Social and Environmental Risk and the Development of Social Complexity in Precolumbian Masaya, Nicaragua
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: This dissertation evaluates the applicability of three models that purport to describe and predict the development and establishment of social complexity based on the interplay between environmental setting and human communities. The three models are juxtaposed in terms of the conditions required to foment the development of and formalization of social complexity and the corresponding level of inequality, so that each model requires contrasting environmental risk conditions relative to the other two. Considering the relative dearth of archaeological studies focused on understanding the development of social complexity in Nicaragua, and the abundance of readily accessible precolumbian ceramics and lithics available on soil surfaces, a full coverage, surface survey (172km2) was conducted in the municipalities of Tisma and Ticuantepe in the vicinity of Masaya, Nicaragua in order to obtain the data necessary to test the suitability of each model. Relative synchronic and diachronic changes, including the tempo and pace were documented using the established and broadly accepted ceramic chronology, including the distribution over the municipal territories and the densities of occupation within each defined community. The results indicate very distinctive patterns for each region over an occupation sequence lasting at least two millennia. Though this dissertation illustrates the limitations of each model using the data available, it also contributes to a clearer understanding of the configurations and trajectories of social change may take in Pacific Nicaragua, thus adding to the growing corpus of comparable archaeological datasets that may bring forth increasingly sophisticated models explaining the development of inequality and its role in the development of increasingly complex social forms. The complete settlement dataset is available in the University of Pittsburgh Comparative Archaeology Database (http://www.cadb.pitt.edu/).
Authors: Roman Lacayo, Manuel António
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2268086602