Recent excavation and survey work by Drs. Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban in the Naco valley in Honduras has indicated the presence of a complex prehistoric polity which reached florescence in the late first and early second millennia A.D. At the central site of La Sierra, investigators noted 38 monumental platforms in the core area and 468 constructions overall which date to the Late Classic period. In the surrounding region, they located a large number of sites, all of which are significantly smaller than La Sierra itself. On this basis they suggested that the site represents the capital of a state level polity which encompasses the entire valley and possibly extends beyond these physiographic limits. With National Science Foundation support the team will continue their research in the Naco Valley. Their goal is to understand the political mechanisms which permitted stratification and centralization to develop. They believe that the economic system was controlled by the elite and organized in such a way to maintain this domination. This extended both to local craft production as well as importation of specialized commodities. To test this idea they will excavate a series of household groups both within and beyond La Sierra to determine the range and intensity of craft activities performed in different portions of the polity. These data will be correlated with site location in relation to La Sierra and other indicators of household prestige. The research is important for several reasons. First, it will increase our understanding of how complex societies are developed, maintained, and eventually collapse. The diachronic data which such archaeology can provide will shed a new light on mechanisms of political control. Secondly, the project will provide data from a relatively unknown area and these will be of interest to a large number of archaeologists. Finally, this project supports research at an undergraduate institution and will provide students firsthand exposure to the practice of science.
