Casas Grandes, located in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, is one of the largest and most elaborate of prehistoric pueblo communities. It contains a unique combination of pueblo-style housing and ceremonial architecture, including ball courts and platform mounds, from Mesoamerica. During its peak in the Medio period (ca. A.D. 1200-1450), Casas Grandes was the primate center of its region and a focal point of the extensive interaction between the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica. Excavations at Casas Grandes provide a good picture of the community, but there never has been much study of neighboring communities. Accordingly, most details of the size, structure, level of centralization, and mode of organization of the Casas Grandes polity remained obscure.
With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Michael E. Whalen and Paul E. Minnis are attempting to remedy this situation by their long-term study of the neighbors of Casas Grandes. In the present project, two seasons of excavation and one of analysis of the recovered materials will be carried out at site 315. The site lies about 2 km from Casas Grandes, within what is defined as the Core Zone. Earlier studies indicate that this was the zone of maximum interaction and integration around the primate center. There are two things that need to be clarified about site 315. The first is the occupational history of the community. One alternative is that the larger Core Zone communities diminished as Casas Grandes rose to its peak. The other is that large, near settlements were contemporary with the apogee of the primate center. These two scenarios require very different organizational models. This leads to the second question: what level of community complexity did site 315 maintain? The authors' previous work in the region provides a well-tested strategy that uses archaeological data to monitor levels of community complexity across time. All of these questions bear on the question of how and to what extent the primate center organized its nearest neighbors of the Core Zone. This poorly understood issue is a limiting condition on the level of complexity of all the rest of the regional system's structure.
The project is significant not only in a regional context, but in terms of general theory. Casas Grandes is widely agreed to have been one of the few complex societies to develop north of Mesoamerica. However, its rise, mode of organization, and decline still are so incompletely understood that it plays almost no role in discussions of sociopolitical evolutionary processes.
The project has several public impacts. First, it promotes training of students in archaeological field and laboratory research methods, and it provides continued opportunities for students to pursue research topics for theses and dissertations. These opportunities are extended to Mexican students as well as to those from North America. Second, the project and others like it significantly enhance the infrastructure for research in northwest Mexico by increasing contact and interaction between North American and Mexican archaeologists and by raising the visibility of the national patrimony for the citizens of this part of Mexico.
