Richard G. Lesure

Chronology, Subsistence, and the Earliest Formative of Central Tlaxcala, Mexico

We propose that pottery-using villages did not appear in the upland Apizaco region of central Tlaxcala, Mexico, until after 1000 B.C., centuries after such developments in choice locations for maize agriculture. We excavated at two of the earliest known Formative sites in the region. That work revealed abundant intact refuse deposits, allowing us to evaluate an exist ing ceramic chronology with new radiocarbon dates as well as characterize Formative subsistence. Our results support a more general model of emerging sedentism in central Mexico involving population dispersions from prime agricultural areas to zones of higher elevation. The earliest pottery-using agriculturalists in Apizaco were probably migrants from adjacent regions.

The Goddess Diffracted

Small ceramic figurines representing predominantly human females are characteristic artifacts of many of the world’s earliest settled villages. A long‐standing interpretive tradition links these to “fertility cults” or “mother goddesses,” but recent feminist scholarship suggests that such interpretations simply perpetuate our own society’s preconceptions about gender, nature, and culture. Such critiques have stimulated a burgeoning literature on figurine traditions in early villages, with an emphasis on diversity in styles, representations, and meanings. But because general frameworks for interpreting figurines have been torn down, we lack analytical approaches for understanding the similarities between different cases or even evaluating different interpretations. This paper describes a new framework for comparative analysis in figurine studies and explores the question why figurines in the Neolithic Near East and Formative Mesoamerica seem to have been predominantly female.

Prehispanic use of chili peppers in Chiapas, Mexico.

The genus Capsicum is New World in origin and represents a complex of a wide variety of both wild and domesticated taxa. Peppers or fruits of Capsicum species rarely have been identified in the paleoethnobotanical record in either Meso- or South America. We report here confirmation of Capsicum sp. residues from pottery samples excavated at Chiapa de Corzo in southern Mexico dated from Middle to Late Preclassic periods (400 BCE to 300 CE). Residues from 13 different pottery types were collected and extracted using standard techniques. Presence of Capsicum was confirmed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC)/MS-MS Analysis. Five pottery types exhibited chemical peaks for Capsicum when compared to the standard (dihydrocapsaicin). No peaks were observed in the remaining eight samples. Results of the chemical extractions provide conclusive evidence for Capsicum use at Chiapas de Corzo during a 700 year period (400 BCE–300 CE). Presence of Capsicum in different types of culinary-associated pottery raises questions how chili pepper could have been used during this early time period. As Pre-Columbian cacao products sometimes were flavored using Capsicum, the same pottery sample set was tested for evidence of cacao using a theobromine marker: these results were negative. As each vessel that tested positive for Capsicum had a culinary use we suggest here the possibility that chili residues from the Chiapas de Corzo pottery samples reflect either paste or beverage preparations for religious, festival, or every day culinary use. Alternatively, some vessels that tested positive merely could have been used to store peppers. Most interesting from an archaeological context was the presence of Capsicum residue obtained from a spouted jar, a pottery type previously thought only to be used for pouring liquids.

Figurines as Representations and Products at Paso de la Amada, Mexico

It is useful to view ceramic figurines from the Early Formative site of Paso de la Amada, Mexico, as both representations and products. That analysis links changes in a tradition of small, solid figurines to the rise of a novel social discourse concerning the elaboration and beautification of the human body. An increasing symbolic emphasis on the body may have been an important backdrop to the emergence of chiefly ideologies in the region.

SWIDDEN AGRICULTURE IN THE TIERRA FRÍA ? EVIDENCE FROM SEDIMENTARY RECORDS IN TLAXCALA

Abstract Swidden agriculture in Mesoamerica is commonly associated with the hot and humid lowlands and with small isolated communities. Charcoal-rich sediments discovered in Tlaxcala, however, suggest that it was practiced in the cold highlands in the Formative and Classic periods. The headwaters of the Xilomantla drainage incised a nine-meter deep channel shortly before 200 b.c., in response to increased runoff from slopes degraded by agriculture. It was filled back within a few hundred years with sands and muds containing recurrent laminae of charred plant matter that reflect the annual burning of secondary scrub in fallowed fields. A gully in the La Ladera drainage received high inputs of charcoal from the surroundings of a nearby settlement between ca. a.d. 400 and 900. The farming practices inferred from these deposits have no exact ethnographic analog. They inflicted lasting environmental damage, but were upheld for several centuries despite changes in settlement patterns.

The Neolithic Demographic Transition in Mesoamerica? Larger Implications of the Strategy of Relative Chronology

The Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT) has been generalized from its origin in Near Eastern/European prehistory for application to early agricultural settings across the world, and it should apply in Mesoamerica as well. This chapter explores the articulation of the NDT as a generalized culture-historical scenario with the more “homegrown” accounts of Mesoamericanists. Most of my effort is devoted to working through, at multiple scales, these larger resonances of the NDT in Mesoamerica. I confront that task by turning as much as possible to selected categories of primary data, thus moving toward grand culture-history from the bottom up. That work lays the basis for a return, at the end of the chapter, to the more concrete problem of setting dt = 0 in Mesoamerica.

The neolithic demographic transition in mesoamerica

The Neolithic demographic transition in Mesoamerica was a gradual process that unfolded over most of the Formative period (1800 BC–AD 200). An analysis of published records of over 6,700 pre-Hispanic burials, focusing on changing proportions of juveniles 5–19 years of age, suggests that fertility rates rose steadily during both the second and the first millennia BC. The gradual pace of the demographic transition was probably related to the low initial productivity of maize.

HOUSES OF STYLE: CONSUMPTION, ADORNMENT, AND IDENTITY IN FORMATIVE TLAXCALAN HOUSEHOLDS

Abstract The households of Formative period central Mexico represent critical loci for understanding major social transformations during a millennium (900 b.c.– a.d. 100) that witnessed the expansion and contraction of several macro-regional stylistic and economic networks, formalization of enduring political and religious institutions, and initial urbanization and state formation. Households and their constituent members used style to articulate important elements of their identity through practices of group consumption and personal adornment. In this study we consider style within the context of ceramic serving vessels and portable adornments primarily from sites in the state of Tlaxcala. We evaluate the manner in which dimensions of stylistic expression in these material goods contributed to shifting conceptualizations of household and individual identity and their articulation with community and supra-community social networks, noting the generally collective or affinitive manipulation of styles with means of socially differentiating age, status, and other dimensions of identity.

Emplotment as Epic in Archaeological Writing: The Site Monograph as Narrative

To emplot a narrative as epic is to present a story of vast scope and multiple plots as a legitimate member of a tradition of other such stories. This article argues that emplotment as epic is the broadest of three levels of plot in archaeological writings. At that level, the site monograph emerges as a characteristically archaeological form of narrative, fundamental to archaeology as a discipline and a source of chronic anxiety for archaeologists. The ‘stories’ told in site monographs are epic in length, diversity of materials covered and multiplicity of themes, plots and authors. Indeed, the more complexities of that sort the better, since those are features that help to emplot the work as good archaeology.

Reply to Comments from Brit Solli, Elisabeth Rudebeck and Alison Mickel

Archaeology compared to history. The categories of book-length works in history and archaeology are proposed as a way of thinking through the differences between historical and archaeological writings. To make sense of the variety of archaeological works, we probably do not need category 2; we could make do with presentations of primary evidence (category 1) versus syntheses (category 3). I agree with Rudebeck that no archaeological reports are pure presentations of data. Even reports that aspire ‘merely’ to present data are in fact inescapably laden with interpretation, not least because observations on material objects have been converted into words. This seems to me an important point of contrast with the characteristic situation of historians, though Solli is of course right about the complexity of actual research. The key points here are that archaeologists write works of different kinds (for instance, data monographs versus synthetic works) and that there are plenty of narrative strands in site monographs that are not always evident at first glance.