The central goal of this research is to understand how complex social entities such as states develop. What are the links which serve in "traditional" societies to join large groups of individuals spread over thousands of square miles into effectively functioning social units? To what extent are economic factors central and where in the social structure do the driving forces arise? Archaeology can effectively address this issue since it can trace developmental trajectories often over millennial time spans.
With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Deborah L. Nichols and Wesley D. Stoner will investigate the development of craft specialization and exchange in the formation of early complex societies, a central research directive for archaeology. Central Mexico is a key region to study these developments as the heartland for the development of a series of large and influential early states and cities. Nichols and Stoner and a team of collaborators from the U.S. and Mexico will survey and excavate at the site of Altica, one of the earliest farming settlements and obsidian-working sites in the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico, that dates to the Early and Middle Formative (ca. 1300-850 BC). Altica is one of the best-preserved of the first farming villages in the Basin of Mexico. It is also one of the only known early villages in the northern Basin that worked obsidian from the Otumba source that, with the development of blade making, became widely exchanged in Mesoamerica. Altica thus became an active node within broad-scale interaction networks that connected the Teotihuacan Valley to other parts of Mesoamerica. Intensification and expansion of these early networks formed the social and economic foundation that propelled subsequent Basin polities to prominence in Mesoamerica.
Archaeological survey and excavations at Altica aim to reconstruct the site's role in establishing these early political and economic networks. The team will survey the ridge on which Altica is located and intensively survey and map the site itself and make systematic collections of surface artifacts. Based on the survey and limited geophysical prospection, excavations will focus on areas with artifact concentrations of possible subsurface features to obtain representative samples of artifacts in context. These data will help address to key questions: did emerging elites and the political economy prompt craft specialization or did its origins lie in the household economy of early farmers? Fieldwork at Altica will contribute new knowledge about early village life, agricultural landuse, and the development of specialized obsidian tool manufacturing and exchange systems. To understand Altica's role in the organization of early trading networks and craft specialization, the researchers will analyze artifacts from key collections of other Early and Middle Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico and apply a multi-technique approach to compositional analyses of ceramics and obsidian from the larger Central Mexico macro-region.
The broader impact of this project is to renew research on the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico that spanned the founding of the first villages to the development of the first cities and states. This project is an important step in addressing the near lack of problem-oriented research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico over the past quarter century. The project will provide training and research for younger archaeologists and students who in recent decades have had limited opportunities for research at Formative sites in the Basin of Mexico. The project involves substantial collaboration with archaeologists and students from Mexico and the US and will contribute to international scientific cooperation.
