes in southern Veracruz, Mexico. From the Arab Spring, to the Haitian earthquake, to global climate change, contemporary events underscore the need for polities to adjust to social and natural disturbances in their environments. Archaeology has a unique ability to provide a comparative perspective on the resilience of human societies in the long term. While much scholarly and popular attention has been focused on the phenomenon of collapse, understanding why some polities and institutions are more resilient than others is as important as as understanding what collapses and why. Tres Zapotes was the capital of regional polity of the Olmec and epi-Olmec cultures between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 300. While other Olmec centers were collapsing around 400 B.C., Tres Zapotes grew and flourished for another 700 years before it suffered a protracted decline. During that time, the evolving Tres Zapotes polity experienced challenges from periodic volcanic eruptions, changing environmental conditions, and an increasingly competitive political landscape. Previous NSF-funded investigations by Dr. Pool suggest that a key factor in the resilience of the Tres Zapotes polity was its shift from monarchical rule to a system in which governance was shared among multiple competing factions in the capital. The current project focuses on how Tres Zapotes implemented governance within its territory and how that territory was created and maintained. Such understanding requires regional-scale data on the distribution of population, the plans of civic-ceremonial architecture, the organization of craft production, and the exploitation of the environment.The current project combines traditional archaeological survey and surface collection methods with the advanced remote sensing technologies of LiDAR and multispectral satellite imagery to investigate the relationship between Tres Zapotes and hinterland populations over time. In addition the project seeks evidence of earlier occupations stretching back into the Archaic period (8000-2000 B.C.) to better understand how humans adapted to the humid tropical environment that eventually gave rise to the Tres Zapotes polity. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its melding of political-economic and landscape perspectives to evaluate models of political resilience - a matter of considerable anthropological and practical importance.The broader impacts of the study include the training of Mexican and U.S. students in field and analytical techniques, interpretation of remote sensing data, and enhancement of the local research infrastructure through needed expansion to the project laboratory on the grounds of the Tres Zapotes Museum. The project will contribute to public education by (1) providing materials for museum displays (2) allowing museum visitors to observe laboratory activities, and (3) giving public talks to schools and civic organizations in the region. Information from the project will be widely disseminated through professional publications, graduate dissertations and theses, and a project web page.