With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Marcie Venter and an international team of colleagues will conduct two seasons of archaeological research on the southern Gulf Coast of Veracruz, Mexico. The fundamental significance of this research rests on the fact that it will permit scientists to gain insight into the long term relationship between climate change and societal response at a traditional level of social organization. This same process is occurring in many parts of the world today among groups of similar social complexity. The effectiveness with which such adaptations take place have worldwide implications.
The research team consists of scholars from several US-based universities, and Mexican researchers and institutions. The research will explore the ways that societies have responded to climate change and environmental degradation in the past by examining the Classic and Postclassic center Matacanela, located in the Tuxtla Mountains. The end of the Classic period (ca. AD 800) was characterized by dramatic climate shifts, the cessation of maize agriculture, political decentralization, economic reorganization, demographic decline and migration. Although most other centers in the region were abandoned, architectural and sculptural evidence strongly suggests that Matacanela was not and that it persisted despite regional collapse. This study will evaluate the reasons for and strategies involved in settlement persistence. The research questions require data from site contexts associated with political authority (civic-ceremonial architecture, plazas), community and household ritual, household organization and food production/processing areas. These data will be amassed through the topographic mapping of the site; controlled, systematic surface collection of artifacts; geophysical survey; and stratigraphic excavations. These data will also help refine the regional chronology, which is relatively coarse-grained following AD 800. Concurrent with and following field work each season, all collected artifacts will be analyzed. Samples will be exported to the US for advanced analyses. The project participants will conduct additional data analysis in the US. The PI will integrate the diverse datasets. The intellectual merits of this project are two-fold. This research provides an evaluation of resilience during the collapse of a lowland Mesoamerican society. This research also compares Postclassic political reorganization with other Gulf lowland settlements. Postclassic reorganization in the south-central Gulf lowlands to the northwest was due in large part to Nahua immigration from the central Mexican highlands. Although Nahua immigration has been documented ethnolinguistically for the Tuxtlas, and some Aztec agents resided in the region at the time of Spanish arrival, continuity with earlier artifact traditions suggests that the foundation of Postclassic Tuxteco society was largely based on a reorganized local population. Important components in this reorganization may have included altered long distance networks, and means of acquiring authority. This project at Matacanela will permit sites in the south-central and southern Gulf lowlands to be situated within a broader comparative historical framework. The broader impacts of this project include collaborative efforts and learning opportunities for US and Mexican researchers and students in the form of field and laboratory experiences, thesis and dissertation data, peer-reviewed journal articles, and a project monograph. Moreover, the study region has experienced an explosion in development of two kinds lately: tourism and commercial infrastructure that seems to be setting the stage for natural gas extraction off of the Catemaco municipal coast. This project will provide important site registry data and management recommendations that natural and cultural conservation agencies, local agricultural cooperatives, tourism entrepreneurs, and officials can use to co-manage important and increasingly endangered components of cultural patrimony.
