文章基本信息

标题：Development of sedentary communities in the Maya lowlands: Coexisting mobile groups and public ceremonies at Ceibal, Guatemala
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作者：Takeshi Inomata ; Jessica MacLellan ; Daniela Triadan 等
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2015
卷号：112
期号：14
页码：4268-4273
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1501212112
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceThe results of our research at the lowland Maya site of Ceibal add to the growing archaeological understanding that the transition to sedentism did not necessarily occur simultaneously across different social groups within a region and that monumental constructions did not always postdate fully established sedentism. Whereas sedentary and mobile populations are, in many cases, interpreted to have maintained separate communities, our study suggests that groups with different levels of mobility gathered and collaborated for constructions and public ceremonies. These data indicate that the development of sedentism was a complex process involving interactions among diverse groups, and that collaborative construction projects and communal gatherings played a critical role in this social transformation by facilitating social integration among different groups. Our archaeological investigations at Ceibal, a lowland Maya site located in the Pasion region, documented that a formal ceremonial complex was built around 950 B.C. at the onset of the Middle Preclassic period, when ceramics began to be used in the Maya lowlands. Our refined chronology allowed us to trace the subsequent social changes in a resolution that had not been possible before. Many residents of Ceibal appear to have remained relatively mobile during the following centuries, living in ephemeral post-in-ground structures and frequently changing their residential localities. In other parts of the Pasion region, there may have existed more mobile populations who maintained the traditional lifestyle of the preceramic period. Although the emerging elite of Ceibal began to live in a substantial residential complex by 700 B.C., advanced sedentism with durable residences rebuilt in the same locations and burials placed under house floors was not adopted in most residential areas until 500 B.C., and did not become common until 300 B.C. or the Late Preclassic period. During the Middle Preclassic period, substantial formal ceremonial complexes appear to have been built only at a small number of important communities in the Maya lowlands, and groups with different levels of sedentism probably gathered for their constructions and for public rituals held in them. These collaborative activities likely played a central role in socially integrating diverse groups with different lifestyles and, eventually, in developing fully established sedentary communities.
关键词：Mesoamerican archaeology ; sedentism ; Maya ; public ceremony ; subsistence