Gordon R. Willey

Horizon Styles and Pottery Traditions in Peruvian Archaeology

The Present paper is partially devoted to a consideration of the concept of “horizon styles” in Peruvian archaeology: how the concept has been used in archaeological reconstruction, and how new styles are in the process of formulation. It includes also an analysis of several ceramic periods which may be grouped into such a horizon style, the White-on-red. Differing from the horizon style is another historical phenomenon which I have called the “pottery tradition.” An attempt is made here to show the relationship of these two concepts— horizon styles and pottery traditions—as they are exemplified in Peruvian archaeology.

The Type-Variety Concept as a Basis for the Analysis of Maya Pottery

The method being used to analyze pottery from Uaxactun and Barton Ramie by the application of the type-variety concept is offered as an analytical approach well suited to the classification of Maya ceramics. Types and varieties are seen as the best archaeological approximation of the ceramic abstractions which existed in the prehistoric cultural configuration. The systematic application of the type-variety concept will make it possible to establish analytical ceramic units which will be comparable throughout the Maya territory, to undertake detailed chronological and areal studies, especially in areas away from the ceremonial centers, and to use ceramics as a step toward cultural interpretation. Considerable attention is given to the procedure of analysis and to the problem of naming the resulting analytical ceramic units. The most desirable nomenclature is illustrated by Aguacate Orange [type]: Holha Variety. Place names have been used for the primary type term and for the variety name, but a descriptive term is used for the second part of the type name. The desirability of keeping the variety flexible and free of bias or prejudice stemming from the nomenclature is stressed. The variety is the smallest meaningful unit of classification in the type-variety method. Sorting, naming, and tabulating begin with varieties which, in turn, lead to the recognition, naming and description of types.

The Prehistory of the Southeastern Maya Periphery

THE VERITABLE EXPLOSION of archaeological research activity in the Maya area during the past 15 years has affected primarily the core areas of prehistoric Maya cultural development: the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala and the lowlands of Guatemala and Yucatan (Adams 1969). Contrary to this trend, the investigations of the Chalchuapa Archaeological Project have focused upon an important population and ceremonial center on the periphery of the Maya area in the southeastern highlands of El Salvador. Despite its long characterization as a frontier between Maya and non-Maya peoples (Lothrop 1939, Longyear 1947), this area has never been subjected to the systematic problem-oriented archaeological investigation necessary to the discovery of the actual nature of this region in pre-Columbian times. The investigations of the Chalchuapa Archaeological Project provide for the first time data bearing upon the entire prehistoric time-span of a major site in this Maya frontier region (fig. 1). The research coincided with the important excavations by Andrews (1970) at

Maya archaeology and ethnohistory

* Preface (Norman Hammond and Gordon R. Willey) * Introduction (Gordon R. Willey and Norman Hammond) * Theoretical Interpretations *1. Priests, Peasants, and Ceremonial Centers: The Intellectual History of a Model (Marshall Joseph Becker) *2. Cropping Cash in the Protoclassic: A Cultural Impact Statement (Bruce H. Dahlin) *3. A New Order and the Role of the Calendar: Some Characteristics of the Middle Classic Period at Tikal (Clemency Coggins) *4. Teotihuacan, Internal Militaristic Competition, and the Fall of the Classic Maya (George L. Cowgill) *5. An Epistemological Pathology and the Collapse, or Why the Maya Kept the Short Count (Dennis E. Puleston) * Data Presentations *6. Prehistoric Settlement at Copan (Gordon R. Willey and Richard M. Leventhal) *7. Prehispanic Terracing in the Central Maya Lowlands: Problems of Agricultural Intensification (B. L. Turner II) *8. The Representation of Underworld Processions in Maya Vase Painting: An Iconographic Study (Jacinto Quirarte) *9. A Sequence for Palenque Painting Techniques (Merle Greene Robertson) *10. The Lagartero Figurines (Susanna M. Ekholm) * Ethnohistoric Approaches *11. The Lobil Postclassic Phase in the Southern Interior of the Yucatan Peninsula (Peter D. Harrison) *12. Coapa, Chiapas: A Sixteenth-Century Coxoh Maya Village on the Camino Real (Thomas A. Lee, Jr.) *13. Religious Syncretism in Colonial Yucatan: The Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Evidence from Tancah, Quintana Roo (Arthur G. Miller and Nancy M. Farriss) *14. Continuity in Maya Writing: New Readings of Two Passages in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Gordon Brotherston) * Bibliography * General Index * Author Index

Aspero, Peru: A Reexamination of the Site and Its Implications

The large preceramic site of Aspero, on the central Peruvian coast, was explored in the past by Uhle and by Willey and Corbett; however, these investigators did not recognize the presence of sizable artificial platform mounds or “corporate labor structures” at the site. In spite of its preceramic status, Aspero was a sedentary community, and the corporate labor structures suggest the beginnings of a complex, non-egalitarian society. The hypothesis is advanced that such a society was “pre-adapted” toward corporate labor activity and that this “pre-adaptation” expedited the rapid transference from a marine economy to an agricultural one at the close of the Cotton Preceramic period (about 2000-1800 B.C.).

The Collapse of Classic Maya Civilization in the Southern Lowlands: A Symposium Summary Statement

A review of evidence on the cultural, economic, and demographic collapses in the Maya southern lowlands after 790 A.D. has led to new theories of the history and causes of these events. Intense population growth, rising socio-political competition between centers, sharpening class divisions, and nascent militarism generated difficult problems for the conservative theocracies of the Maya polity. These problems were intensified by military and economic pressures ultimately originating from the more dynamic Mexican societies. Ensuing breakdowns in trade and agriculture led to an intensifying cycle of disbalances and, finally, collapses. Maya recovery was later inhibited by the rise of new competing centers with stronger resource bases than those of the Maya southern lowlands.

Horizonal Integration and Regional Diversity: An Alternating Process in the Rise of Civilizations

The Precolumbian culture sequences for Mesoamerica and Peru, the two New World areas where native civilizations attained their greatest complexity, show, in each case, an alternation between periods of horizon-style unifications and periods of marked regional stylistic diversity. It is the thesis of the present essay that this alternating process of intense regional interaction broken by periods of lesser interaction is a vital one in the rise to civilizational complexity.

Mesoamerican civilization and the idea of transcendence

How do ideas, or ideologies, articulate with other cultural systems? This is a complex question, and archaeologists, in their study of the rise and growth of civilizations, have been hesitant to address it. There are obvious reasons for this hesitancy. Even in those instances where the archaeological record is text-aided it is difficult, and it is still more so where contemporaneous documentary materials are lacking or equivocal, as in Precolumbian America. Then, too, it is my impression that while many archaeologists are willing to grant ideology a role in cultural development they tend to look upon it as causally ‘secondary’. Subsistence, demography, technology, and ecology—perhaps because they are more directly susceptible to archaeological methods and inferences than are idea systems—are more apt to be seen as the seats of ‘prime cause’.

Developments in the Archaeology of Nuclear America, 1935-60

Archaeological developments in the zone extending from Mesoamerica to the Andes are summarized in terms of the following topics: early man, the origins of agriculture, the interrelationships of the Nuclear American cultures, the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, horizonal and tradition formulations, the place of Nuclear America in the hemisphere, relationships between the New World and the Old World, the rise of native American civilizations, and main trends since 1935. These trends include increasing chronological control, greater awareness of context, growing interest in culture process, and more clarity and precision in definitions.

Archaeological Perspective on Algonkian-Gulf Linguistic Relationships

INTRODUCTION A GENETIC RELATIONSHIP of a fundamental n ture has been proposed between Algonkian languages and those of a Greater Muskogean or Gulf family (see Haas, this issue). This relationship, as I understand it, indicates a connection more recent and more intimate han those previously suggested between Muskogean and the other supposed component families of the Hokan-Siouan phylum, such as Siouan, Iroquian, or Caddoan. If this proposal of Algonkian-Gulf affinities is accepted it means a major redrawing of the linguistic map of eastern North America. The pattern would be no longer that of a northern a d eastern Algonkian front impinging upon a southern and western Hokan-Siouan block; instead, the whole Woodlands of the East would now constitute a solid expanse of Algonkian-Gulf languages, dotted only by Iroquois, Cherokee, Uiche, and other minor enclaves. This rearrangement raises a number of questions for anthropological and archaeological consideration. One of the first of these queries prompted by the linguistic realignments is whether o not a basic unity of prehistoric cultures xists in the Eastern Woodlands that might accord with an ancient Algonkian-Gulf language family. Ifso, what are the estimated ages? Deriving from these questions are others concerning continuities and replacements of peoples, languages, and cultures, with particular reference to the relationships between Algonkian-Gulf and Hokan-Siouan groups. In addressing myself to the archaeological perspectives of these questions, let me make clear that here has been no established dogma in Eastern United States archaeology concerning linguistic-archaeological identifications o a major scale. Consequently, the recent findings on Algonkian and Gulf affinities do not necessitate the abandoning of deeply cherished opinions. Eastern archaeologists have pursued the matter of prehistoric culture and language correlations upon the relatively safe ground of historic site documentation as this pertains to specific tribes and archaeological omplexes. Such studies, while giving some clues toward generalizations, have also emphasized the well-known dictum that there are no easy one-to-one correlations of archaeological and linguistic data. For gross languagearchaeological culture relationships the best we can hope for is reasonable probabil* This paper was presented as a part of a symposium at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, December, 1957. It is reproduced here substantially as read.