What makes us different is what makes us human..
Prehispanic Chiefdoms of Mesoamerica and Colombia
The chiefdoms of the Valle de la Plata turned out to be very largely a phenomenon of the higher elevations represented by the western survey zone. It was in this survey zone where the regional settlement evidence enabled the clearest definition of districts—-human interaction communities of the Regional Classic period that each comprised a few thousand inhabitants in an area 10–15 km across. Each of the Regional Classic districts had a single complex where a small number of extremely highly regarded individuals were buried in monumental tombs surrounded by carved stone statues. Closely surrounding this complex was a core area of concentrated population. Moving out from this central core, the density of occupation steadily diminished, with households located farther and farther apart on the landscape. Eventually the spacing between households began to decrease again, as the core area of the next district was approached. The particular activities most in evidence for providing a central focus and an identity to these large scale centralized human communities were the burials and permanent monumental commemoration of specific important individuals. (Drennan 2006:219)
Robert D. Drennan, ed.2006 Prehispanic Chiefdoms of the Valle de la Plata, Vol. 5: Regional Settlement Patterns. University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, No. 16, p. 219.
A multidimensional scaling of 10 households at Fábrica San José, a Late Guadalupe phase (800-700 B.C.) village, shows five grouped tightly together. These households have evidence of only basic domestic activities. Four others are set off from this group by the presence of distinctly different sets of tools related to different crafts. Such specialization means economic interdependence and a level of daily interaction that would have strengthened the forces that pulled these 10 households together into a compact community in the first place. Fábrica San José seems typical of small villages in Oaxaca, not only during the Guadalupe phase, but also during the preceding San José phase (1200-900 B.C.). In addition to economic interdependence, social inequality is a second major axis of variability. One household is set off sharply from all the rest in this regard; its members had many decorated serving vessels, ate considerably more deer meat, and owned more elaborate ornamental possessions than their neighbors. A 60-year-old woman of this household was buried with four ceramic vessels and 55 polished stone beads--much more elaborate treatment than any other burial excavated at the site. (Drennan and Peterson 2006:3960)
Robert D. Drennan and Christian E. Peterson2006 Patterned Variation in Prehistoric Chiefdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:3960-3967.
The overall impact of the Alto Magdalena's monuments is to focus attention strongly on specific individuals, who may well be represented in the large sculptures incorporated into the barrows and the plazas adjoining them. The sculptures combine human and animal characteristics in clearly supernatural references, as in human faces with fangs or two-headed reptiles on the backs of human figures. These themes recall ethnographically known shamanic beliefs in supernatural power involving human-animal transformations. The monument complexes range from small (a single mound and a few statues) to large (several large mounds and dozens of statues on adjacent hilltops) and are widely distributed across the Alto Magdalena. The ceremonial activities carried out at the monuments and the hierarchical social relationships they express so conspicuously seem the central elements in regional-scale social integration. The multiple regional-scale chiefly communities of the Alto Magdalena are, in this respect, very much like the lone San José Mogote district in Oaxaca.(Drennan and Peterson 2006:3961)
Robert D. Drennan and Christian E. Peterson2006 Patterned Variation in Prehistoric Chiefdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:3960-3967.
Teotihuacan-dominated Middle Horizon Basin of Mexico can be characterized with a very high degree of confidence as more primate than Monte Albán IIIA in the Valley of Oaxaca, because the Middle Horizon rank-size curve … lies far outside the 90% confidence zone for the Monte Albán IIIA curve. Comparing the Middle Horizon to two earlier, more primate, patterns in the Valley of Oaxaca, we see that the difference between the Middle Horizon and Monte Albán Early I also has considerable significance. While our confidence is somewhat lower for a third comparison, we would still be more than 90% confident that even the extremely primate Formative period San José phase settlement system is not as primate as the Middle Horizon system. (Drennan and Peterson 2004:548)
Drennan, Robert D., and Christian E. Peterson2004 Comparing Archaeological Settlement Systems with Rank-Size Graphs: A Measure of Shape and Statistical Confidence. Journal of Archaeological Science 31:533–549.
La construcción del Montículo Occidental de la Mesita A [en San Agustín] con su tumba principal y varias estatuas asociadas posiblemente ocupó los esfuerzos de unos 15 trabajadores durante un mes y medio. Definitivamente no tenemos que pensar en la organización de un cuerpo de cientos de hombres durante varios años—simplemente no es una obra pública de tal escala. Drennan 2000:20–22)
The construction of the West Mound of Mesita A [in San Agustín], with its main tomb and several associated sculptures might have required the labor of some 15 people for about a month and a half. We definitely do not have to imagine organizing a force of hundreds of laborers for some years—it simply is not a work on such a scale. (Drennan 2000:20–22)
Drennan, Robert D.2000 Las Sociedades Prehispánicas del Alto Magdalena. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia.
Taking three different approaches to characterizing the distribution of environmental characteristics as related to agricultural productivity, then, we repeatedly failed to find a consistent relationship between density of Regional Classic occupation and either agricultural productivity or any specific environmental conditions. It is not the case that population tended to concentrate in certain areas simply following the uneven spatial distribution of agricultural productivity. This, of course, is not to say that the settlement concentrations existed and were located with no reference whatever to environmental parameters, but rather that they appear to owe their existence more to social and/or political factors than to strictly environmental ones.
Robert D. Drennan and Dale W. Quattrin
1995 Social Inequality and Agricultural Resources in the Valle de la Plata, Colombia. In Foundations of Social Inequality, edited by T. Douglas Price and Gary M. Feinman, Plenum Press, p.220.
Excavations began with the cleaning and straightening of the walls of a stone quarry in the southwestern corner of the site. . . . This section of the site was designated Area A, and as soon as the sections of the profile had been photographed and drawn, several horizontal excavations were opened up, proceeding by natural stratigraphy back from the profile, where features such as house floors, burials, hearths, or bell-shaped pits of probable Middle Formative date were visible. . . . As excavations in Area A progressed . . . it was planned to excavate a series of test pits, beginning on the east side of the artificial mound and continuing to the east until the end of the Middle Formative deposits was reached.
Robert D. Drennan
1976 Fábrica San José and Middle Formative Society in the Valley of Oaxaca. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan 8:12.
The individuals buried in the Valle de la Plata's elaborate tombs seem most likely to have been the leaders (or "chiefs") of these societies.... The monumental nature of these burials made an emphatic and permanent statement about the importance of the individuals so commemorated.
Robert Drennan
1995 Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices, Dumbarton Oaks, p. 94.
A road cut provides a cross-section over 50 m long of 2 m or more of cultural deposition at VP0243. . . . The site attracted attention early on in the work of the Proyecto Arqueológico Valle de la Plata, not only because of the high density of sherds on its surface, which made large surface collections possible, but also because those surface collections included ceramics of five different types. This variety of ceramics, together with the clearly demonstrated depth of the cultural deposits and the ready access to them provided by the road cut, made the site at El Rosario an obvious choice for stratigraphic testing aimed at building ceramic chronology.
Robert D. Drennan
1993 Ceramic Classification, Stratigraphy, and Chronology," In Prehispanic Chiefdoms in the Valle de la Plata, Volume 2: Ceramics-Chronology and Craft Production, edited by Robert D. Drennan, Mary M. Taft, and Carlos A. Uribe. University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology 5, p. 45.
Robert D. Drennan
Robert D. Drennan (Professor) received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1975. He is an archaeologist whose interests focus on the origins and development of complex societies (especially chiefdoms), regional settlement pattern studies, and household archaeology.
His principal methodological specialty is quantitative data analysis and computer applications.
He does fieldwork in China, Mesoamerica and northern South America.