The Archaic and Formative Periods of Mesoamerica Michael Love Note: this piece is an article that I’m preparing for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of World Prehistory, edited by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn. It presents a very different perspective on domestication, agriculture, and sedentism than the scenario found in your textbook. I, of course, think that my synthesis of the data is much better, but your textbook gives the generally accepted viewpoint. You can also note my points of disagreement with Jared Diamond. The dates in the article are all calibrated radiocarbon dates; the presentation and your textbook both use uncalibrated dates, so there are bound to be differences. The Cambridge Encyclopedia uses BCE (before common era) and CE (common era) instead of BC/AD. I haven’t inserted the images into this article, but most of the referenced items are found in the Powerpoint presentation. Mesoamerica is one of the six or seven areas of the world where independent domestication of plants and animals lead to the emergence of food production, and subsequently civilization (Bellwood 2005; Smith 1998). Mesoamerica was once considered to have lagged behind other regions of the world in agricultural origins, but evidence now places the beginnings of food production soon after the onset of Holocene conditions. Similarly, the origins of urbanism and state formation are now placed much earlier than would have been the case a decade ago. Once thought to be hallmarks of the Classic Period (AD 250-900), both urban settlements and state-level polities are now well attested before the end of the first millennium BCE. The time of first domestication and the development of social complexity are called the Archaic and Formative periods. The Archaic begins with the onset of Holocene conditions about 10,000 years ago and continued up to the time of the adoption of pottery, ca 2000 BCE. The Formative period (also called the Preclassic) succeeds the Archaic and ends at 250 CE. The criteria for defining both periods have shifted in recent times, and the divisions have become blurred. It was once thought that the joint appearance of agriculture, sedentism and pottery defined the beginning of the Formative, but earlier placement of first domestication and sedentism leaves only early pottery as the sole criterion. The end of the Formative period is also very arbitrarily placed at 250 CE, as many traits previously used to define the succeeding Classic period, including writing, calendrics and urbanism, were well attested in the Late Formative (400 BCE-250 CE). The Archaic Period The Archaic period was the time during which domestication, food production, and sedentism developed from the preceding Paleo-Indian Period (Stark 1981). In contrast to the Old World and South America, domesticated animals placed only a minor role in the development of food production in Mesoamerica. Although domesticated mammals and birds including ...

1. The Archaic and Formative Periods of Mesoamerica
Michael Love
Note: this piece is an article that I’m preparing for the
Cambridge Encyclopedia of World
Prehistory, edited by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn. It presents
a very different perspective on
domestication, agriculture, and sedentism than the scenario
found in your textbook. I, of course,
think that my synthesis of the data is much better, but your
textbook gives the generally accepted
viewpoint. You can also note my points of disagreement with
Jared Diamond. The dates in the
article are all calibrated radiocarbon dates; the presentation and
your textbook both use
uncalibrated dates, so there are bound to be differences. The
Cambridge Encyclopedia uses BCE
(before common era) and CE (common era) instead of BC/AD. I
haven’t inserted the images into
this article, but most of the referenced items are found in the
Powerpoint presentation.
Mesoamerica is one of the six or seven areas of the world where
independent

2. domestication of plants and animals lead to the emergence of
food production, and subsequently
civilization (Bellwood 2005; Smith 1998). Mesoamerica was
once considered to have lagged
behind other regions of the world in agricultural origins, but
evidence now places the beginnings
of food production soon after the onset of Holocene conditions.
Similarly, the origins of
urbanism and state formation are now placed much earlier than
would have been the case a
decade ago. Once thought to be hallmarks of the Classic Period
(AD 250-900), both urban
settlements and state-level polities are now well attested before
the end of the first millennium
BCE.
The time of first domestication and the development of social
complexity are called the
Archaic and Formative periods. The Archaic begins with the
onset of Holocene conditions about
10,000 years ago and continued up to the time of the adoption
of pottery, ca 2000 BCE. The
Formative period (also called the Preclassic) succeeds the

3. Archaic and ends at 250 CE. The
criteria for defining both periods have shifted in recent times,
and the divisions have become
blurred. It was once thought that the joint appearance of
agriculture, sedentism and pottery
defined the beginning of the Formative, but earlier placement of
first domestication and
sedentism leaves only early pottery as the sole criterion. The
end of the Formative period is also
very arbitrarily placed at 250 CE, as many traits previously used
to define the succeeding Classic
period, including writing, calendrics and urbanism, were well
attested in the Late Formative (400
BCE-250 CE).
The Archaic Period
The Archaic period was the time during which domestication,
food production, and
sedentism developed from the preceding Paleo-Indian Period
(Stark 1981). In contrast to the Old
World and South America, domesticated animals placed only a
minor role in the development of
food production in Mesoamerica. Although domesticated
mammals and birds including dogs,

4. ducks, and turkeys were very important at certain times and
places as food sources, they were not
critical in the early development of food production during the
Archaic period.
The beginning of the Holocene period brought generally warmer
and wetter conditions to
much of Mesoamerica (Flannery 1986a; Piperno and Pearsall
1998), causing foraging peoples to
broaden their diet but also to experiment with new techniques
for harvesting and preparing
foods. Many sources of data suggest that human modification of
plant genomes began early in
the Holocene period soon after 8000 BCE and that cultivated
domesticates were significant
contributors to their the diet throughout the Archaic period.
The experiments by Archaic peoples throughout the Americas
included considerable
variety and were not limited to food plants. Many experiments
failed or were abandoned in favor
of species that were more responsive or rewarding. The
successful experiments spread
throughout the continent, contradicting the postulate that the
north/south axis of the American

5. continents was an impediment (Diamond 1997). Maize spread
throughout the Americas, while
Mesoamerican peoples adopted the South American domesticate
manioc and may have received
domesticated sunflower from North America. Some species of
domesticated chiles may have
been imported from South America to Mesoamerica (Piperno
and Pearsall 1998: 154), and at
least one species of domesticated squash (Curcurbita moschata)
was introduced from Central
America. The spread of domesticates, combined with evidence
of the long-distance exchange of
resources such as obsidian, demonstrates that the interactions
across ethnic and linguistic lines
characteristic of Mesoamerica developed early in the Archaic
Period.
Evidence for early domestication and cultivation comes from
three sources:1) genetic
analysis of domesticated plants and their wild ancestors; 2)
microfossils such as phytoliths,
pollen, and starch grains; and 3) macro-botanical remains that
include seeds, stems, and
peduncles. There are differing opinions as to the strength and
reliability of these three classes of

6. data, and sufficient vagaries exist to make a definitive
judgement difficult. Smith (1998, 2005)
and Blake (2006) cast doubt on the dating of micro-botanical
remains from sediment cores,
which are usually indirectly dated, and prefer directly dated
specimens from controlled
archaeological contexts. That standard, however, limits the data
to dry cave sites in the highlands
and ignores the remarkable agreement among dates derived from
cores. The internal consistency
of dates from sediment cores and micro-botanical specimens and
the agreement of those dates
with genetic evidence suggests that such dates are reliable.
Genetic and micro-fossil data support a scenario in which many
important plants were
domesticated in lowland and mid-elevation ranges in the early
Archaic period. By the Middle
Archaic period domesticates of both the lowlands and highlands
were widely shared. It is mostly
assumed that diffusion took place via exchanges among foraging
groups, largely because
linguistic evidence suggests separation among the major

7. Mesoamerican linguistic groups early in
the Archaic period. However, the spread of agricultural groups
within limited ranges after the
adoption of agriculture is a possibility.
Plants domesticated in the early to middle Archaic (8000-4000
BCE) include maize,
multiple species of cucurbita, and beans (both runner beans and
the common bean), and
avocados. Maize, beans, and squash were domesticated along
the coast of Central Mexico during
8000-6000 BCE (Matuoka et al 2002, Piperno et al. 2009; Smith
1998), although beans and
various squashes may have been domesticated more than once in
different locations.
Early domesticates in Mesoamerica included not only foods, but
utilitarian plants as well. The
earliest securely identified domesticate in Mesoamerica may be
a species of squash (Cucurbita
pepo) derived from wild bottle gourds that were used as
containers in Oaxaca ca 8000 BCE
(Smith 2006). Cotton (gossypium hirsutum) may also have been
a plant exploited early in the
Holocene (Piperno and Pearsall 1998: 163), although its date of
domestication is not firmly

8. established.
The use of cultigens supplemented what were fundamentally
foraging economies
throughout much of the Early and Middle Archaic (Flannery
1986a; Smith 2001). Despite the
continued importance of foraging, however, large scale
modification of the environment,
especially the clearing and burning of forests, accompanied the
adoption of horticulture,
according to data from lowland pollen cores.
The Domestication of Maize
Despite the importance of variety to the Archaic Period diet,
maize (Zea mays mays) was
the single most important plant in that period, as well as later
periods, in Mesoamerica. The
increasing importance of maize to the Archaic Period diet was
due mostly to its genetic
malleability, which permitted human selection to increase its
productivity dramatically and
develop new varieties that expanded its growing range.
It is now firmly established that the wild predecessor of

9. domesticated maize was a variety
of teosinte, Zea mays ssp. Parvuglumis (also known as Balsas
teosinte), whose modern center of
distribution lies in the mid-range elevations (400-1800 m) of the
Rio Balsas drainage of
Guerrero, Mexico (Doebley et al. 1985; Matsuoka et al. 2002).
Genetic evidence indicates a
single domestication event at around 7200 BCE (Matsuoka et al.
2002). Although domesticated
maize shows signs of subsequent introgression from highland
teosinte (Zea mays spp. mexicana),
anything other than Balsas teosinte has been eliminated as a
direct ancestor.
The genetically derived date for maize domestication matches
remarkably well with a
date of 7100 BC for archaeologically recovered starches and
phytoliths from domesticated maize
and squash (possibly C. argyrosperma) at the Xihuatoxtla rock
shelter, located in the Rio Balsas
drainage (Piperno et al. 2009). Data from Xihuatoxtla also
indicate that the cobs of early maize
were processed, not the stalks, undercutting the proposition that
teosinte and maize were initially
cultivated only for the sugar of their stalks (Iltis 2000; Smalley

10. and Blake 2003).
Controversy still surrounds the climatic zone in which the
domestication event took
place. Some data support a scenario of highland domestication
(Matsuoka et al. 2002) followed
by diversification, although that conclusion may be due to
sampling methods (Benz 2004). The
model of highland domestication would imply either that the
ancient range of Balsa teosinte
extended beyond that known today, or that ancient foragers
transported it from its wild setting to
the highlands, domesticating it in the process. However that
may be, the data from Xihuatoxtla
shelter support a mid-range elevation site for domestication
(under 1800 m), in concordance with
the general model for the neo-tropical lowland origins of
agriculture (Piperno and Pearsall 1998).
The locus of domestication is highly significant, because it
impacts how we interpret the maize
remains in the semi-arid Mexican highlands, where the earliest
macro-botanical specimens have
been recovered and directly dated by AMS to 3400 BCE
(Piperno and Flannery 2001).

11. Microfossil data consistently support the model of early Archaic
domestication, followed
by the spread of the cultigen throughout Mesoamerica. Zea
pollen consistent with domesticated
maize is found at 5100 BCE at San Andrés, Tabasco, on
Mexico’s Gulf coast, concurrent with
evidence of forest clearance (Pope et al 2001). Pollen cores
from Lake Quilisimate show
domesticated maize in the Central Guatemalan highlands by
4000 BCE (Freidel et al 2001),
while microbotanical studies carried out in northern Belize
(Pohl et al 1996) show that maize and
other cultigens, including manioc, were used by 3400 BCE.
Land clearance and maize
agriculture are documented for the Mirador Basin of northern
lowland Guatemala by 2600 BC
(Wahl et al. 2006).
Some of the strongest data come from the Pacific coast, where a
series of cores found
evidence of maize as well as other presumed cultigens, squash
and arrowroot prior to 3500 BCE
(Neff et al. 2006a). This date is supported by archaeologically
recovered Zea phytoliths from a

12. clay floor at the Tlacuachero site, dating to 3500 BCE (Jones
and Voorhies 2004). The cores
evidence significant increases in the levels of charcoal after
3500 BCE, and continued high levels
through multiple episodes of forest burning up to 2600 BCE.
Between 2500 BCE and 1000
BCE there was a decrease in agricultural activity and forest
disturbance, possibly caused by
dessication. The dry period lead to the abandonment of some
areas of the coast prior to 2000
BCE (Neff et al., 2006b).
On the Pacific coast, the cultivation of maize and other
domesticates probably took place
at permanent inland base camps such as Vuelta Limón with
seasonal foraging trips to estuary and
and lagoon sites to fish and to collect shellfish and mollusks
(Voorhies 2004). The central
settlements were occupied year-round, although perhaps not for
a large number of years. The
difficulty in locating and excavating lowland Archaic Period
sites outside of the estuaries may
indicate continued mobility over the long term.

13. Sedentism and Mobility in the Archaic Period
The model of “Central Place Foraging” developed for the
Pacific Coast may also apply to
other regions of Mesoamerica, with widespread sedentism by
the Middle Archaic. A key point is
how to interpret the data from the highlands.
If maize was indeed domesticated in mid-altitude ranges, then
the highland-focused
models proposed by Flannery (1986) and MacNeish (1981)
require significant revision, not only
for where and when domestication took place, but also in regard
to the relationship between
seasonal mobility and increasing dependence on cultivated
foods. The original Tehuacan and
Oaxaca models portrayed the Archaic Period as a time of
gradual transition and co-evolution of
domestication, cultivation, and sedentism. As cultivated
foodstuffs became more productive
through human selection, their role in human diet increased, and
people spent longer periods of
time in the camps where cultivated fields were maintained. The
models posited that eventually
the productivity of cultivated plants, particularly maize,
exceeded the caloric rewards of

14. collected foods and people committed fully to horticulture and
remained year-round in their
settlements.
A key aspect of the co-evolution model was that people in the
semi-arid highlands were
collecting wild maize in slope locations and transferring it to
camps in bottomland zones. In the
process, they selected for the traits that characterized
domesticated maize: a non-enclosed seed,
larger cob size, multiple rows, and a single infloresence. The
putative dispersal of maize from the
locations where it grew wild was part of the yearly round of a
mobile foraging economy, and
conceivably could have been an unintentional product of human
subsistence practices.
If, however, maize were domesticated in lower elevations before
its initial appearance in
Tehuacan and Oaxaca, two conclusions follow: 1) maize was
brought to the highlands by
intentional human action, either by exchange or by the
expansion of lowland horticultural groups.
2) The cultivation of maize in the highlands began as an event

15. rather than being a gradual
process.
The latter conclusion casts doubt on the model of seasonal
mobility emphasized for the
highlands. If Archaic peoples adopted already domesticated
maize from the lowlands and were
clearing land to cultivate the crop, scheduling makes it unlikely
that they would continue to be
mobile (Bellwood 2005). There is a fair amount of evidence to
support that conclusion. Faunal
data from Zohapilco, in the Basin of Mexico, could indicate
year-round occupation of the site
(Niederberger 1979). Further, the seasonality data for Tehuacan
can be interpreted in such a way
that year-round sedentism occurred earlier than posited by
MacNeish (Stark 1981: 354-355).
Stark noted that several occupation surfaces with indicators of
multiple seasons were somewhat
arbitrarily divided into separate seasonal occupations.
Moreover, some seasonal indicators were
not interpreted in a customary manner, with mesquite pods,
grasses, and amaranth taken as spring
indicators, when most scholars judge them to show late summer
to fall occupations (Stark 1981:

16. 372, footnote 8).
The Late Archaic
A very important tenet of the highland model remains true: that
up until about 2000 BC
maize and other cultigens were supplements to the foraging
diet. Human experimentation with
maize continued after its initial domestication and adoption, and
its productivity increased
through time. A threshold of sorts was crossed at about 2000
BCE when continued selection for
cob size increased its productivity to such an extent that it
surpassed other contributors to the
diet. Flannery (1986b: 27) very effectively demonstrates how
this productive threshold induced
foragers to forsake the collection of many wild plants, such as
mesquite seeds and acorns in the
highlands, to commit fully to the cultivation of maize and other
domesticates.
Early Formative 1 (2000-1200 BC)
As in other parts of the world, the full commitment to
horticulture and sedentism brought

17. about both a significant increase in population and the
development of economic surpluses that
enabled social inequality to be manifested as differences in
wealth. By 1700 BCE there are signs
of differentiation among villages, with hierarchies linked to
trade, politics, and religious life. The
best evidence for the early emergence of inequality and
centralization during the Early Formative
comes from the Pacific coast, and the Mazatán region of
Chiapas, Mexico. Regional settlement
data support the presence of several two-tiered settlement
systems suggestive of simple
chiefdoms soon after 1700 BCE (Clark, 2004; Clark and
Hodgson 2004). By 1650 BCE Paso de
la Amada was laid out as a planned center, with buildings
spaced along a central plaza using
units of measurement derived from Mesoamerican cosmology
and calendrical cycles of 260 and
365 days, indicating a sacred basis for the site plan. The site
had communal features, including
the earliest documented ballcourt in Mesoamerica (Hill et al.
1998). A considerable amount of
communal labor was invested the construction of the ballcourt

18. and other central buildings, which
may be either elite residences or public buildings (Figure 2).
Paso de la Amada was both a
sacred place and a political center, and is at present “the earliest
known ceremonial center in
Mesoamerica” (Clark 2004: 45).
Although Paso de la Amada is for the moment unique in
Mesoamerica, it is likely that
other similar settlements existed and may eventually be
discovered. Most importantly, however,
the data from the Mazatan region illustrate the impact of
agriculture and sedentism on
Mesoamerican societies early in the Formative period. A course
of increasing socio-political
complexity had begun and the speed of change increased once
again as the second half of the
Early Formative began.
The Olmec Phenomenon
The continued intensification of economic production created
large surpluses, and elite
sectors of society were able to channel those surpluses into
public works and prestige goods that
carried a strong ideological message justifying centralized

19. power. Regional exchanges of both
goods and ideas intensified in a complex web of interaction
between the largest sites across
Mesoamerica. The twin themes of increasing complexity and
regional interaction are intertwined
with the Olmec phenomenon, which begins in the Early
Formative 2 period (1300-1000 BCE),
but endures well into the Middle Formative.
The term 'Olmec' is used in many ways. First, it is used
frequently to denote a group of
people and a culture of the Gulf Coast region of Tabasco and
Veracruz, Mexico. Secondly, it is
used to refer to any material culture product made by those
people, such as “Olmec art.” Third, it
is used to refer to a system of iconography that includes of
symbols, motifs, and figures, that
occur on a variety of material culture forms and in locations
outside the Gulf Coast region. The
variable usage of the term can be confusing, and the confusion
is compounded by the fact that the
Olmec phenomenon was complex and long-lived.
Objects that are stylistically Olmec or that have Olmec

20. iconography appear throughout
much of Mesoamerica, cutting across ethnic and linguistic
boundaries. Many have seen this
distribution of the Olmec style to represent the diffusion of
ideas and cultural practices, or even
the movement of people, from the Gulf Coast 'heartland' to the
rest of Mesoamerica. Thus, there
are many who place the Gulf Coast region of Mexico in a
central role for both the Early and
Middle Formative, defining successive San Lorenzo and the La
Venta horizons, named after the
largest sites of the Gulf Coast region during each period. In
these interpretations the 'Olmec' (the
people of the Gulf Coast), are seen as the 'Mother Culture' of
Mesoamerica. That is, that they
were the first complex society of Mesoamerica and invented
many of the cultural traits that are
considered typical of later Mesoamerica: sculpture, architecture,
writing, and a formal religion
based on the worship of specific deities. In this view, the Olmec
people then stimulated the rest
of Mesoamerica to develop more complex social forms.
An alternative perspective sees Formative Mesoamerica as
composed of a number of

21. “Sister Cultures” that developed more or less in parallel, with
constant economic and intellectual
interaction among them (Flannery and Marcus 2000). In this
view, the societies of the Gulf
Coast were not in any way precocious and were not exclusively
responsible for creating the many
traits that comprise the “Olmec style.” Rather, in this view
Mesoamerica should be viewed as a
developing interaction sphere, without a single center and with
multiple sources for development
of the shared style of material culture.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between the two extremes.
During the Early
Formative 2 (1300-1000 BCE) the site of San Lorenzo, Veracruz
was certainly far larger than its
contemporaries, but in the Middle Preclassic 1 (1000-600 BCE)
regional parity was much
greater. Whether all traits commonly called “Olmec” originated
in the Gulf Coast region is
uncertain, as is the structure of regional relationships, but some
forms of material culture with
Olmec iconography, especially sculpture, appear first or have

22. their greatest concentration in the
Gulf Coast region. However, many other traits often called
“Olmec” have origins outside the
Gulf Coast, or may not even appear in the Gulf Coast.
Complex Societies in the Early Preclassic 2
The scale and scope of complexity expanded greatly throughout
Mesoamerica in the Early
Formative 2, 1300-1000 BCE. Populations grew significantly
and regional polities with two to
three levels of administration, classified as chiefdoms in neo-
evolutionary typologies, appeared
in many regions.
The largest settlement of the Early Preclassic 2 period was the
site of San Lorenzo,
located in the modern state of Veracruz, Mexico. At its peak,
just before 1000 BC, San Lorenzo
covered approximately 500 hectares, centered on an elevated
plateau of 60 ha that was of largely
artificial construction (Symonds et al. 2002). Although lacking
the monumental pyramids and
plazas of later Mesoamerican cities, San Lorenzo did have many
elaborately adorned
constructions, such as the “Red Palace”, a building with red

23. gravel floor and clay walls
containing red sand, with an entry-way formed by large basalt
columns. Although described as a
“royal compound” (Diehl 2004: 36), the domestic nature of the
Red Palace is not firmly
established, in part because it is extremely difficult to establish
archaeological criteria to
unambiguously distinguish public from private during this time
period in Mesoamerica.
In addition to the massive plateau, the most impressive feature
of San Lorenzo may be its
sculpture. Monumental sculpture is one of the hallmarks of the
Olmec style, and San Lorenzo
has over 120 pieces, including 10 colossal heads. The colossal
heads are thought to be portraits
of Olmec rulers, because each has individualistic features,
including distinctive headdresses. The
largest of the colossal heads weighs over 5 tons. Carved of
columnar basalt transported over 80
km from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains north of San Lorenzo,
each head represents an
enormous investment of labor and skilled craftsmanship. Other
classes of sculpture were also

24. carved at San Lorenzo, including table-top altars, which may in
fact have served as thrones. The
altars were often even larger than the heads, reaching weights of
over 28 tons. A common theme
of the altars is that of a male figure seated with in a niche
formed by the mouth of a supernatural
creature, usually a feline or serpent. Such niches are symbols of
cave mouths, symbolic portals to
the underworld. The images thus invoke either an ancestor
within the underworld or perhaps a
ruler or lineage head with the ability to communicate with
underworld spirits. The perceived
ability to communicate with the supernatural and to divine the
future was a prominent feature of
elite claims to power throughout Mesoamerica.
Other themes of San Lorenzo’s monumental art include
supernatural creatures, that
probably include deities, and hybrid creatures that combine
human and animal characteristics.
However, the most common theme in Olmec art is the human
body (de la Fuente 1984). Many of
the supernatural creatures known from early Olmec sculpture
also appear as incised or excised

25. designs on pottery, often in an abbreviated form. Carved or
incised pottery plays a key role in the
contentious debate over San Lorenzo’s influence in the rest of
Mesoamerica.
A large settlement for any period in Mesoamerica, San Lorenzo
was enormous by Early
Formative standards. Although the overall density of
occupation has yet to be determined, the
sheer size of the site is impressive. Population within San
Lorenzo’s sustaining hinterland was
large and distributed in a hierarchy of sites, which is interpreted
as evidence of a regional
political system. At least three large secondary centers, with
significant sculptural corpuses of
their own, lie near San Lorenzo, while villages and hamlets
form a more dispersed outer
hinterland.
The type of political system represented by this settlement
hierarchy has been disputed.
Some see San Lorenzo itself as urban and its regional system a
state-level society, but others see
nothing more complex than a chiefdom (Flannery and Marcus
2000; Spencer and Redmond

26. 2007). San Lorenzo is certainly an expansive settlement but its
population was dispersed. Its
regional system is very top-heavy with secondary centers of
moderate size. Significant political
centralization is thus suggested, but this may be an instance
where neo-evolutionary typologies
fail us, and attempting to fit San Lorenzo into a category
defined by ethnographic examples
simply does not work. San Lorenzo’s rulers had wealth to
sponsor craft specialists and the ability
to organize large amounts of labor exceeding that of
ethnographically known chiefdoms, but it
seems a stretch to suggest that San Lorenzo had the type of
bureaucratic governmental structures
normally associated with a state.
Other complex societies of the Early Preclassic 2 period
Large settlements that were the paramount centers of complex
regional polities became
widespread throughout Mesoamerica in the the Early Formative
2 period. Within the Gulf Coast
region, Laguna de los Cerros may have covered over 300 ha.
(Pool 2006) Farther afield,

27. settlements of over 50 ha in size, associated with at least a two-
tiered regional hierarchy, appear
in many regions of Mesoamerica. The data are uneven across
regions; some areas lack intensive
surveys, while other sites lack household-level data. The
differences in the quantity and quality
of data make comparisons difficult and definitive answers about
regional relationships almost
impossible to achieve.
Preclassic Oaxaca
At the beginning of the Early Preclassic 2 period (Tierras
Largas phase) there were more
than twenty sites known from survey within the Valley of
Oaxaca. Most of these sites were small
villages of under 3 ha, with the exception of San Jose Mogote
which is estimated to cover 7.8 ha.
In addition to being twice the size of most settlements, San Jose
Mogote was distinctive for the
period in having what is thought to be a public building.
In the latter part of the Early Preclassic 2, the San Jose Phase
(ca. 1200-900 BC), the
main residential area of San Jose Mogote may have covered up
to 70 ha. and several different

28. types of public buildings were found at the site. San Jose
Mogote was the paramount settlement
in a regional system that included at least 40 sites, with a 2-3
tiered settlement hierarchy. In
addition to being a religious center, San Jose Mogote was a
regional economic center that
redistributed goods within the Valley of Oaxaca and also
operated as a node in pan-
Mesoamerican exchange systems. Most significantly, San Jose
Mogote mediated the production
and exchange of iron-ore mirrors which found their way to
many regions of Mesoamerica.
Household data suggest that during the San Jose phase status
differences form a
continuum from relatively high to relatively low, without a rigid
division into social classes.
What may be the highest status residence at San Jose Mogote
was built one a 1 m high platform
and was finished with lime plaster. A less prestigious house had
a foundation of field stones and
a layer of whitewash over the daub. Features associated with
this type of house have larger

29. quantities of marine shell ornaments, shell debris, mica, and
chert, which suggest privileged
access to prestige goods. A third type of house lacked
foundation stones, but did have
whitewashed walls and a series of outbuildings. The simplest
kind of residence at San Jose
Mogote was about 4x5 m in size, with a clay floor and walls of
wattle and daub house.
Burial data of the San Jose phase also show a continuum from
simple burials to more
prestigious. What are judged to be the lowest ranking
individuals received no offerings, while
high ranking people were buried with jade jewelry, pottery, and
shell or magnetite ornaments. A
San Jose phase cemetery at the site of Tomaltepec contained
more than 60 burials, with the
remains of 80 individuals. Most of the burials were extended,
but some males were buried in a
flexed positon. Although there were only 10 males in the flexed
position, they received 50
percent of the burial vessels with carved 'fire-serpent' (often
considered to be an “Olmec” motif)
designs and 88 percent of the jade beads.
The Basin of Mexico

30. Several large settlements may have emerged in the Basin of
Mexico during the Early
Formative 2 period. Tlatilco, Tlapacoya, and Coapexco all
covered 40-50 ha in size, although the
site of Tlatilco may in fact be several small villages in close
proximity. Regional survey data for
the time period are incomplete, as later pre-hispanic and modern
settlements obscure smaller
villages.
More than 500 burials have been excavated at Tlatilco and they
reflect the emergence of
social inequality by the Early Formative. Both Tlatilco and
Tlapacoya show the development of
distinctively local variants of an “Olmec” style, using motifs
also seen elsewhere in
Mesoamerica, but with regional vessel forms, slips, and other
decorative techniques.
Although the data for the Basin of Mexico are frustratingly
incomplete, they suggest the
development of social complexity and the participation by local
peoples in exchange networks
with the rest of Mesoamerica.

31. The Pacific Coast In Early Formative 2
The chiefdoms established in the Mazatan region during the
Early Preclassic 1 period
endured for several hundred years but pronounced shifts occur
at 1300 BC, when there were
movements in settlement location and the appearance of new
material cultural forms. Some
crucial data are lacking, but the major sites of Canton Corralito
and Ojo de Agua appear to
represent successive capitals of regional polities.
Canton Corralito emerged as a major settlement and regional
center at about 1300 BC and
shows strong connections with San Lorenzo, Verazcruz
indicated by similarities in vessel forms,
vessel sizes, and decorative motifs. It may be that a colony of
people from San Lorenzo resided
at Cantón Corralito, but undetermined is the nature of the
colony, its extent, and its impact upon
the local population. Individual households were not excavated
at Cantón Corralito, so that we
cannot assess whether these “Olmec” objects were used only by
the elite, or by the populace in
general. It is possible that craftspeople from the Gulf Coast

32. were contracted by local rulers, or
that a colony was established by groups fleeing San Lorenzo
rather than representing it.
At about 1200-1000 BC Ojo de Agua replaced Cantón Corralito
as the Soconusco’s
largest site. The extent of the site is uncertain, but it certainly
exceeds 100 ha. There are elevated
mounds, apparently prototypes of the pyramidal form common
in Mesoamerica, around a central
plaza (Clark and Hodgson, 2004). Important sculptures known
from site, as well as the
surrounding region, forming the only significant corpus of
Olmec style sculpture outside of the
Gulf Coast for this time period.
Regional Relationships in the Early Preclassic 2
The relationship between early complex societies throughout
Mesoamerica is the subject
of intense debate (Blomster et al., 2005; Flannery et al., 2005).
The discussion is actually much
more nuanced that the “Mother Culture-Sister Culture”
positions and the available data are not
sufficient to choose between them.

33. The debate over the origins and spread of the Olmec style often
hides a more important
conclusion, which is that during the period of 1300-500 BC
Mesoamerica witnessed the birth of
high culture, associated with the rise of a privileged elite whose
power was based upon a political
interpretation of religious maxims. Perhaps most importantly,
by 1300 BC this tradition of high
culture, as well as elite identities, cut across ethnic and
linguistic divisions and spread throughout
much of Mesoameria.
Evidence of and unbalanced exchange of decorated ceramics has
been used by some as
support for the “Mother Culture” hypothesis (Blomster et al.
2005). San Lorenzo exported
ceramics with carved to other regions of Mesoamerica but those
regions did not export such
ceramics to San Lorenzo. We know, however, that the overall
balance of trade during the Early
Preclassic 2 period was not one-sided. San Lorenzo imported
commodities such as obsidian, iron
mirrors, and hematite ore in varying forms and often in large
quantities (Pires-Ferreira 1975; Di

34. Castron Stringher 1997), so that while ceramics may not have
been entered San Lorenzo in
exchange for pottery, other items did.
We also know that throughout much of Mesoamerica, there was
a broad transformation in
material culture at about 1300 B.C. that goes well beyond
pottery. Such a widespread
transformation indicates social and ideological changes so broad
that they cannot be reasonably
attributed to any single site. Moreover, in the midst of this
widespread transformation, there are
signs of increasing regionalization in some forms of material
culture, most notably architectural
layouts, which would not be expected if the similar traits were
spreading as a unitary
phenomenon.
The Middle Formative (1000-400 BCE)
The Middle Formative period in Mesoamerica was a time of
incipient urbanism, with
denser populations as well as larger overall settlement size,
driven by a significant population

35. boom. There were population loses in some areas at the end of
the Early Formative, such as in
the San Lorenzo and Mazatan regions, but those reflect the
political fortunes of specific sites and
were highly localized. Even in regions lacking intensive
surveys, such as the Maya lowlands, the
higher visibility of Middle Formative sites is notable.
While settlements over 50 ha were rare in the Early Formative,
there are many Middle
Formative centers over 1 km . The area of monumental
architecture at La Venta covers 2 km at2 2
its peak, and with areas of habitation included, may well be
over 4 km . La Blanca, on the Pacific2
coast of Guatemala, covered just under 3 km .
Teopantecuanitlan, Guerrero, Chalcatzingo,2
Morelos and Tres Zapotes, Veracruz were all well over 1 km
(Pool 2004). These settlements2
were cities and most had monumental architecture. It was at
this time that they archetypal temple
pyramid became widespread (Figure 3).
Socio-political complexity in the Middle Formative
In Middle Formative times many political systems are on the

36. verge of becoming states.
By the norms of neo-evoutionary typologies, the largest polities
would probably be called
complex chiefdoms, but they have many state-like attributes,
including urbanism, the presence of
administrative bureaucracies, and rigid social distinctions
between elites and commoners. The
best examples may be La Venta, Tabasco in the Gulf Coast
region of Mexico and La Blanca,
Guatemala on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala.
La Blanca
La Blanca development following the collapse of the Ojo de
Agua polity in Mazatan, at
1000 BCE. It was the largest settlement of a complex regional
system covering nearly 300 km ,2
and incorporating more than 80 other settlements (Love 2002).
La Blanca’s core was a 100 ha area of terrain raised and leveled
by over 2m of fill. A
large acropolis east the main plaza was raised an additional 2m.
The main ceremonial buildings
in the core shared a common orientation and the central axis of
the site aligned with the tallest
peak in Central America, the Tajumulco Volcano. The largest

37. construction at the site, Mound 1,
was a temple pyramid over 25 m in height, measuring 100 by
150 m at its base (Figure 4a).
Constructed soon after 1000 BC, it was one of the earliest
monumental temple pyramids in
Mesoamerica. The total area of occupation at La Blanca covered
approximately 280 ha, with
dense occupation at the site core and more dispersed occupation
at the outskirts. Few stone
sculptures have been discovered at the site, but a unique
quatrefoil-shaped altar was discovered
in association with an elite residence (Figure 5).
The regional system has at least three and perhaps as many as
four levels with secondary
centers also marked by large temple pyramids. A settlement
hierarchy of this nature would be
viewed by most as indicative of something less than a state, but
many factors, including the scale
of monumental construction, make it seem more complex than
the common definition of a
chiefdom.
La Venta

38. La Venta has a long history of occupation, stretching from
approximately 1300 to 400
BCE. Its peak size was probably reached at approximately 800
BC, but major constructions date
as late the the 400 BCE terminus (González 1996).
La Venta’s core is a ceremonial complex covering
approximately 125 ha, but major
constructions cover over 200 ha and areas of habitation may
expand to the total size to nearly 3
km . The largest structure at the site was a temple pyramid of
approximately 30 m in height,2
Mound C-1 (Figure 4b). North of C-1 was a courtyard enclosed
by basalt columns and occupied
by numerous small mounds. In the plazas between these
mounds five monumental offerings,
including a mosaic pavement representing a supernatural often
called an “Earth Monster”, were
placed in deep pits. Numerous smaller offerings including
sculpted jade and other green stones
were placed within the complex. Evidence of burials was also
found within Complex A, raising
the possibility that the complex was designed as a funerary
precinct for La Venta’s elite. At the

39. very least, Complex A appears to be focused on concepts of the
supernatural underworld.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Middle Formative La
Venta is the large sculptural
corpus. At the present, there are 73 sculpted monuments and 27
plain stone monuments
documented for the site. Many of the sculptural forms, such as
colossal heads and table-top
altars, closely resemble the monuments of San Lorenzo. As at
San Lorenzo, many of La Venta’s
monuments represent supernatural creatures, possibly deities,
but the majority represent the
human figure. Most of the people represented were probably
rulers, and they are shown in elite
reglia and in positions of power, often associated with
supernatural figures whose presence
indicates the power of rulers to communicate with and control
the supernatural.
As was the case with San Lorenzo, the source of basalt from
which most of the
monuments were carved was the Tuxtla Mountains to the
northwest. The movement of stones up
to 20 tons undoubtedly involved huge amounts of labor,

40. organizational acumen, and
sophisticated technology. However, many of La Venta’s
monuments were carved from local
sandstone or other sedimentary rocks.
The monumental constructions, stone monuments, and
ceremonial offerings of jade and
other precious stones all mark La Venta as a center of
tremendous wealth and its rulers as very
powerful, an elite very distinct from the social stratum of
commoners. Their wealth enabled
them to support the craft specialists who sculpted their
monuments and smaller sculptures. The
regional system in La Venta’s immediate environments shows a
3 level hierarchy, but none of the
sites identified as secondary centers has monumental
architecture. The secondary centers cover
no more than 10 ha and the largest mound recorded at any of
them is 3m in height. Indeed, these
mound may have been residential, rather than public. The
remarkably small size of these
documented secondary centers seems inconsistent with the large
scale of La Venta itself and the
wealth and power reflect in its monuments. It may be that La
Venta’s polity stretched beyond the

41. area so far surveyed and that larger settlements await
documentation.
Other Middle Formative Cities
Other large settlements of the Middle Formative include
Chalcatzingo and
Teopantecuanitlan in Central Mexico, Tres Zapotes on the Gulf
Coast, Chalchuapa in El
Salvador, Chiapa de Corzo in highland Chiapas and Naranjo in
highland Guatemala. Each of
these is 100 ha or more in total extent and associated with a
hierarchically structured regional
system. In any case, each of these Middle Formative centers
controlled a polity that was larger
and more complex that what was seen in the region previously.
Emerging complexity is also
evident in the Maya lowlands, at sites such as Nakbe in the
Mirador Basin, Cival in the Northern
Peten, Yaxuna in Yucatan, and Ceibal in the Pasion River
region. These Maya sites show large-
scale monumental construction and overall size that suggest
emerging urbanism (Estrada-Belli
2010).

42. Economic intensification and Exchange Systems of the Middle
Formative
Economic intensification provided the material base for the
expansion of elite power and
the means to finance monumental public works during the
Middle Formative. Pacific coast data
show that key elements of subsistence intensification were the
increased consumption of maize
and the use of the domesticated dog as a protein source (Love
1999).
Continued human selection for increased productivity
undoubtedly led to the growing
importance of maize to the economy. Maize provided the
maximum return per unit of labor
invested while also allowing multiple crops to be grown within
a year in some regions. The
increased focus on high-yield protein sources, such as dogs,
also reflect a maximizing strategy by
minimizing labor expended in food procurement. The
augmented yields from these foods not
only provided the resources to support larger populations, but
yielded large surpluses that
supported the labor invested in public constructions and
monumental art, as well prestige goods

43. consumption by the elite. That increased wealth, in turn,
stimulated interregional exchange.
There was, by many accounts, a reorganization of regional
social and economic
relationships at the beginning of the Middle Formative. Grove
(1989) has proposed that
increased trade in, and competition for, elite prestige goods led
to formal alliances among
centers. Demarest (1989) has proposed, in a similar vein, that
the Middle Formative was an era of
greater interregional contact, reflected in trade in raw materials
as well as shared iconography.
One of the most significant aspects of the Middle Formative is
that monumental sculpture
in Olmec style is found in large quantities outside the Gulf
coast. During the Middle Formative
we find Olmec style sculpture in the Central highlands of
Mexico and all along the Pacific coast
as far south as El Salvador. At some sites, such as Chalcatzingo
(Figure 6) and Takalik Abaj, the
bodies of Olmec sculpture are very large, with over 50
monuments at each site. Significantly,

44. however, monumental sculpture (in the Olmec style) is lacking
from the Basin of Mexico,
Oaxaca, highland Guatemala, and the Maya lowlands.
Of particular interest is that while many of the sculptures in
these regions may resemble
those of the Gulf coast, they aren’t simply copies. There are
clear regional styles and entirely new
forms in each region that are not found elsewhere. This is true
not only the sculptural forms, but
in the iconography, where we see symbols and meanings in
disparate parts of Mesoamerica that
are not found in the Gulf coast sites. These regional
manifestations indicate that people in
Mesoamerica outside of the Gulf Coast but were actively
engaged in creating aspects of the
Olmec style.
Middle Formative Networks of Exchange and Interaction
It has long been noted that the largest sites with Olmec style
objects, especially sculpture,
lie along the major trade routes. One clear difference in the
Middle Formative is the expansion of
the trade networks along which goods and communication
flowed. The most obvious example is

45. the Maya lowlands. There are no signs of sociopolitical
complexity in the Maya Lowlands during
the Early Formative, but in the Middle Formative there
evidence of emerging complexity. At the
same time the pottery of the region come to have the same
design motifs as the rest of
Mesoamerica.
Just as important as the areas that do participate in the Middle
Formative exchange long-
distance exchange systems are those that don’t. Those areas that
lie outside the important trade
routes lack “Olmec” traits, but also lack signs of socio-political
complexity. There are, for
example, Middle Formative sites in Guerrero that lack
obviously “Olmec” traits and there are
similar cases in Guatemala, especially the western highlands.
Trade structured the regional relationships and networks of
interaction, but also provided
the wealth by which elites defined themselves. While there is
cause to debate the structure of
regional relationships in the Early Formative, there is little in
the Middle Formative data to

46. support an assymmetrical model of interaction. Although there
are undoubtedly differences in
size, wealth, and power among the regional centers, those
differences cannot be reduced to a
simplistic models of core/periphery. The Gulf Coast region, and
La Venta in particular, may have
been the most important node in this system and for that reason,
the rulers of La Venta and
possibly some other Gulf sites had much greater wealth at their
disposal than did the rulers of
other sites in other region. That wealth allowed them to
commission beautiful art and monumental
constructions. But having greater wealth does not mean that
they were the source of all things
bright and beautiful in Mesoamerica, or that the Gulf Coast
region as a whole had cultural or
political dominance over the rest of Mesoamerica.
By the Middle Formative nearly many regions of Mesoamerica
had well-developed
structures of inequality and integration and it appears unlikely
that elites needed to emulate
foreign styles to enhance their prestige. Instead, what we see in
the Middle Formative are

47. numerous stylistic, symbolic, and iconographic elements being
used to mark membership in a
pan-Mesoamerican elite network. At the same time, a number of
common symbolic and stylistic
elements served to mark social distance between the elite and
the non-elite in each region. The
most important conclusion deduced from this pattern is that by
the Middle Formative
Mesoamerican elites were fully conscious of themselves as a
group of peers, albeit with strong
rivalries among themselves for prestige and power. The
primary social identify of the elite now
lay with this peerage, rather than with the local populace.
The Late Formative
The trajectory of increasing urbanization and socio-politcial
centralization climaxed in the
Late Formative period with the development of fully urban
states in most regions of Mesoamerica.
Late Formative cities were both larger and more numerous than
those of the Middle Formative,
and occur over a larger area, stretching from the Basin of
Mexico to the north to El Salvador to
the south. The Late Formative period is also notable for the

48. intensification of production using
irrigation or other water management systems, such as raised
fields constructed on the margins of
lakes or swamps. These highly productive systems enabled
larger overall populations, higher
population densities, and greater surpluses that were ultimately
controlled by increasingly wealthy
and powerful elites. A consideration of four key regions will
illustrate the trends.
Basin of Mexico in the Late Formative
Within the basin of Mexico, two major state-level polities
centered on urban settlements
developed during the Late Formative period. Settlement patterns
for this period indicated a very
rapid shift toward more complex regional organization between
200 BCE and 100 BCE. In the
southwestern part of the basin, there is good evidence for a
four-tier regional hierarchy dominated
by Cuicuilco. Cuicuilco spread over 400 hectares and may have
held as many as 20,000 people.
At least ten very large platforms were constructed at Cuicuilco,
one of which may be a palace. The

49. largest structure at the site was 20 m heigh and 80m in
diameter. Intensive cultivation, in the form
of the lake-shore margin fields known as chinampas, may have
help meet the food needs of the
growing city (See Manzanilla’s article for complete references).
In the northeastern portion the basin, Teotihuacan developed
rapidly and by 100 BCE
covered 8 km . Although much of the occupation at Teotihuacan
for this time period lies beneath2
Classic period construction there are suggestions of monumental
architecture. Teotihuacan also
dominated a four-tiered settlement hierarchy and like Cuicuilco
probably developed intensified
forms of cultivation during the final years before the common
era. The site was located at the head
of a number of springs whose flow could have been used for
irrigation.
Clusters of sites in the northwest and southeastern portions of
the basin may also represent
complex polities, although not as large as Cuicuilco or
Teotihuacan. In both the northwest and
southeast clusters, sites are located in defensive positions,
suggesting that they were threatened by
the expansion of the two large polities. At the beginning of the

50. common era, then, the Basin of
Mexico was divided into a minimum four polities, with two
large state-level polities, Cuicuilco
and Teotihuacan. One hundred years later, there was only a
single massive polity, dominated by
Teotihuacan. Soon after reaching its peak at the beginning of
the common era, Cuicuilco was
decimated by a volcanic eruption and large portions of the city
were covered by a lava flow 10 m
in depth. Approximately 100 years later, a second eruption
destroyed what little remained of the
city.
After the destruction of Cuicuilco, Teotihuacan grew quickly, to
rougly 20 km with a2
population reaching perhaps 80,000 people. Survey data
suggest that over 80% of the population
of the Basin of Mexico moved into its environs. Large-scale
monumental construction expanded
dramatically, with the two principal streets laid out on a
cruciform. The largest of the major
streets, later called the Street of the Dead by the Aztecs, held
the two largest constructions at the

51. site. The Temple of the Sun was raised almost entirely at this
time and the Temple of the Moon,
which closes the northern end of the Street of the Dead, was
begun. Over twenty additional
temples were construction along the northern portion of the
Street of the Dead,
Teotihuacan’s economic influence began to spread as Formative
period came to a close.
One of the major sources of Teotihuacan’s wealth appears to
have been based on mining obsidian
and the production of obsidian tools. Evidence of the first
specialized workshops producing such
tools appears as Teotihuacan consolidated its power within the
Basin of Mexico.
Oaxaca in the Late Formative
Urbanism and state-level political institutions began in the
Valley of Oaxaca between 500
BCE and 200 BCE. The transition is associated with the
founding of a new settlement, Monte
Alban in the central portion of the valley, on a series of
ridgetops, elevated above the valley floor
and hence removed from arable land. Once thought to have been
to be an administrative center
resulting from a confederation of the rulers from the three

52. different branches of the valley,
evidence now indicates that its power was achieved through
conquest, although its domination of
the valley was incomplete. There is ample evidence of violence
during this time period, and the
location of Monte Alban, as well as features associated with it,
suggest that its location was
chosen because of its defensibility (Refer to Balkansky for
complete references).
By 200 BCE Monte Alban covered over 4 km , with an
estimated population of over2
17,000 people, roughly half of the valley's total population. The
city itself was composed of three
distinct neighborhoods. Construction within the the Main Plaza,
the heart of the later city, was
begun but the extent of monumental construction is uncertain.
There are several fragments of
buildings that appear to date to this time period, but only one
complete building has been
excavated, the so-called Gallery. The Gallery contains a series
of low-relief sculpture, called the
Danzantes, that depict people in grotesque poses, often with
signs of mutilation. These are most

53. commonly interpreted as sacrificial victims, possibly captives
taken in war. The depictions are
often accompanied by what may be name glyphs (identifying the
captives), which are some of the
earliest inscriptions known for Mesoamerica.
Monte Alban’s political realm at 200 BCE included much, but
not all, of the Valley of
Oaxaca, with a four-tiered settlement hierachy. There are four
identified secondary centers,
including San Jose Mogote, which were large cities themselves,
with substantial public
architecture. Tertiary centers were smaller settlements with
public architecture, and below this
were small villages without public architecture. The expansion
of population and governmental
structures was underwritten by the cultivation of Oaxaca’s
piedmont slopes via irrigation.
Although small in absolute scale, the irrigation works expanded
production by allowing multiple
crops to be grown during the year.
In the second half of the Late Formative (200 BCE - 250 CE)
the city of Monte Alban may
have suffered population loss, but its public buildings

54. increased. The area of the Great Plaza was
leveled, and Building J was constructed at its south end.
Building J contains a number of panels
with hieroglyphic inscriptions, which may include the names of
cities conquered by Monte Alban.
If that interpretation is correct, the territory governed by Monte
Alban extended beyond the
Valley of Oaxaca to the Canada de Cuicatlan, 100 km to the
north.
Maya Lowlands
Although evidence for increasing urbanization and political
centralization is found
throughout the Maya lowlands in the Late Formative period, the
most significant events took
place in the Mirador Basin, located in the northern lowlands of
modern Guatemala. Within the
Mirador Basin, several centers emerged in a competitive
landscape during the Middle Formative
period, with Nakbe was the largest among them and probably
the most important ritual center.
The Late Formative period saw the consolidation of the Mirador
Basin into a single polity, with its

55. center at the site of El Mirador (Hansen 2001).
El Mirador has massive ceremonial core of over 2 km and
contained two great acropoli.2
The 73 m-high Danta complex at the lay east end of the site,
while at the west end of the site rose
the 53 m-high Tigre Complex. A smaller elevated complex, the
Central Acropolis, lies between
those larger complexes. As many as 15 smaller complexes at El
Mirador repeat the triadic
arrangement of temples typical of the Late Preclassic period.
Hundreds of residential platforms lie
around the ceremonial core, and the overall extent of El Mirador
may be as large as 16 km2
(Hansen 2001; Demarest 2006).
The area controlled by El Mirador probably included the
entirety of the Mirador Basin,
over 2000 km , in what was probably a four-tiered settlement
hierarchy. Five raised causeways,2
up to 24m wide and 4 m in height, connected El Mirador to
secondary centers within the basin.
The largest causeway, which runs to the site of Tintal, is over
40 km in length.

56. The growth of El Mirador in population and wealth was based
on intensive agriculture that
used artificial terraces filled with organic-rich mud harvested
from seasonal swamps. Phytolith
analysis indicates that maize, gourds, palms, and undetermined
fruit trees were planted both in
large fields and in smaller plots within the site center.
Other large lowland Maya centers with Late Preclassic
monumental architecture include
Cerros and Lamanai in Northern Belize, Becan in southern
Quintana Roo, San Bartolo and Cival
in northeastern Peten (Estrada-Belli 2010). Each of these sites
has a Late Preclassic floresence
followed by permanent or temporary abandonment. Large-scale
defensive moats and walls at
Cerros, Becan and Cival boasted large-scale defensive moats or
stone walls, which highlight the
increasing militarism of the time. Other very large Late
Formative occupations are now
recognized through the Maya lowlands, but they are often
deeply buried at sites occupied during
the Classic period. In addition to the sites already mentioned,
important Late Formative
occupations are known at Tikal, Ceibal, Altar de Sacrificios,

57. Calakmul, Rio Azul, Yaxha,
Naranjo, Caracol and Cahal Pech.
The Southern Maya region In the Late Formative
During the Late Formative period the highlands and Pacific
coast of Guatemala (known as
the Southern Maya Region) was filled by large settlements, the
largest of which were true cities
and the capitals of small states. These city-states were linked by
local and long-distance trade
systems and shared many elements of material culture. The
early states of the Southern Region
(Kaminaljuyu, Takalik Abaj, El Ujuxte, and Izapa and possibly
others) are best considered as city-
states, or micro-states, with sustaining hinterlands generally
under 1000 km . Of these many state2
polities, the best documented are Kaminaljuyu and El Ujuxte.
Kaminaljuyu
Kaminaljuyu was the largest of the the Southern Maya city-
states, both in terms of territory
governed and its overall influence with in the region. The core
area of Kaminaljuyu was at least 8

58. km . Within the core zone monumental architecture was
extensive during the Late Preclassic2
period, with the largest single structure being the 20 m tall E-
III-3 pyramid (Shook and Kidder
1952).
The evidence of social stratification and rulership at
Kaminaljuyu are impressive, with
dozens of representations of powerful individuals in art (Figure
7) and from the two royal tombs
excavated in Mound E-III-3 (Shook and Kidder 1952).
Urbanization at Kaminaljuyu may have
been supported by intensive agricultural systems feed by an 8
Km long aqueduct known as the
Montículo de la Culebra (Ohi 1994). Other canals from Lake
Miraflores fed small plots of
furrowed fields (Popenoe de Hatch 1997).
Kaminaljuyu’s political sphere included most of the Valley of
Guatemala, encompassing
approximately 1200 km area. Settlements within this political
sphere there was a five-tiered2
hierarchy, with the first four having some form of public
architecture. The secondary centers
shared a common ground plan with multiple plazas and an
orientation of the site axes at 21

59. degrees east of true north. Both the second and third-level
centers have plain stone monuments,
but lack the portraits of rulers that are so abundant at
Kaminaljuyu (Love 2010).
El Ujuxte
At the southwestern extreme of the Southern Maya Region the
site of El Ujxute developed
after the decline of La Blanca at about 600 BC. El Ujuxte was
built as a planned city, with most
buildings within the 4 km core zone conforming to a grid with
an orientation of 39 degrees east2
of true north. At the heart of the city was a ceremonial acropolis
with seven temples and another
monumental temple pyramid approximately 22 m in height.
Beyond the core zone lie areas of
habitation covering at least another 3 km , but the site may be
as large as 9 km . 2 2
The El Ujuxte polity included approximately 600 km ,
encompassing at least five, and2
possibly six, levels. The secondary centers of the polity have
small-scale copies of El Ujuxte’s
ceremonial core, while the third and fourth-level sites have

60. other forms of public architecture.
Interaction and High Culture in the Late Formative Period
Frequently described as a time of increased regionalization, the
Late Formative period
actually shows continued intense interaction and trade all across
Mesoamerica. Increasing
interaction is notable especially in the areas of high culture,
including art, calendrics, writing, and
political ideologies.
Although there are regional styles, stone sculpture in
Mesoamerica’s Late Formative
period emphasizes a number of shared themes wherever it is
found, especially the representation
of myth, links of rulers to a myth of creation, and the
performance of ritual. Late Preclassic
depictions of rulers share a distinctive visual system of
communication that cut across ethnic and
linguistic boundaries (Guernsey 2010). The creation of public
art displayed in formally arranged
civic centers formed by monumental buildings was widespread
in the Late Preclassic period in all
regions of Mesoamerica outside of the Basin of Mexico. Other
artistic media, such as the San

61. Bartolo murals shared the same vocabulary of images.
Visual imagery and oral performance were the principal means
for the communication of
political ideology during the Formative period, but texts came
to occupy an important role by the
Late Formative. Early forms of writing on monuments,
especially in the use of calendrical dates,
names, and some icons, probably date to at least the latter part
of the Middle Formative period,
but in the Late Formative the use notational systems linked to
language begin to spread. At least
three phonetically based scripts develop by the Late Formative:
the Zapotecan script in Oaxaca
(phonetic at least in part), the Isthmian Script (linked to the
Mixe-Zoquean languages) in the Gulf
Coast, Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and Pacific Coast, and Mayan
scripts in the Lowlands and
Highlands. Readings have been proposed for the Zapotec and
Isthmian scripts, but are not
universally accepted. The Preclassic Mayan scripts have been
generally attributed to a Cholan
language, but do not conform to the Classic period Mayan
scripts; hence, they are not completely

62. deciphered, although some graphemes can be read and some
limited phonetic reading can be
made.
Although these three scripts are each linked to a distinct spoken
language, they share many
iconographic elements and in some respects show common
elements of format (Macri 2010). It is
clear from these similarities that scribes and other intellectual
elites in most of Mesoamerica knew
of one another and through some means shared ideas, just as
artisans in the various regions shared
sculptural techniques and iconographic standards.
The use of calendrical notations on monuments also became
widespread in the Late
Formative, although the calendars themselves may be much
more ancient. The use of dots to
represent the number 1 and bars to represent the number 5 was
nearly universal in Mesoamerica
and presumably goes back long before the time they first appear
on stone. The 260 day sacred
almanac and 365 day solar calendar also undoubtedly antedate
their first appearances on
monuments; together these formed the Calendar Round, which

63. cycled every 52 years. Although
each region used its own language to name the days and months
of these respective calendars, in
structure they were the same throughout Mesoamerica.
A Late Formative innovation was the Long Count, used in the
Mayan and Isthmian
regions. The Long Count begins at a mythical date of creation,
generally placed at August 13,
3114 BCE. From this date the Long Count literally counts the
number of days since the creation,
using a largely vigesimal system of calculation. The earliest
use of the Long Count is on a series
of monuments dating to the first century BCE, and occur in an
arc stretching from the Gulf Coast
(Tres Zapotes) through the highlands of Chiapas (Chiapa de
Corzo) and down the Pacific coastal
slope (Takalik Abaj and El Baul). Tres Zapotes Stela C is
arguably an Epi-Olmec monument, but
the remaining examples are often described as Maya in style,
although they occur in what was
likely a zone of intense ethnic interaction.
The purpose of the Long Count was probably two-fold. First, it

64. served to link literate elites
to the act of creation. That link became a powerful ideological
tool, as rulers claimed that their
actions in ritual were analogous to those of gods at the time of
creation, as demonstrated by the
San Bartolo murals. Second, the Long Count provided a
mathematical system by which to
calculate the number of days between events, something that
was especially useful in determining
the intervals between astronomical phenomena. Astronomical
knowledge, and the ability to
predict celestial phenomena became key tools of political power
at this time.
List of Figures
1. Map
2. Building 6 at Paso de la Amada
3. Early temple pyramids a) La Blanca Mound 1 b) La Venta
Mound C-1
4. La Blanca Monument 3
5. Chalcatzingo Monument 1
6. El Baul Stela 1.

65. The Neolithic Revolution and the Development of Complex
Societies
After 20,000 years ago, the earth’s climate began to change
dramatically. For over
10,000 years the climate was unstable and fluctuated greatly.
But over the long term, the trend
was toward a warmer climate. In short, that 10,000 period saw
the end of the Pleistocene period
(the last great “Ice Age”) and the beginning of the Holocene
period (the modern climate regime).
With the beginning of the Holocene epoch, a fundamental shift
in subsistence strategies
occurred in many parts of the world. That shift was one from
hunting and gathering (foraging) to
food production (the reliance upon the cultivation of
domesticated plants and the husbandry of
domesticated animals). This shift came about independently in
at least seven parts of the world:
1) Southwest Asia (the Near East) and Egypt (the Nile) 2) The
Indus Valley 3) Northern China 4)
Southern China 5) Mesoamerica 6) South America 7) Sub-
saharan Africa. There is a case to be
made for viewing North America as another independent
example.
The shift in these seven or eight regions tremendously increased
cultural diversity among
human populations. First, there is the divided between
separation between the hunter/gatherers
and the food producers. Its important to remember that while

66. people in many regions of the
world shifted to food production, many others did not. They
continued to be very happy as
hunters and gatherers. But the origin of food production is the
social equivalent of bipedalism: it
is a watershed event that has dramatic ramifications. One group
of people pursues a stable
adaptation. Another follows an unstable, but dynamic path that
dramatically changes the way
that they live. The people who adopt food production step down
what Robert McCormick
Adams has called “the path of fire.” In a few thousand years
their societies would be radically
transformed from highly mobile, egalitarian, and small-scale
societies into sedentary, urban-
dwelling, and socially stratified societies with the types of
centralized governments we call
“states”.
Why does it take place? Let’s begin with why it did not take
place:
1) food production isn’t “better” than hunting and gathering.
Hunting and gathering was
a stable and workable adaptation for over 1 million years.
2) food producers don’t work less, just the opposite.
3) Food production isn’t more reliable. It is unstable, leads to a
degeneration of health and
is generally less reliable. The earliest farmers suffered from
poor health compared to the late
Pleistocene hunters and gatherers?
So why did people do it? That is the big question that we’ll
now examine.

67. There are many ways that we could approach this
transformation. We could rapidly
examine all the seven cases, but to my mind that results only in
a superficial understanding. The
approach that I want to take is to examine one case in great
details. We will look at the way in
which the transformation took place in two parts of the world:
Southwest Asia (The Near East)
and Mesoamerica. These two regions probably have the best
data because people have been
investigating this region longer than others. The first lecture
this week will cover the Near East,
while the second will cover Mesoamerica.
We’ll start by examining the archaeological record in the Near
East starting at about
20,000 BC and work our way up to the first urban settlements
with state-level political
organization. The whole sequence covers about 17,000 years
and can be broken down into six
stages:
1) Late Pleistocene Hunters/gatherers
2) Sedentary hunters/gatherers
3) Initial Agriculturalists
4) spread of agriculture to the Hilly Flanks
5) colonization of the Mesopotamian plain
6) Intensive irrigation agriculture
But before we look at the stages, I want to briefly describe the
environment of this region.

68. General Environmental Factors in the Near East
Landforms: Although there is great diversity in the physical
terrain of the Near East, it is
useful as a first approximation to divide this region into two
major landforms. The first zone is
defined by the major mountain ranges -- the Pontic and Taurus
of Anatolia and the Zagros and
Elburz of Iran -- running across the norhtern half of the Near
East. Many peaks are at higher
elevations that the 2,000 meter tree line. Many alluvial valleys
are interspersed among these
mountains, and there are two major upland plateaus. The
Anatolian plateau is surrounded by the
Pontic and Taurus, and the Iranian plateau by the Zagros,
Elburz, and other mountains in the east.
Both plateaus are at elevations ranging from 500 to 1500 meters
and are generally dry.
The second major landform zone of the Near East comprises the
southern hills and plains;
its diverse topography ranges from alluvial plains to rolling
hills and low mountains at elevations
from sea level to 1000 meters. Geologically, this zone is
composed of horizontal sedimentary
rocks. The major feature of this zone is the broad valley of the

69. Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The
Mesopotamian plain itself was depressed and began to fill with
the eroision products ofthe
surrounding mountainridges of both the Zagros and Taurus
ranges. Hence, the folded terrain
near the center of the depression was covered with alluvial
sediment and is now a very flat plain.
The Levant is a zone of junction where relatively recent
sediments are folded onto the
buckled and broken edge of the Arabian platform. The terrain
has fractured in a generally north-
south direction, with minor cross-faults at intervals, which has
given rise to a series of detached
upland masses separated from each other by small lowland areas
arranged in a roughly
rectangular pattern. The mountain ranges, especially to the
north, are an effective barrier to
movement inland from the narrow and broken coastal plain.
Settlement in the hilly country is
restricted to valley floors. The mountains capture rain from
humid air coming off the
Mediterranean, leaving the areas to the east in a rain shadow.
Because of lower rainfall further

70. inland in the Syrian desert, communities had to be located on
rivers or near springs. The impact
is similar to that of the Sierra Nevada, where deserts develop
east of the mountains.
An area of the Levant of great archaeological and geological
interest is the Jordon rift
Valley. As the northern end of a major rift system that can be
traced all the way to South Africa,
the Jordon Rift Valley extends 400 kilometers north from the
head of the Gulf of Akaba. It varies
in width from3 to 25 kilometers; it lowest point, at the surface
of the Dead Sea,is 395 meters
bwlow sea level.
Climate
Two major characteristics of Near Eastern Climate in the
lowlands are high temperatures
in the summera and a broad temperature range, both annually
and dirunally. A clear sky is an
important factor responsible for intense heating, which is also
promoted by the absence of soil
and vegetation. Another factor affecting temperature is the
mountainous coastline, which
restricts the tempering effect of the sea to a narrow strip.

71. Although the summers are hot in in
most parts of the near East, the winters are usually cool and
often very cold. Snow falls in many
places and only southern Arabia is entirely free from snowfall.
The distribution of rainfall in the Near East is largely controlled
by topography and the
disposition of land and sea in relation to rain-bearing winds.
The Near East is predominantly a
continental area, certain regionsofwhich are affected by the
proximity of small bodies of water.
Its continental aspect is emphasied by the presence of high
coastal mountain ranges. Moist winds
frequently break through the coastal chain in Syria to contribue
moisture ot the Taurus and
Zagros foothills. The amount of precipitation varies greatly
from year to year, which makes
average rainfall figures very misleading. For example, in a
twenty year period the average annual
precipitation in Baghdad was 139 millimeters, but ranged from a
minimum of 72 to a maximum
of 316. Few regions outside of the highlands have a stable
annual rainfall.
One of the most important factors of the Mediterranean climate
regime of important

72. regions of the Near East affecting the development of
agricultural society is the winter rainfall
regime. Most precipitation, and almost all usable rainfall,
occurs inthe winter months at the
middle and lower elevations.
It is thought that early agriculturalists in the Near East
cultivated their crops only in
winter, on land that is located at the middle of the range of
elevations. Plants like barley, wheat,
peas, lentils, flax, chickpeas, and vetch were originally adapted
to a winter growing season. They
were planted sometime between October and december and
Harvested between April and June,
the exact dates varying by region. These crops could be grown
in the summer only inareas that
were cool or at high elevation because they cannot tolerate hot,
humid conditions. The climatic
characteristics, together with those of the crops themselves,
determined the location and activites
of early villgers. They also affected early irrigated farming in
the Nile and Mesopotamian river
valleys; the flooding of the Nile in the late summer an early

73. fall was ideal for crops grown in the
winter, but the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates in the late
spring had to be controlled rather
than allowed to flood the fields freely.
Vegetation
There are five general vegetation zones
1. Mediterranean vegetation is confined to the wetter parts of
the coastal area and adjacent
mountain flanks. It consists of open woodlands of evergreen oak
with areas of subtropical pine
and wild olive trees. Walnut and poplar trees are found in
damper places, and introduced cacti
now grow widely. Today, because of deforestation, most areas
of the mediterranean vegetation
contain a somewhat impoverished set of plants including stunted
oaks, pistachios, and many
shrubs.
2. Steppe vegetation is caused by seasonal variationof
temperature and generally low rainfall. On
the flanks of mountains there is open savanna vegetation with
scattered juniperand small bushes,
but in regions of true steppe, consisting of various species of
grasses, hervs, and low shrubs, trees

74. are absent. The appearance of steppe landscape differs greatly
from summer to winter; in the late
winter and early spring, many species of flowers and grasses
grow rapidly, but they shrivel or are
completely burned or grazed off during the rest of the year. The
contrast between the summer
barrenness and the luxuriant early spring vegetation is striking,
and even a small climatic
fluctuation can greatly affect plant growth. It can prompt major
movements of the primarily
pastoral peoples who occupy this type of terrain.
3. Mountain vegetation is related to elevation and rainfall.
Evergreen oaks predominate on the
lower slopes, whereas decidious oaks, cedar, maple, juniper,
pine or fir are found higher up,
depending on the area. On the damp northern slopes of the
Elburz and Pontic mountains, there
are temperate decidious and coniferous trees, as well as a dense
undergrowth of shrubs and vines
in some areas. At elevations higher than 2000 meters in eastern
Anatolia and northwestern Iran,
there are areas of alpine vegetation reminiscent of the Swiss

75. Alps.
4. Riverine vegetation is present in lower courses of the Tigris-
Euphrates Valley and consists of
scattered willow, poplar, alder and tamarisk. The abundant date
palm, which is tolerant of
excessive water and salinity, was introduced to this reigon. The
thick undergrowth in deltaic
regions is composed of aquatic grasses, papyrus, lotus, and
reeds that can obtain heightsof 7
meters.
5. Desert Vegetation is extremely adaptive to dry or saline
conditions. Many desert plants
complete their growing cycle within a few weeks after the end
of the winter rains. Throughout
the spring an extraordinary variety and abundance of flowery
grasses can be seen that last only a
few days before drying up under the increasing heat.
The natural vegetation of a region is indicative of the
agricultural potential of the area.
The plants grown by earely farmers could survive only in
certain regions. This limited the
distributionof early farming villages. As strains of plants and
animals improved and new

76. technologies were developed, farming villages spread to other
zones. Given adequate plants and
techniques, the potential for plant growth in these new areas --
especially in the alluvial lowlands
-- was significantly higher than it had been in the original
farming center.
Summary
1. The Near East is a topographically diverse region, with high
mountains, rolling hills, and a
broad alluvial plain. Zones having their own distinctive natural
resources are distributed roughly
in bands across the region. the proximity of different
environmental zones and the localized
nature of certain resources encouraged the exchange of goods
and the movement of peopl.
2. The Mediterranean climate of hot summers and cool winters
combined with winter rainfall in
the intermontane valley and foothill regions nutured the growth
of annual grasses, some of which
became the earliest domesticated plants.
3. The existence of large alluvial valleys adjacent to the Nile,
Tigris, Euphrates and Karun rivers

77. allowed plants domesticated in the uplands to be cultivated with
the aid of irrigation water. The
rivers also facilitated communication and exchange.
River regimes
Mesopotamia: The relationship between the early settlements of
the Mesopotamian plain
and their ecological settings is primarily determined by the
location an regimes of two major
river-- the Tigris and the Euphrates -- originating in the
Anatolian Highlands. The Euphrates is
feed chiefly by melted winter snow, recieving two left-bank
tgributaries: the Balikh and the
Kahbur. No significant tributaries are received from the Syrian
or Arabian deserts, but a large
number of seasonal stream beds suggest that at one time water
may have entered from the right
bank. The Tigris, lying close to the Zagros mountains, is
primarily rain fed, and along its whole
length it receibeves many tributaries, some of which are quite
large. The Euphrates depends on
the rainfall of a single and relatively restricted catchement area;
consequently, the volume of the

78. river does not fluctuate rapidly in its middle and lower courses.
The Tigris, on the other hand,
draws its water from a much wider catchment zone and local
rain in a single district soon affects
the height of the river, making suddent floods common. A local
rainstorm in the Zagros can
produce marked changes in the height of the Tigris within a few
hours, and it is not unusual for
the river to rise from 2 to 3 meters in 24 hours.
The Tigris River falls nearly 300 meters between the turkish
frontier and Baghdad. It
carries a greater volume of water than does the Euphrates and is
subject to greater seasonal
fluctuations. Both rivers are at their lowest levels in September
and October. Flooding of the
Tigris is greatest in April and the high water for the Euphrates
is inMay. These floods are poorly
times with respect to the prevalent winter agricultural schedule;
the high water comes at a time
when crops are mature and ready to be harvested; therefore,
rather than helping their growth, it is
amajor threat to their harvesting.
The Transition to Food Production

79. Stage 1) Late Pleistocene Hunters/gatherers
Late Paleolithic
At 20,000 BC people of the Near East were like those
everywhere: they made their
livings by hunting game, trapping fish, and collecting wild
plants, fruits, and nuts. They were
mobile and moved about on the landscape following the
seasonal availability of resources in
different environmental zones.
Three types of sites are hypothesized to account for the
variations inthe observable
archaeological remains: seasonal base camps, butchering
stations, and transitory stations.
The largest of the three types is a seasonal base camp. Most
known base camps are
located in large, chambered caves commanding a good view of
passing game. The camps are
large enough to accomodate from 10 to 30 people. A base
camp would have been occupied by
an economically self suficient and politically autonomous
hunting band. Most tool
manufacturing and food preparation took place at these base

80. camps, resulting in a great density
and diversity of refuse in the archaeological deposits. Base
camps have more hearths than other
types of settlements, and they have clearly defined living floors.
The second type of site in the Paleolithic settlement model is a
butchering station. Most
butchering stations were small rock shelters, seldom more than
10 square meters in area. These
camps were used by groups of hunters who made a kill,
butchered the animal and later returned
to a base camp.
Assemblages at butchering stations include killing and
butchering implements but lack
other tools found at base camps.
The third type of site is a transitory station. Many of these sites
may have served as
lookouts for hunting searching for game and passing the time by
preparing new tools and
weapons. Scattered chipping debris characterizes such sites.
Changing subsistence strategies
During the upper paleolithic peoples of the near east relied
heavily on hooved mammals

81. for their food. They may have represented as much as 99% of
the meat eaten by people at that
time. The seasonal round of the people may have been based on
following the migratory patterns
of these large animals.
At about 20,000 b.c. there was a change in food resources that
shows up clearly in
archaeological deposits. The change consisted of a significant
broadening of the subsistence base
to include progressively greater amounts of fish, crabs, water
turtles, molluscs, land snails, birds,
and possibly plant foods. The hunting of ungulates remained a
major aspect of the diet, but over
time the other resources came to be dominant.
This transition is called the “Broad Spectrum Revolution.”
Fundamentally, it is seen to
be a cultural adaptation to changing resource availability caused
by environmental shifts. Most of
the truly enormous animals such as the elephant and the
rhinoceros had disappeared thousands of
years earlier. But, the seasonal patterns of the animals present
may have been disrupted. People

82. responded to the change by broadening their subsistence base;
they diversified the types of food
that they ate.
The Kebaran Culture
The archaeological culture associated with the Broad Spectrum
Revolution is called the
Kebaran. Kebaran sites are found in a wide variety of locations,
reflecting the diversity of their
subsistence base. Very importantly, the Kebaran culture shows
the first signs of an emerging
technology for processing the seeds of grasses such as wheat
and barley. These grasses spread as
the result of increasing aridity and seasonality.
Grasses are annual plants; they are adapted to climates with
marked seasonality because
once dispersed their seeds can lie dormant in the ground until
the rains come. Thus, they can
survive in climates with lengthy dry seasons. This
technological breakthrough became very
important in the succeeding Natufian period.
Stage 2: Sedentary Hunter/Gatherers, The Natufians
The last part of the Kebaran period, called the Geometric
Kebaran, is followed by the

83. Natufian. Geometric Kebaran phase indicates restricted
mobility, as the environment dries up.
The constriction of territory, reduced mobility, and
agglomeration of population
continued and accelerated about 13,000 years ago, or 11,000
B.C., and results in a Culture called
the Natufian (See the slide of site distribution)
Important Natufian sites:
Abu Hureya - up north of the ‘core Natufian zone’
Jericho
Ain Mallaha – upper Jordan River
Natufian settlements are located in the Levant, with most in
northern and central Israel
and in northern Jordan. Natufian sites are found in both open air
locales and in caves. They are
found roughly from modern Beirut to Cairo, predominantly
along the coast. Early Natufians
favored the Mediterranean coastal and woodland zones, and
rarely the steppe areas farther inland.
Later Natufian peoples moved into the steppe zone and had
several large settlements there.

84. The largest Natufian settlements are about 2000 square meters,
or 1/5 of an acre. Largest
sites may have housed 200-300 people. Relative to the Kebaran
period, there is an increased
presence of grinding stones and smaller stone tools. Hafted
tools, including sickles. Food storage
facilities.
The Natufians were foragers who lived by hunting and
gathering, but they had settled
down and lived in particular locations. They were, in a phrase,
sedentary hunter/gatherers. Many
Natufian settlements seem to be temporary camps, or camps that
were visited repeatedly, but
others were almost certainly occupied year-round. Natufian
settlements have circular houses
with stone foundations. The villages may have been as large as
50 houses. Examine the
slides of settlements. Note permanence and investment of labor.
The Natufians invested
substantial labor in their houses; they meant to stay there awhile
The Natufian tools assemblage included microliths and blades
used in composite tools.

85. They had grinding implements for processing grains and storage
pits.
The Natufian people living in permanent villages took a step
that changed the course of
history. The Natufians harvested a large number of grains,
including emmer wheat and barley.
But all of the botanical remains found at Natufian sites are wild
forms, they were not
domesticated.
.
Burials: There are individual burials under house floors and
collective burials in larger
pits outside the houses. Many more men than women and it has
been suggested that female
infacticide was practiced.
Analysis of the bones shows that health was good. The bulk of
their calories came from
carbohydrates, indicating heavy use of harvested grains.
Natufian settlements were large, but they were not cities, or
even large villages. Natufian
sites were linked by a network of trade that included obsidian
from the north, shells and possibly

86. beads from the coastal zones. But there were is no evidence of
any kind of political or economic
unity above the settlement. There may have been some incipient
social inequality, but they are
Best described as tribal networks.
The Natufian period came to an end ca. 9000 B.C., with the
onset of a pronounced dry
period. Rainfall decreased and seasonality increased. Soon
after we see evidence of cultivation
and agriculture, marking the transition to the Pre-Pottery
Neolithic. The transition to agriculture
was rapid. It happened in a matter of just a few hundred years.
By 8,500 B.C. Sites like Jericho
have domesticated foodstuffs.
The earliest evidence for cultivation comes from the Levant,
where the dryness and
seasonality were most marked. People under stress by
environmental; change were apparently
forced to make dramatic changes in the techniques they used to
obtain food.
It was probably a short leap from intensive collection of grains
to some sort of incipient
cultivation. Once people were sedentary, it wasn’t too

87. complicated to domesticate animals. The
range of animals was restricted by seasonality, so they were
easily captured. The animals that
were domesticated were herd animals, who were naturally
social. Jared Diamond explains this
aspect of food production very well in Guns, Germs, and Steel
(that section of the book is not
assigned for this week, but you might want to read ahead).
The Neolithic Revolution?
The shift to the Neolithic way of life is sometimes described as
a “Revolution.” Views
have shifted, however, and now the changes are not seen as
being rapid, but as coming about
slowly.
The Neolithic (New Stone Age) way of life had three essential
elements: 1) food
production (cultivation and animal husbandry) 2) sedentism
(year-round residence in a single
location and 3) domestication (the human modification of plant
and animal genomes).
The Natufians had one element of the package: sedentism.
Their mobility was curtailed

88. by environmental change, but they were able to cope with that
by emphasizing the harvesting of
wild grains. The same environmental change that curtailed their
mobility led to the spread of
wild wheat and barley, so that the Natufians enjoyed an
abundance of those foods. They were
able to harvest sufficient quantities and store the grain so that
they could get through the dry
months of the year.
The Natufians, however, did not cultivate the grains; they didn’t
plant seeds from their
grain stores. Nor did they genetically alter the genome of plants
or animals through selection.
The situation changed dramatically at about 11,000 BC, with the
Younger Dryas. The
Younger Dryas was a period of very cold conditions, a return to
Ice-Age climate. Following that,
came a pronounced period of increased heat, aridity, and
seasonality. It was during the latter
period of increased seasonality that the Natufians made the
transition from harvesting wild plants
to active cultivation. They did so, in essence, because they had
to. If they did not become more

89. pro-active they would not have made it through the increasingly
hot and dry summers.
Once the Natufians began to sow seeds from their stored grain
supplies and to cultivate
the fields, they were food producers. In the process of selecting
the seeds to sow each year, they
domesticated the plants (i.e., they altered the genome of the
species).
Early Domesticates
The most frequently reported early domesticated plants in the
Near East are cereal grains.
Other types of plants were also domesticated at an early date,
but they were not as common and
have not been given the same attention by researchers. The
brief description that follows of the
morphology and behavior of wheat and barley is intended to
apply to cereals in general
Cereals, which consist of annual grasses such as wheat and
barley, are grown chiefly
because their large grains are a concentrated source of
carbohydrates that can be stored easily.
Examine the drawing of morphology of a cereal spike. The
central column is the axis, or

90. rachis, and is made up of nodes and internodes. The nodes are
points at which wild brittle-spike
cereal comes apart, each section sonsisting of the internode,
node and attached spikelet. These
disintegration points made become solid by mutation; then the
azis does not fall apart, but
remains a single tough column. the toughness of the spike is
the property of domesticated cereals
that made them worthwhile crops for early farmers.
The spikelet consists of two glumes enclosing one or more
florets. The floret consists of
two inner bracts, the lemma and palea, which contain the
stamens and the pistil; the ovary, which
is part of the pistil, eventually develops into a fruit (grain).
Each node bears a single spikelet,
whereas in barley, each node bears three spikelets,, each
consisting of a single floret and a pair of
reduced glumes. In two-row barley, the ancestral form, only the
middle spikelet bears a fertile
floret and can therefore produce a grain; the two lateral ones are
sexually imperfect and thus
sterile. By genetic mutation the lateral florets have become
fertile, hence each of the three florets

91. of the spike can become fertile, making the barley six-row.
Other important domesticates: legumes (peas, lentils,
chickpeas),
Nut trees: oak, pistachio, almond, (ripen in autumn which
complements the spring ripening
grains).
Fruit: olives, grapes, dates, figs: all added by the fourth or
third millenium (domesticated via
vegetative propagation of clones: grafting, cutting seedlings,
etc.)
Animal Domestication
Unlike the New World, the domestication of various animal
species was vitally important
in the old world. Animals provided food as meat, through their
milk, as well as providing raw
materials for clothing, tools, and adornment. Many animals
also provided energy that served as a
means of agricultural and economic intensification.
Most changes in domesticated animals are behavioral. It is hard
to detect
archaeologically. Linked genetic characteristics may be
indicative.

92. Dogs: by 10,000 B.C.
Sheep: kept by 11,000 B.C. domesticated by 7,000 B.C.
Goats: ditto
Pigs: by second half of the 7th millenium
Cattle: Probably domesticated in several locations. Possibly
first domesticated in Europe
ca. 7000 B.C. present in Near East by 6,000 b.c.
Stage 3: Initial Agriculturalists and the Neolithic Period
By the 9th milleniumm settlements grew in size and
permanence. Architecture became
more widespread and substantial. Although there is no definite
evidence for either plant
domestication or animal domestication, there is evidence for
intensified experimentation with
wild progenitors of cereal grasses and herd animals.
Some very large settlements, esp. at Jericho.
The Neolithic Period is Divided into two big parts. The first is
the Pre-pottery Neolithic, which is
just what it says. It is the time after people develop the three
principal traits of the Neolitihic way
of life, but before the development of pottery. The Pre-Pottery

93. Neolithic is further divided into
two parts: the Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA for short) and
Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB).
After the development of pottery, archaeologists define phases
(periods of time) based on
pottery styles. In our case, we’ll use names like Hassuna and
Samarra, which are phases
localized within Mesopotamia.
Dates:
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A: ca 8500 BC-7500 BC
Pre-pottery Neolithic B (starting just before 7500-6000 B.C.)
During the PPNA there appeared widespread early farming
villages in the hilly slopes area.
where there was rainfall exceeding 200 mm. per year. The first
villages were small, but by the
end of the PPNB villages were growing quite large, as
exemplified in Catal Huyuk, in southern
Turkey.
PPNA villages:
Beida (southern jordan; 2000 sq. meters in size)

94. Jericho
Hacilar
Cayonou (Anatolia; 250x150 meters 7300-6500 b.c.)
Jarmo (Zagros; 1.5 hectares) before 6750 B.C.
Ali Kosh (on the fringes at 300 m. elevation ; 135 ;meters in
diameter)
Hunting and gathering was still important at this time.
The sixth Millenium
The preeminence of the early village developments in the
southern Levant diminished at
the beginning of the sixth millenium BC. At approximately
6000 b.c. many of the communities
in the southern Levant were abandoned, and large areas were
not reoccupied for at least a
thousand years. Their abandonment seems to have been a result
of a drying of the climate that
reached a maximum at about 6000 b.c.
PPNB settlements (very large)
Catal Huyuk and Jericho
Catal Huyuk (in southern Turkey) was largely agricultural.

95. Improved varieties of crops:
hybridized wheat and six-row barley. Occupied ca. 6500 - 5000
(uncalibrated). Catal Huyuk is a
very large settlement; the houses are closely packed, apparently
for defensive purposes.
Agricultural production was generating wealth and that wealth
apparently attracted raiders. In
addition to being located in a productive agricultural zone,
Catal Huyuk controlled an important
source of obsidian (volcanic glass) which was used for cutting
tools. Trade in obsidian also
provided wealth to the town.
At Catal Huyuk we begin to see signs of emerging social
inequality. Burials reflect
differences in social status; many artifacts point to an increased
concern with social display
through clothing adornments, personal adornments (tatooing,
piercings, make-up), and prestige
goods (exotic jewelry).
by 6000 B.C. there is evidence of irrigation agriculture and the
first appearance of early ceramics.
Stage 5: The colonization of the Mesopotamian Plain
The expansion of agricultural villages out of the hilly flanks of

96. the fertile crescent
coincides roughly with the invention of pottery. Pottery allows
us to not only “tell time” because
styles change rapidly, but it also allows us to track regional
interactions, because each region of
SW Asia had its own style of pottery.
The more fundamental importance of the expansion into the
lower elevations of the
Mesopotamian plain is that it could not have been accomplished
without irrigation technology.
Remember, there is not enough rainfall in the lower elevations
of Mesopotamia to support
cultivation without irrigation.
We’ll discuss the concept of intensification in a few weeks, but
for now let’s just say that
irrigation not only allowed cultivation to take place within the
Mesopotamian plain, but it also
allowed cultivation to be expanded throughout the year.
Whereas only a single crop might be
grown in a year using rainfall, irrigation allowed multiple
crops. That meant more food for
growing populations, but also surpluses that could be used for