Introduction:
An archaeological project has been working in the Santa Maria Valley in Mexico over the past
several years. One of the prime objectives of the project is to document social change among
Indigenous societies in the area, some 3000 to 1000 years ago. The project included the
excavation of two sites: 1) A Formative period site dating to around 600 B.C., and 2) A Classic
period site dating to around A.D. 700. Major portions of both sites were excavated, and now
the project needs someone to analyze the data in order to request continuation of funding from
a federal granting agency. Included here are maps of parts of both sites, the areas excavated,
and a summary of the remains encountered.
Your job as a member of the ongoing project is to describe and contrast the social, economic,
and political organization of the societies that occupied these two sites. Obviously, there are
enough data here to write a very long report, but granting agencies (really!) have strict page
limits. You may select particularly important aspects of the data, but be concise and try to
recover as much information as you can, explicitly recognizing your assumptions about the
meaning of the data.
Address the following questions in your report:
1. Evaluate any evidence that you can find for the following phenomena, at each of these
two sites:
a. social stratification
b. long-distance trade and redistribution of materials
c. differential access to strategic resources
d. craft specialization
e. violence
f. administrative and bureaucratic complexity
g. institutionalized religion
h. inherited status differences
2. Evaluate how these data confirm or refute the standard narrative of the rise of civilization in
the ancient world.
3. Suggest additional areas of both sites for excavation, to help clear up problems and follow
prospects suggested by the initial data.
We recommend that you spend about 70% of your report on question 1, 20% on question 2, and
10% on question 3, but we ask that you integrate your answers into a single narrative and please
do not list either the questions or separate headings in your essay. Please also avoid going over
6-7
double-spaced typed pages, using 12-point font and 1″ margins — that is, 1250 to 1750 words.
