Settlement and Subsistence in Early Formative Soconusco: El Varal and the Problem of Inter-Site Assemblage Variation

The Soconusco region, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, is the location of some of the earliest pottery-using villages of ancient Mesoamerica. Mobile early inhabitants of the area harvested marsh clams in the estuaries, leaving behind vast mounds of shell. With the introduction of pottery and the establishment of permanent villages (from 1900 B.C.), use of the resource-rich estuary changed. The archaeological manifestation of that new estuary adaptation is a dramatic pattern of inter-site variability in pottery vessel forms. Vessels at sites within the estuary were about seventy percent neckless jars -- "tecomates" -- while vessels at contemporaneous sites a few kilometers inland were seventy percent open dishes. The pattern is well-known, but the the settlement arrangements or subsistence practices that produced it have remained unclear. Archaeological investigations at El Varal, a special-purpose estuary site of the later Early Formative (1250-1000 B.C.) expand possibilities for an anthropological understanding of the archaeological patterns. The goal of this volume is to describe excavations and finds at the site and to propose, based on a variety of analyses, a new understanding of Early Formative assemblage variability.Series: Monographs 6

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

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

The Constitution of Inequality in Yurok Society

Ethnographic accounts of the precontact Yurok of Northwest California serve as a test case for evaluating Jane Collier's (1988) recent models of the constitution of inequality in kin-based societies. This analysis does not support Collier's basic thesis that the nature of the relationship between husbands and their wives' kin determines the degree of social inequality. Nor does it support her contention that each of three contrastive models represents a particular type of society, since two of her three models apply to the Yurok case. However, Collier's models, treated as organizational themes rather than societal types, represent useful analytical tools for understanding the bases of inequality in Yurok society. In addition to the social structural relations explored by Collier, particular material circumstances and cosmological tenets established the contexts in which people negotiated the distribution of power, privilege, and prestige