September 11, 2014
National Science Foundation Funding for "The Early Mesoamerica City: Urbanization at La Blanca, Guatemala"
Dr. Love, along with colleagues and students from US and Guatemalan universities, will conduct an archaeological investigation of early urbanism at the site of La Blanca, Guatemala. Previous scholarship on Mesoamerican urbanism has placed its first appearance in the Classic Period (ca AD 300- AD 900), but recent evidence suggests that urbanism began much earlier, during the Middle Preclassic period (ca 1000-600 BC). Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus many topics of broad interest to the social sciences and the humanities. As a process, urbanization changed the relationships between many social and cultural variables including demography, economy, political structures, and religious practices. Analysis of first-generation urbanization therefore offers an important opportunity to achieve a holistic perspective on important changes in the human condition as well as a myriad of social issues. As one of the limited number of cases in the world where urban centers developed independently, Mesoamerica plays a major role in the worldwide comparative analysis of first generation cities and urbanism. As one of Mesoamerica’s first settlements of urban scale, La Blanca is a key site in understanding first-generation cities.
Love’s research will examine how daily life was altered by urbanization and how people brought together in an early city negotiated their lives with one another. La Blanca was established when groups from a broad hinterland came together at a new location. This form of aggregation seems typical of early cities throughout the world. A primary question is whether these people of different backgrounds merged into a single new group, or whether they remained mostly independent of one another and maintained separate identities. Love’s study will examine three different areas of the city and ask whether they were integrated with one another through a single hierarchical system, or whether the districts were autonomous and only loosely integrated with one another. Love and his colleagues will examine the material remains of a number of households in each district of La Blanca and analyze the evidence of daily life preserved in houses, food remains, tools, and ritual items. The team will collect data on household economic activity (such as subsistence practices, craft production), as well as domestic ritual activity, including rituals of ancestor veneration. Those data will then be used to determine whether economic and ritual activity were organized primarily within each district or integrated at the level of the city itself.
Wenner-Gren Funding for "The Early Mesoamerican City: Urbanism And Urbanization In Formative Period Mesoamerica"
The purpose of the symposium is to examine the nature and scope of urbanism during the Mesoamerican Formative Period (1700 BCE-300 CE). Scholars will examine case studies of early cities, as well as pan-Mesoamerican trends in economy, social organization and cultural practices. The products of the seminar will be important contributions to the anthropological study of urbanism, identity, and social change, as well as a contribution the world-wide study of cities by anthropological archaeologists. Not too long ago the term “Formative Period Urbanism” would have struck many Mesoamerican archaeologists as an oxymoron. Yet, research over the past 20 years has demonstrated that the Formative Period was not just a prelude to the Classic Period (300-900 CE), but that it many regions it exceeded the Classic; not only were there true cities in the Formative period, but they were as large or larger than those the Classic. The latter part of the Formative period saw the climax of a 1500 year-long trend of increasing complexity and cities were widespread throughout Mesoamerica, supported by systems of intensive agriculture, with elites who shared a pan-Mesoamerican tradition of high culture that included art, writing, religion, and engineering.Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus many topics of broad interest to anthropology and is one of the central enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. As a transformational process, urbanization changes the relationships between many social and cultural variables such as demography, economy (especially subsistence and exchange), politics, and ideology. Analysis of urbanization therefore offers a unique opportunity to achieve a holistic perspective on a myriad of anthropological issues. As one of the limited number of cases where urban centers developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the world-wide comparative analysis of first generation cities.
The symposium is co-sponsored and co-funded by the CSUN Center for Mexican and Latin American Studies