Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, Eva Martinez will carry out a full-coverage systematic survey of the Jamastren Valley, in southeastern Honduras to explore the bases of social inequality in the regions. It is useful to approach the emergence of social differentiation from the perspective of aspiring elites striving to improve their social positions through various political strategies. There is considerable debate over the extent to which such aggrandizers must achieve economic control over those they subordinate. Some argue that no substantial inequality emerges without firm economic control as its base, while others hold that exalted social positions can be based on prestige in the absence of much accumulation of wealth. This research attempts to contribute to the discussion by evaluating the relative importance of two kinds of strategy for gaining social rank: 1) those based on economic control over either basic agricultural resources or the production of utilitarian craft items, and 2) those focused on enhancing prestige by manipulating connections to elites in neighboring regions and symbolically-charged prestige goods.
In order to evaluate the relative importance of these two kinds of strategy Ms. Martinez will focus on elite involvement in three activities: 1) agricultural production; 2) local craft production and exchange; and 3) interregional interaction. The Jamastran Valley provides an ideal setting to explore the functioning and interplay of these activities. For the first, it offers highly productive agricultural land, able to support large permanent human populations and potentially subject to elite control. Related to both the second and third, a rare source of obsidian, widely traded for making cutting tools in prehispanic times, is located close to the Jamastran Valley. This obsidian could have been exploited for local use and/or export by residents of the valley, with or without elite control. And pottery, textiles, and other craft goods manufactured from locally available resources might have been produced by practically every family or in much concentrated and specialized fashion, again with or without elite control. The proposed research will provide documentation of the nature and pacing of social change in the Jamastran Valley so that its relationship to these economic and potentially non-economic factors can be evaluated. It will then also be possible to compare the trajectory of social change in the Jamastran Valley to those of neighboring regions.
This project will also have a broader impact in that it will be a crucial element in the training of the doctoral candidate, and it will further the training of Honduran students who will participate in the fieldwork. It will also provide documentation of cultural remains currently threatened with destruction by agricultural development, and will strengthen ties of international scholarly collaboration, since it will cooperate closely with salvage efforts in the region by the Instituto Hondures de Antropologia e Historia.
