Human Adaptation in Ancient Mesoamerica: Empirical Approaches to Mesoamerican Archaeology

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Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword

George R. Milner

Preface

Nancy Gonlin and Kirk D. French

Section I: Introduction

1. Empirical Archaeology and Human Adaptation in Mesoamerica

Kirk D. French and Nancy Gonlin

Section II: Water and Land

2. Water Temples and Civil Engineering at Teotihuacan, Mexico

Susan Toby Evans and Deborah L. Nichols

3. Measuring the Impact of Land Cover Change at Palenque, Mexico

Kirk D. French and Christopher J. Duffy

4. Complementarity and Synergy: Stones, Bones, Soil, and Toil in the Copan Valley, Honduras

John D. Wingard

Section III: Population and Settlement Studies

5. Chronology, Construction, and the Abandonment Process: A Case Study from the Classic Maya Kingdom of Copan, Honduras

AnnCorinne Freter and Elliot M. Abrams

6. The Map Leads the Way: Archaeology in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico

Stephen L. Whittington and Nancy Gonlin

Section IV: Reconstruction and Burial Analysis

7 The Excavation and Reconstruction of Group 8N-11, Copan, Honduras: The Process of Discovery and Rediscovery

Randolph J. Widmer and Rebecca Storey

8. The Maya in the Middle: An Analysis of Sub-Royal Archaeology at Copan, Honduras

David M. Reed and W. Scott Zeleznik

Section V: Political Economy

9. Life under the Classic Maya Turtle Dynasty of Piedras Negras, Guatemala: Households and History

Zachary Nelson

10. The Production, Exchange, and Consumption of Pottery Vessels during the Classic Period at Tikal, Petén, Guatemala

Kirk Damon Straight

Section VI: Reflections and Discussion

11. Forty Years in Petén, Guatemala: A Hagiographic Prosopography

Don S. Rice and Prudence M. Rice

12. Two-Katun Archaeologist

David Webster

List of Contributors

Index

Figures

0.1. Group photo of SAA symposium participants, April 2012, Memphis, TN

1.1. Map of Mesoamerican sites discussed in this volume

1.2. Julian Steward

1.3. Gordon Willey

1.4. William T. Sanders

1.5. David Webster

1.6 Chronology chart of phases for major sites/areas discussed in this volume

2.1. Teotihuacan’s ceremonial center crosscuts the slopes of the valley

2.2. The San Juan River

2.3. Teotihuacan’s two largest pyramids, the Street of the Dead

2.4. The Tetitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan

2.5. A feline clad in a net kneels before a water temple

2.6. Da Vinci’s Annunciation shows a format similar to the net jaguar murals

2.7. Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in San Juan Teotihuacan

3.1. Plan map of Palenque, Mexico

3.2. Bryson/MarkSim simulated precipitation and temperature

3.3. A prismatic finite volume approximation for surface and groundwater flow

3.4. PIHMgis scenarios for the Palenque watershed

3.5. Average total daily discharge for the Palenque watershed

3.6. Average yearly precipitation and temperature for three time periods

3.7. Seven-day average peak and low flows; Otolum vs. seven-day precipitation total

4.1. View of the Copan Valley, Honduras

4.2. Population growth models: two simulations using different assumptions

4.3. Land cleared each year, peak period for each topographic zone in the Copan Valley

4.4. Cultivation by topographic zone, weighted average slope of alluvial foothill soils

4.5. Population growth models: pre–Late Classic and Late Classic, Copan, Honduras

5.1. Copan’s Principal Group and courtyard groups

5.2. Plan maps of selected Copan courtyard groups

5.3. Radiocarbon and obsidian hydration dates for groups at Copan

5.4. Copan Valley settlement distribution by 150-year intervals

6.1. Mapa de Teozacoalco in the form of a mappa mundi

6.2. First page of San Pedro Teozacoalco’s Relación Geográfica

6.3 Reconstructed borders of Teozacoalco, 1580 CE, and current San Pedro Teozacoalco

6.4 Logograph of Chiyo Ca’nu (Teozacoalco)

6.5 Archaeological sites encountered by the Proyecto Arqueológico Teozacoalco

6.6 Sketch map, Iglesia Gentil, on top of Cerro Amole, Teozacoalco

6.7 Sketch map, Cerro del Fortín

6.8 Sources of obsidian used in the Teozacoalco area

6.9. Citizens of Zapotitlán del Río inspect a poster describing the Proyecto Arqueológico Teozacoalco

6.10. Student’s sketch map of Bellevue College, in the style of the Mapa de Teozacoalco

7.1. Plan maps of Groups 8N-11 and 9N-8 in Sepulturas, Copan, Honduras

7.2. Map of excavated portions of Group 8N-11, Copan, Honduras

7.3. Tunnel into the western face of the Structure 66C platform, Group 8N-11

7.4. Structure 66C Second, Group 8N-11

7.5. Group 8N-11 dedicatory caches

7.6. Conical fired-clay-lined pit basin, Group 8N-11

7.7. Part of Feature 20, Structure 66N, Group 8N-11

7.8. Offerings and caches, Group 8N-11

7.9. Dismantled walls in recovery of burials at Group 8N-11

7.10. Burial offerings from Group 8N-11

8.1. Principal component loadings highlighting variables that contribute most to each factor

8.2. Scatter plot, boxplot, and histogram showing distribution of mortuary scores

8.3. Stable carbon and nitrogen measurements, by commoner and elite site types

8.4. Principal component biplots of the top middle and bottom middle subdivisions

8.5. Scatter plot of mortuary scores showing jade in burials

8.6. Scatter plots of mortuary scores by sex and number of jade items

8.7. Stable carbon and nitrogen measurements by sex

9.1. Map of Piedras Negras, Guatemala

9.2. Selected Mesoamerican sites to scale

9.3. Quadrant map of Piedras Negras, Guatemala

9.4. Polity size versus estimated population by ruler for Piedras Negras

9.5. Chert, figurine, and obsidian quantity by ceramic phase, Piedras Negras

9.6. U-Group at Piedras Negras with excavated areas of PN 33A-E and PN 33F

10.1. Map of Tikal Park with locations of 2005–2006 peripheral excavations

10.2. Bivariate graph of the first and second principal components

10.3. Round-sided bowls of the Balanza ceramic group

10.4. Four views of a reconstructed Ik lateral-ridge dish

11.1. Map of the Maya region

11.2. The Pennsylvania State University Archaeology faculty in 1972

11.3. Map of the lakes regions in central Petén, Guatemala

11.4. Lake-core extraction at Lake Macanché

11.5. Map of archaeological sites in the central Petén, Guatemala

Tables

4.1. Population growth model parameters for Copan, Honduras

4.2. Elite labor demands for Copan, Honduras

5.1. Radiocarbon and obsidian hydration dates, Gr. 10L-2

6.1. Archaeological phases in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico

7.1. Burials and their locations in Group 8N-11, Copan, Honduras

8.1. Frequency of age-at-death divided by sex for Copan

8.2. Frequency of age-at-death for Copan

8.3. Frequency of grave types for Copan

8.4. Reliability analysis results of mortuary variable for Copan

8.5. Mortuary score for percentiles of Copan burial data

9.1. Epicentral structural counts from selected Mesoamerican sites

9.2. Classic Maya Turtle lords of Piedras Negras

9.3. Household signature by ceramic phase

9.4. PN 33A–F artifact assemblages

9.5. PN 33A–F proportional assemblages

9.6. PN 33F vs. Copan rural sites, artifact assemblage

10.1. Percentage of vessel form classes from peripheral Tikal excavations

10.2. Number of samples assigned to compositional reference groups, Tikal ceramics

10.3. Pottery samples from compositional reference groups, by zone designations (Zones 1, 2, 3, SE, and West)

10.4. Pottery samples from compositional reference groups, by zone designations (Zones North and SE)

10.5. Pottery samples from five compositional reference groups, from single middens

10.6. CV values for Ik ceramic complex lateral-ridge dishes, Tikal

10.7. CV values for Ik ceramic complex lateral-ridge dishes, outliers removed

10.8. Ik lateral-ridge dishes assigned to five compositional reference groups, Tikal

Foreword

GEORGE R. MILNER

When asked to write an introductory piece, I was not entirely sure what could possibly be added to this already fine collection of essays. The editors provided few instructions, other than that as head of Penn State’s anthropology department I should say something about the archaeology program, and as one of David Webster’s colleagues for upwards of 30 years it would be appropriate to highlight some of his contributions to archaeology.

So I suppose the title of David’s chapter, Two Katun Archaeologist, is as good a place to start as any. While appropriately enough referring to the Maya, it has been my experience that he is more interested in the Great Game¹ and the other happenings, preoccupations, and follies of imperialism, which serve as fine examples of how institutions work (or don’t), and the often serendipitous unfolding of human history that, more often than not, is little more than one misadventure after another. At least that is what we are forever talking about in his office or mine, although that might just reflect my tenuous grasp of Mesoamerican prehistory. But it also underscores David’s wide, almost encyclopedic, knowledge of human affairs, institutions, and history (extending into deep prehistory) derived from extensive reading, travel, and reflection.

To establish my credentials for the task at hand, I should trot out my sole entry into the vast, thought-provoking, and provocative, if not always believable, Mesoamerican literature (Buikstra et al. 2006). David had a hand in this work, if only as an interested bystander. A number of years ago when Jesper L. Boldsen (University of Southern Denmark) and I were developing a better means of skeletal age estimation for adults, my former doctoral advisor, Jane E. Buikstra, contacted me because she was heading off to Palenque to look at a skeleton. In due course she sent me her observations of the pubic symphysis, the best part of the skeleton for aging purposes, along with a photograph. When I received them, I had no idea that a controversy swirled around this skeleton’s age and identity. It just so happened that David walked by my office shortly after Jesper and I calculated the individual’s age, which took work on both sides of the Atlantic. When told about the result, David reacted with surprise and pleasure because the maximum likelihood estimate was within a few years of the glyph-derived age, which, until our conversation, was unknown to me. He also explained who the mysterious Pakal was, and that archaeologists were divided over whether the skeleton was his or not.

This was one of those rare occasions when a single result clearly distinguishes among competing ideas. There were several alternatives that, to an outsider like myself, might be possible, if not equally plausible: the original skeletal age estimates were wide of the mark, somebody else’s body was placed in Pakal’s tomb, the glyph age was deliberately misleading, or the glyph age was mistranslated. As it turns out, the individual buried in the tomb was indeed an old man, so existing age estimates were in error, as they were too young. That comes as no surprise because standard procedures produce biased results, so the true ages of people from roughly their fifties onward are underestimated. In addition, they fail to provide a means of doing anything with individuals thought to be old, other than lumping them into a terminal, open-ended interval (e.g., 50+ years). So perhaps the skeleton really was Pakal. Going that far, however, rests squarely on the consistency of all available evidence: the age and sex of the skeleton, burial offerings, tomb characteristics and location, and glyphs. In this instance, the data are mutually supportive and point in one direction, meaning we can be reasonably happy with the interpretation.

The last point will strike a chord with anyone who knows David. He is always saying that the best inferences are those that are based on multiple lines of evidence. Claims that new findings overturn long-established interpretations are common in our field. Sometimes that actually is the case, which is gratifying because present understandings should always be questioned in light of additional information and improved methods. Unfortunately, new findings that supposedly have revolutionary implications are often found wanting upon further reflection. That is because of technical problems, which were not initially fully understood, or poor sampling, especially the number and representativeness of the materials examined.

Anyone who has been around for a while will recognize a common pattern. A procedure is introduced that yields seemingly straightforward and unassailable results, the work is widely touted by science reporters, and there is a flurry of papers. Belatedly the results are seen to be less definitive than originally thought, prompting more work to fine-tune the procedure. In due course, initial enthusiasm subsides as limitations on what can be reliably said are recognized. If everything goes swimmingly well, the new procedure eventually becomes one of the conventional means of analyzing archaeological materials.

The preceding discussion was framed around techniques, but the same holds true of new concepts and terms, typically borrowed from allied fields. One such example is world systems that caught on in archaeology about 25 years ago, even while it simultaneously became so diluted it bore little resemblance to the highly developed economies of the past few centuries it was designed to characterize. One might be excused for believing that boosting an article’s chances of publication is the main goal of including newly introduced terms and concepts divorced from their original contexts and meanings. They go through periods of popularity before being all but abandoned, much like the familiar battleship curves describing artifact frequencies over time. Whatever good comes from them eventually worms its way into the general body of archaeological thought, resulting in incremental shifts rather than seismic transformations. In the final analysis, it is much ado about nothing, with due apologies to William Shakespeare for applying his title to tedious academic texts bereft of comedic content (except the unintentional kind).

Perhaps the most salient characteristic of David’s work, which conforms to the archaeology program at Penn State more generally, is its singleness of purpose. Much like a ship of the line sailing the high seas, the research has proceeded apace, tacking as necessary when close-hauled against strong scholarly headwinds. His work has never deviated far from its charted course, unlike so many efforts that have been diverted to ill effect by passing fancies that periodically convulse our discipline.

Human-environment relationships have long dominated Penn State’s archaeology program, and David’s part in it, as illustrated by the chapters in this volume. Sometimes derided as old fashioned, these topics actually represent the future. That is how it would appear from the Society for American Archaeology’s recent compilation of the 25 most important issues that face us (Kintigh et al. 2014). Environmental and population-related topics figure prominently on the list, as do those on social organization and economic systems. Here is where archaeological research can make a real difference in our understanding of how we got to where we are today. It only makes sense to focus on these issues considering the challenges posed by ever-increasing numbers of people clamoring for greater access to limited resources. No matter how bleak a Malthusian future might be ahead of us—and there is reason to believe solutions will be hard to come by—we can perhaps learn from past adaptive strategies that were sufficiently resilient to last for long periods of time.

The Penn State program, and especially David’s involvement with it, has long been associated with settlement survey and excavation projects. The chapter by Dolph Widmer and Rebecca Storey covers one such meticulous excavation. David’s work, and that of his colleagues, is indicative of a broadly construed concern with human-land relationships. These projects include a strong population orientation, including the estimation of settlement and regional population sizes and their changes over time. Adequately addressing such issues requires intensive fieldwork, both surveys and excavations, and a firm grasp of comparative information on household composition, community size, and the like. Chapters by John Wingard, as well as AnnCorinne Freter and Elliot Abrams, on Copan are fine examples of the value of complementary investigations of changes over time in population size, sociopolitical systems, and landscapes.

Furthering our understanding of human-land relationships, especially with a suitably long and sufficiently precise temporal dimension, involves years of arduous work collecting information from the right kinds of contexts targeted by well-designed surveys and excavations. David’s work with Bill Sanders at Copan is an outstanding example of how this interdisciplinary work should be conducted. Several chapters, including those on Copan and Tikal, are in no small part based on field projects undertaken with David’s direct involvement. One result of this work, as explained by Dave Reed and W. Scott Zeleznik, is an appreciation of the variability in social categories such as elite, thereby providing a better feel for the true workings of the Copan society. For Tikal, Kirk Straight covers pottery production, including who was doing it, what they made, how it was distributed, and what all of that means in terms of an urban center. For the remainder of the sites—Teotihuacan, Palenque, Piedras Negras, and Teozacoalco—David’s influence is felt as mentor and colleague. For example, much like the situation at Copan, Zach Nelson explores variation in Maya social categories, pointing out that inclusive labels such as elite and non-elite fail to capture the rich social fabric of Piedras Negras.

A dominant theme in David’s work is cultural evolution, especially as it pertains to the emergence of complex sociopolitical systems. A vocal minority reflexively react negatively to cultural evolution, so some explanation is necessary. Although there is nothing necessarily wrong with saying that humans adapt to the world’s diverse environments through their culture, the story is more complicated than that. Particular ways of life can be viewed as satisfactory adaptations in the sense that they persist in specific settings. That statement does not imply they are the best conceivably possible if one could somehow assemble social, political, economic, and belief systems from scratch to accommodate all the peculiarities of local natural and social environments. Political and economic institutions, beliefs, settlement configurations and distributions, and land-use patterns have deep histories that impose constraints on the future shapes of societies. They often retard changes that would make sense if there really were such a thing as an adaptationally perfect world. Similar to biological evolution where selection and drift act on what already exists, historical contingency looms large in long-term cultural sequences. That is one reason there is much quirkiness in cultural adaptations to the point where particular ways of doing things, established by longstanding convention, can be downright maladaptive.

In short, traditions are a bit like zombies. They are very much alive—traditions great and small guide much of what we do every day. Yet they simultaneously exert a deadening effect on the capacity to adapt to new circumstances. Established ways of thinking and acting can be maladaptive to the point of hastening people to their graves, such as when existing practices impinge on the technological and organizational wherewithal required to produce food and to decrease exposure to infectious diseases. Over time these practices might be weeded out of the population. But for that change to happen, selection against them must be great enough to transcend traditional ways of structuring relationships and performing basic tasks, and their elimination should not significantly disrupt other essential aspects of daily life. This process must occur before the natural and social environments change yet again, altering selective forces in ways that might reverse the earlier effect. To the extent that local settings are shaped by the people residing in them—places are consciously and unconsciously modified in ways that often benefit particular ways of life—there is an additional drag on cultural systems, favoring near-stasis over dramatic change. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that archaeologically measurable indicators of change, such as the characteristics of artifacts and architecture, tend to span many generations to centuries, the basis for the battleship curves mentioned above. Even the use of the word battleship in that context illustrates retention long past immediate relevance, as most archaeologists today were born after those ships were repeatedly shown to be inconsequential to the world’s navies. When sudden changes in the archaeological record appear, they demand our close attention. They assuredly occurred, and establishing what lay behind them will tell us much about the development of cultural sequences.

Another criticism of cultural evolution is that it implies the existence of some mechanism that pushes societies unidirectionally from one point to the next. It is as if an external force, perhaps environmental change or uncontrolled population growth, or internal dynamic, much like nineteenth-century paleontological orthogenesis or historical dialectical materialism, spurred on institutional change, resulting in ever more complex sociopolitical and economic systems. David, in his summary of this volume, is rightly critical of the notion that evolution connotes progress. In fact, the two—evolution and progress—were decoupled long ago, except by the relatively few archaeologists who cynically use it as a strawman to gull credulous readers.

Yet there is still one area where directional change is still very much with us, coupled with visions of a prelapsarian hunter-gatherer past. It is widely believed that the human condition went through progressive decline, first with the appearance of agricultural economies (Neolithic), and then with the emergence of complex sociopolitical systems (Civilization). Among this scenario’s empirical, methodological, and logical flaws is the directional change implied by a simple two-step model of uniformly declining health—it is as if the same force(s) was acting on societies worldwide. We would be better off if we looked at the wide range of societies that existed in both the distant and more recent past, and spent time exploring their diversity while also identifying commonalities that permit generalizations about cultural systems and evolutionary processes. This is the multilinear approach, to use an old but still apt term, which has characterized much of David’s work on sociopolitical evolution. Exploring the diversity of cultural adaptations and their effects on morbidity and mortality is a better way to proceed than to assume at the outset, in the fashion of Rousseauian thinking, that health deteriorated with agricultural economies and declined still further with the appearance of the state.

Turning to intersociety relations, David has a longstanding interest in warfare in prehistory, specifically how it can be recognized, the ways it was conducted, who participated in it, and how conflict was related to both the structure of sociopolitical systems and societal change. In fact, back in the 1970s, long before it became fashionable to do so, he argued that it was a major part of life for the ancient Maya.

Prehistoric warfare has now become a popular topic among archaeologists associated with North American institutions, as indicated by the large number of recent meeting presentations and published papers. Those inclined to alternative universe and time-warp fiction might be forgiven for concluding that the ancient Maya did not fight until the 1980s, and their North American cousins were peaceful for somewhat longer. At least that is how it might appear to those imaginative if misguided souls, to judge from the number of papers and grants and when they appeared.

Unfortunately, much of what is done today on prehistoric warfare is hardly worth the effort of reading. Too many studies are spiced with idle speculation that reveals a poor grasp of the ethnographic and historical literature, or what earlier archaeological contributions have to say about the topic. Even solid descriptive studies are often of limited interest as they are of the we have that here too sort. David’s work has done much to embed this aspect of human interaction into Maya sociopolitical systems, especially as conflicts often stemmed from the machinations of rulers constantly jockeying for advantage using the limited means available to them. It is this focus on what was happening on the ground that distinguishes his research, and makes it so instructive well beyond the Maya area.

Overall, much remains to be learned about how fighting was conducted and who took part in it in specific cultural settings. Perhaps more important, there is a real deficit of concrete information on the impact of warfare on local communities and why it seemingly waxed and waned from one place and time to another. All we know for sure is that the level of intergroup hostilities varied considerably among the small-scale societies of the distant past—the situation was not one of unrelieved Hobbesian warre or idyllic Rousseauian harmony. At the very least, archaeological information is a useful corrective to overly broad generalizations, such as those that appear in Pinker’s (2011) highly acclaimed The Better Angels of Our Nature. His argument is much more than a reprise of Hobbes’s Leviathan. However, preliterate societies of all types, including those in prehistory, are given short shrift, being painted as existing in a state of savagery dominated by violence. The real question—and it is one that has yet to be tackled by quantifiable archaeological evidence—is why some groups were prone to conflict, whereas others were not.

It is trite to say archaeologists face great uncertainties in our interpretations. Samples are small relative to the phenomena we wish to document and, worse, they are rarely representative, especially because we generally have only a fuzzy notion of the population from which the samples were drawn. Dating accuracy (correspondence between estimated and actual ages) and precision (estimate interval length) are typically far less than we would like. Perhaps most disturbing, the connections between what we are interested in, behavior and various events, and the physical remains preserved for study are incomplete and indirect. It is a wonder any sense at all can be made of the past. There are, of course, postmodernists who maintain that all is illusion, and any attempt to discriminate between better and worse explanations is a fool’s errand. Yet despite my deep misgivings about much of what archaeologists report as fact—here I am referring mostly to my geographical area expertise, although there is no reason to think the situation is different elsewhere—I believe something can be done to sort out the best interpretations from the rest of the pack. Some of them better account for the evidence at hand because observations are more numerous or collectively constitute a more representative sample, or perhaps the data were collected and analyzed with superior methods. Whatever the reason, some inferences correspond more closely with the evidence than others. They are the ones that should be favored until something better comes along.

I often tell students that one way to think about structuring research is through a process of exclusion. There are normally several possible explanations for a particular observation; for example, the discovery of a distinctive kind of artifact far from its place of origin. Next one looks at the available evidence, as much as possible from various sources, and determines which alternatives are less likely than the others, thereby eliminating them from further consideration. In the end, there might be more than one possibility, and this hopefully small set of alternatives forms the basis for additional field or laboratory work. There is, of course, nothing new about this approach. Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier described it as follows: when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It may well be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support (Doyle 2003, 528). That is much different from what some archaeologists do when starting off with an idea and then proceeding to cherry-pick available survey and excavation findings for anything that might happen to be consistent with it.

A major part of determining which explanations better account for how people organize their lives and comport themselves in particular circumstances might be called common sense. It is, however, rather more than that. This understanding is acquired only through a close reading of numerous ethnographic and historical sources, preferably coupled with observations of people whose ways of life retain many traditional features, such as villagers whose labor, much of which is by human effort alone, is largely conducted within household contexts. That can only come with time, which is one reason why becoming a good anthropologist is only imperfectly achieved after a lifetime of concerted effort. That element distinguishes archaeology from disciplines in which cutting-edge practitioners are often those who are just starting out; they are the ones who have received training in the most up-to-date techniques and have digested information that definitively supersedes what came before.

One problem in archaeology, especially for specialists from other fields seduced by prehistory, is that simplistic conclusions drawn from a limited array of data exert a powerful allure, such as the attribution of the Maya collapse to a single cause. That is, a single natural or social condition or event was sufficient to precipitate societal dissolution and population loss across the entire Maya area. The resulting publications often turn out to be of the Thirty Seconds Over Maya Land kind. Much like Doolittle’s raid, they make a big splash, but have little true or lasting effect. Societies tend to be resilient, and the question in such situations really becomes one of identifying the concatenation and timing of multiple stresses that in concert resulted in discernible societal and population change.

When evaluating interpretations of the distant past, David is forever asking students what it would have been like for people who had to cope with all of life’s uncertainties in specific natural and social environments, not what they should have been doing according to textbook syntheses of institutions and common practices. All people are highly resourceful, and they find ways of doing things and justifying them to accommodate the demands of the moment. They do not always do what we might expect of them. It is no wonder that the physical signature of what people did—much of which is simply garbage from daily activities—is so marvelously variable within a particular region or even an individual site.

Because multiple traditions in archaeology are captured, however imperfectly, by academic genealogies, the chapter by Don and Pru Rice is especially useful as it traces the rich network of Penn State scholars, notably those in the early days of the department when David was a young professor. Although not born to the Penn State lineage, or to one of its offshoots, I am glad to be counted among them through long association, a form of intellectual adoption. With a strong biological outlook to start with, one might say I was preadapted to fit into the archaeology program’s overtly scientific approach where priority is placed on getting enough of the right kinds of data, analyzed appropriately, and tied to concrete research questions. That orientation does not mean that research must be limited to a narrowly defined set of topics. Anything is fair game as long as it can be analyzed rigorously, preferably quantitatively, and tied to a well-articulated issue concerning human existence. The many conversations David and I have had on religion and the role it plays in societal organization and change would no doubt confound those who believe the Penn State program does not venture far beyond population histories, human-land relationships, and their connection to sociopolitical systems. One such example is the chapter by Susan Evans and Deb Nichols that explores relationships at Teotihuacan among the natural landscape, architecture, and beliefs.

One salient characteristic of the Penn State archaeology program, and David’s part in it, is a reliance on solid empirical evidence, preferably analyzed quantitatively, couched in a comparative framework derived from an extensive familiarity with traditional societies. The last criterion imposes a check on the fanciful ideas often proposed about the number of people who occupied specific settlements up to entire regions, the degree of control exerted by so-called elites, and the like. But it also can have the opposite effect. Too often the capabilities of past peoples are underestimated by archaeologists who do not have firsthand familiarity with what can be accomplished by hand through hard work by those who lack access to the labor-saving conveniences of modern life. That unfamiliarity results in the common conclusion that huge populations were required to build impressive architecture. With a supposedly large number of people comes a cascade of assumptions about food production and distribution, occupational specialization, and societal control, all pointing toward great sociopolitical complexity.

This tendency has been around for a long time. Returning to mounds and other earthworks in my geographical area, over a century ago Gerard Fowke (1902, 81) felt compelled to tell his readers that there is no need for supposing a great number of inhabitants to account for the creation of even the largest earthworks. Today there is even more need for such reminders, as we are that much further removed from a time when most people were deeply engaged in physical labor to support themselves and their families. David, in contrast, has long personal experience with hard work, as he is continually puttering around his mountainside retreat, chopping wood to keep the cold at bay (his woodpile is an impressive example of provident behavior), adding new parts to his home (in that respect it is Elizabethan in all but appearance), and otherwise improving his property.

Students know only too well David’s insistence on having a clearly articulated research question backed by solid data that are analyzed with appropriate methods. To be sure, papers always have a beginning and an end. Yet much of what is published today is unsatisfying, being little more than the written equivalent of fast food that goes down easy before causing much discomfort. These McPapers feature a fluffy and tasteless bun at the front and back that owes its attractiveness to a liberal sprinkling of buzzwords, a rather seedy topping, instead of a tight statement of research significance tied to well-defined and achievable objectives. Any meat is thin and tucked under pickles and condiments in the form of excessive and obscure verbiage that masks the suitability of the samples and methods for the task at hand. The meat (the substance) and bun (the introduction and conclusion) are unconnected, except that the former is sandwiched uncomfortably between the latter.

David’s papers are characterized by remarkably clear, and often entertaining, writing. Around the department he is known as one of a handful of faculty members who insist that dissertations are well written, in addition to being substantive contributions to anthropological knowledge. He is, in fact, the author of the dissertation rant that periodically makes its rounds of students, much to their chagrin but long-term benefit. He is forever insisting that students define the terms they use, and never employ labels or concepts unless they are clearly understood. Evidence of that clarity can be found in the essays that compose this volume.

That sort of attention allows positions to be faithfully explained in all their complexity. The alternative, which occurs all too often, involves using labels to characterize researchers or schools of thought, a shorthand akin to colorful battle flags fervently waved to rally the troops in the dust and din of scholarly debate. Doing so guarantees that subtleties of positions, precisely what is of most interest, are lost. Examples of labels, intended as pejorative, applied to members of the extended Penn State archaeological community include cultural evolutionist, cultural ecologist, environmental determinist, and (my favorite) ecofunctionalist. Using such terms without further elaboration means the original work is not explained and put in context, so the nuances of arguments are missed, perhaps because they were not understood in the first place. Such labels gain traction because we, as humans, reflexively categorize the world around us, and various ways of thought are no different in that respect than anything else. That does not mean, however, that labels are an acceptable substitute for thoughtful writing.

A key feature of the Penn State program is the interdisciplinary nature of much of the research, which is built in from the start on field projects. One such example is the work by Kirk French and Chris Duffy on water management at Palenque. The Penn State work also features a public outreach component, in David’s case most notably the Out of the Past film series. The chapter by Steve Whittington and Nan Gonlin on their work at Teozacoalco covers a natural development of that concern: reaching out to indigenous communities with a vested interest in learning about, and helping preserve, the remarkable achievements of their ancestors.

In closing, I should say that I have benefited greatly from my long association with David and the Penn State graduates, including those who left before I arrived. It is a loosely knit community of scholars that has contributed much to our understanding of Mesoamerican prehistory and to archaeology as a whole. A special thanks to David is in order for the innumerable stimulating conversations (and books) we have shared over the years. In that very real sense, I too am one of his students.

Note

1. By way of explanation for our more technologically oriented colleagues, I am referring to the Russian-English rivalry over influence in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Persia, not some great computer game that David would not know how to play nor be interested in learning to do so. Return to text.

References Cited

Buikstra, Jane E., George R. Milner, and Jesper L. Boldsen. 2006. Janaab’ Pakal: The Age-at-Death Controversy Re-visited. In Janaab’ Pakal of Palenque: Reconstructing the Life and Death of a Maya Ruler, ed. Vera Tiesler and Andrea Cucina, 48–59. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Doyle, Arthur C. 2003. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics.

Fowke, Gerard. 1902. Archaeological History of Ohio. Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society.

Kintigh, Keith W., Jeffrey H. Altschul, Mary C. Beaudry, Robert D. Drennan, Ann P. Kinzig, Timothy A. Kohler, W. Fredrick Limp, Herbert D. G. Maschner, William K. Michener, Timothy R. Pauketat, Peter Peregrine, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Tony J. Wilkinson, Henry T. Wright, and Melinda A. Zeder. 2014. Grand Challenges for Archaeology. American Antiquity 79 (1): 5–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.79.1.5.

Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking.

Preface

NANCY GONLIN AND KIRK D. FRENCH

As Penn State graduates, we have been privileged to partake in an extraordinary academic program. The resources, support, dynamics, and personnel during our graduate careers have contributed highly to our success as anthropological archaeologists. For both of us and numerous others, a large part of that success has been due to the mentorship of Professor David Webster, who has been contributing to Penn State’s Department of Anthropology since 1972.

This volume represents only a very small part of the influence that David Webster has had on Mesoamerican archaeology. There easily could have been dozens of chapters, but we had to narrow down the contributions for obvious reasons. The chapters are based on the 2012 Society for American Archaeology symposium (Scribes & Commoners, War & Peace: Forty Years of Mesoamerican Archaeology at Penn State) that we co-organized with Jason De León that was held in honor of David (figure 0.1). For anyone who knows him, it would come as no surprise that holding anything in David’s honor would have to be an exercise in furtiveness. Thanks to the assistance of his wife, Susan Toby Evans, we were able to garner his cooperation and his appearance at this event. And it’s also no surprise that David was not surprised. Long threatened and finally come to fruition, the symposium took place during David’s fortieth year at Penn State, an auspicious number in the Mayan calendar that represents two katunob. Due to the high attendance at the Memphis meetings and several obligations of the contributors, we were given an evening time slot that could accommodate everyone’s schedule. In true Penn State fashion, we made the most of our allotted time by transforming the gathering into a sunset soirée by providing participants with liquid refreshments to enhance the hours. This volume contains contributions from most of the original symposium participants. We were appreciative of the comments of our two discussants, Kenneth G. Hirth, professor of Mesoamerican archaeology at Penn State, and George Milner, current head of the Department of Anthropology at Penn State.

Figure 0.1 Group photo of SAA symposium participants, April 2012, Memphis, TN. Seated: Nan Gonlin, Tim Murtha, Kirk Straight, Rebecca Storey. Standing: Elliot Abrams, Ann Freter, John Wingard, Susan Evans, David Webster, George Milner, Steve Whittington, Don Rice, Dolph Widmer, Pru Rice, Zach Nelson, Deb Nichols, David Reed, Kirk French, Ken Hirth, Jason De