With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Charles Knight will conduct three field seasons of archaeological survey of the Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian source area in northeast Puebla, Mexico. Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass that was the principal material used for all cutting, scraping and drilling activities throughout Mesoamerica for millennia. Consumer data from sites in the southern Gulf lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico, and neighboring regions, indicate that from the Late Formative to Late Classic period (ca. 400 B.C. - A.D. 900), obsidian from the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area dominated regional site assemblages. How the extraction and production systems were organized at the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area, how these subsystems were linked to regional and interregional obsidian economies, and, ultimately, what was the nature of their role in regional sociopolitical behaviors remains virtually unknown, since no systematic archaeological data on obsidian material extraction and initial commodity production has been collected from this source area.

The research is significant because it provides insight into the economics and the role which scarce, valued and localized resources play in developing and maintaining social integration. These same factors come into play today in many regions of the developing world and an archaeological study such as this one allows one to examine their interaction in an extended chronological context.

Most models of obsidian economies are built on the assumption that patterns of obsidian distribution and consumption at individual sites accurately characterize those occurring at extraction and production loci. However, the few studies that have begun to investigate obsidian extraction and production at source areas in Mesoamerica, and elsewhere, indicate that a great variety of extraction strategies were utilized through time, suggesting that the organizational behaviors represented at quarry sites do not necessarily mirror those reconstructed from obsidian consumption and distribution contexts. Therefore, the proposed research will concentrate on an area of the Zaragoza-Oyameles source area where quarrying activities have previously been identified in order to test several hypotheses of commodity exchange that have been central to reconstructions of the evolution of complex societies in Mesoamerica. Questions to be investigated are: How was obsidian extraction organized? Where did the initial production of obsidian commodities take place? and Who organized and benefited from these activities? A model of direct commercial administration over quarry activities and the commodities produced will be contrasted against models of indirect commercial administration, and independent extraction and production based on individual or community-wide identities.

Systematic survey and surface collections will investigate these questions by identifying and recording the location, size and type of habitation and production sites, and extraction activities conducted within the source area, and will correlate these activities to diachronic changes in obsidian extraction and commodity production technologies. Parameters of scale, intensity, and uniformity will be used to gauge types of extraction methods encountered vis-à-vis regional and interregional economic sociopolitical behavior.

Broader impacts include the training of U.S. archaeology students in field and analytical techniques. The proposed project also has a component of inter-disciplinary research with Geology that will foster an important cross-fertilization of methods and theory in both disciplines. Finally, data from the proposed project will be integrated with that from the nearby center of Cantona, where Mexican archaeologist Dr. Ángel Garcia Cook has been working for many years. The research project will compliment Garcia Cook's more intensive site-level study benefiting the aims of both research programs and providing a deeper understanding of the role of obsidian in the Formative through Classic period political economy of western Mesoamerica.

Project Report

The goal of the Zaragoza-Oyameles Regional Obsidian Survey is to investigate the development of social complexity through the nature of the prehispanic Mesoamerican obsidian economy during the Late Formative through Late Classic periods (ca. 400 B.C. - A.D. 900). To do this, the project focus on the economic subsystems of material procurement and primary tool production at the obsidian source area of Zaragoza-Oyameles in northeast Puebla, Mexico. A combination of intensive surface survey, systematic surface collection, mapping and analysis was conducted to address this goal. Background and Results The 2014 season (Season 3) survey was focused on the gaps in the areas of surface survey conducted in the 2012 and 2013 seasons, as well as in areas along the eastern edge of the survey limits The surface survey comprised seven archaeologists walking along parallel transects spaced 5 meters apart in plowed fields, following the orientation of the furrows. Archaeologists scanned the ground in front and beside them for surface artifacts, and this allowed for 100% coverage of the surface of plowed fields. The location of all tools such as projectile points, cores, scrapers, ceramics, bifaces and groundstone were marked with a GPS and then bagged and collected. In total, 369 hectares (911 acres) were surface surveyed over 32 days in February and March of 2014. Two workshops were identified during the 2014 season, bringing the total of known quarry workshops up to 50. The Surface collections made in 2014 brought the number of quarry workshops randomly sampled to 5 (or 10% of all quarries identified). Additional collections were made at a number of non-quarry sites bringing the total of all sites sampled to 28. Table 1 summarizes the quantity and size of surface collections from each non-quarry and quarry workshop site. In addition, all obsidian projectile points (n=16), bifaces and unifaces (n=122), cores (n=151), core sections (n=22), scrapers (n=9), and ceramic sherds (n=523) were collected from the surface, as well as other ground stone tools. Surface artifact concentrations, scatters, isolated ceramics, and other notable artifact categories were point provenienced with a GPS and described in the project journal. Analysis All surface artifacts from 18 of the 27 sites that were surface collected during the 2012 and 2013 seasons were analyzed, as were all the 2013 and 2014 surface bifaces and projectile points and the 2013 surface cores. Overall, of the 50 sites identified in the 2012-2014 seasons, the material from 36% have been analyzed. However, considering that collections were made at only 28 of the 50 sites, 64% of sites with material collected have been analyzed 40 obsidian source samples were submitted to The Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor for Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis. Habitation Sites The identification of three relatively large, domestic sites on the level ground west of the base of the Oyameles Dome was the biggest surprise during the 2014 season. In addition, a hypertrophic polyhedral core was recovered, that measures 38 cm in length and it weighs 23.5 kg (52 lbs), which was likely part of linked-sequence reduction, where large percussion blades were removed to be used as blanks for large, elongated bifaces that could be further reduced into dart points. Topographic Mapping Near the end of the 2014 field season, Dr. Greg Smith, from Northwest College, conducted 5 days of intensive topographic mapping of seven quarry workshops (Taller 3, 9, 24, 25, 32, 42 and 51). Conclusions The data recovered during the 2014 field season supports the earlier season's conclusions that polyhedral core production was the principal activity at the Zaragoza-Oyameles quarries. We identified specific production loci for bifaces and for polyhedral cores, thus representing some degree of spatial (and/or temporal) stratification of reduction sequences. The intensive, 100% coverage survey of the western flanks of the Oyameles Dome, where the majority of quarry activity and habitation occurred, provided an unparalleled level of detail as to the types of reduction activities that occurred there. In this manner, we achieved one of the major goals of the project, which was to define different production activity loci in the source area. The 2014 field season introduced three undergraduate students to chipped stone technologies and the process of obsidian extraction. Outreach activities were limited to local presentations to communities and ejido organizations, as well as individual interactions with all locals that we met in the field who expressed an interest in what we were doing.

Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2011-09-01
Budget End
2014-08-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2010
Total Cost
$162,822
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Vermont & State Agricultural College
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Burlington
State
VT
Country
United States
Zip Code
05405