The research objectives of the project were: Assess whether the pre-Olmec use of caves in Eastern Guerrero involved foragers periodically living in them, practicing a mixed economy; Test whether the ancient people stopped using the caves as seasonal foraging camps at the same time the Olmec presence is reported; Analyze Read more…
This project explores how communities across Mesoamerica took diverse paths in the transition from an egalitarian and mobile forager-cultivator way of life in the Archaic period to sedentism, agriculture, and social complexity of the Formative period. For the case of Eastern Guerrero, this project explores the hypothesis that a subsistence Read more…
The sites of Contlalco and La Coquera in the valley of Tlapa were excavated in 2004 by the PI. Both date from the Middle to Late Formative periods (750 BC-AD 200). Excavations there also suggested that earlier periods of occupations in the narrow valleys of the Balsas River are either Read more…
Sociopolitical complexity developed in Mesoamerica beginning in the initial Early Formative period (1700-1200 BC) with the transition from egalitarian communities to ranked societies, although there are also disagreements as to causes, processes, place, and timing of the archaeological correlates associated to this emergence. The emergence, geographic spread, timing, meaning and Read more…
Defining the pre-Olmec people of Guerrero is a difficult task since relatively little is known about them. While the Olmec mural of Cauadziziqui provides the Formative period ceiling, the pre-Olmec mural may date any time before that, although a Paleo-Indian date for the mural seems unlikely.