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Une 30, 2018: National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborati E Research Grant )ORULGD6WDWH8QLYHUVLW\/LEUDULHV 2018 Final Performance Report, November 1, 2012 June 30, 2018: National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant Christopher L. von Nagy and Mary D. Pohl Title of Project: Origins of the Mesoamerican City: Ritual and Polity Name of Project Directors: Mary D. Pohl (FSU), with project co-directors Christopher L. von Nagy (UNR and FSU) and Paul Schmidt Schoenberg (UNAM). Follow this and additional works at DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] Cover Page Type of Report: National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant Final Performance Report, November 1, 2012 – June 30, 2018 Grant Number: RZ-51497-12 Title of Project: Origins of the Mesoamerican City: Ritual and Polity Name of Project Directors: Mary D. Pohl (FSU), with project co-directors Christopher L. von Nagy (UNR and FSU) and Paul Schmidt Schoenberg (UNAM). Name of Grantee Institution: Florida State University Date: September 30, 2018 Report authored by Christopher L. von Nagy and Mary D. Pohl Pohl, von Nagy, Schmidt Schoenberg Accomplishments Major goals The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Florida State University (FSU) a collaborative research grant for the period November 1, 2012 through June 30, 2018. The Origins of the Mesoamerican City: Ritual and Polity at La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico grant co-directed by Mary D. Pohl (FSU), Christopher L. von Nagy (FSU/UNR), and Paul Schmidt Schoenberg (UNAM) has several primary goals: 1) to promote close collaborative research in the Humanities between US peers and Mexican scholars at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico); 2) to explore the nature of the early ritual polity, public art, and early urbanism in Mesoamerica, focusing on the important Guerrero Formative community of Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán (frequently known in scholarly and popular literature through Oxtotitlán Cave, a component of the larger site) and through close comparison to adjacent major Formative Guerrero sites (such as Teopantecuanitlán) that together form a chain of prominent Early to Middle Formative polities linking the Central Mexican highlands with the Pacific and Gulf coasts; 3) to closely compare relevant data from Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán to that of other early first millennium BCE urban communities, in particular Chalcatzingo in the Central Highlands and La Venta, Tabasco on the Gulf Coast where we have extensively worked, too; 4) and to bilingually disseminate and publish results through traditional print, film, and innovative digital approaches for scholarly, educational, and lay community use. Through the course of research funded by this grant, we focused on two major regions in Mesoamerica: mid-highland Guerrero where Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán is located amid a sharp karstic landscape of ridge and valley, and lowland Tabasco where La Venta is located amid the remnants of interplay between coast and river delta. Both sites provide significant testament to the Mesoamerica-wide Early to Middle Formative emergence of 1 Origins of the Mesoamerican City: Ritual and Polity (RZ-51497-12) the Olmec art style (ca. 1400–400) and, of significance to us, the foundational development of particularly Mesoamerican political and economic systems of kingship and of the cultural and religious understandings undergirding these. We have long-standing research in both regions. During the first year of the grant, we began research in the La Venta area where we intended to develop a new cycle of research arising out of our earlier research at the site of San Andrés (also known as Barí 1) part of the exurban area of La Venta, a component we term Lower La Venta where ancient habitational sites lie along ancient river channels adjacent to La Venta. There we sought to better delineate the development of the lowland Olmec city. Due to developing security and political concerns, we refocused work to Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán during the second and subsequent years of this grant. In 2012, we had begun a research project in Guerrero parallel to our ongoing Tabasco research, with interrelated theme. Our goals remained substantially the same at Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán. Close research into the nature of two Olmec period polities, hundreds of kilometers apart and located in very different physical and biogeographic contexts yet integrated into extended spheres of symbolic and economic exchange, provides us with a privileged vantage point from which to consider the key themes we posed in our original proposal: the interplay of symbol, monumentality, and emergent writing; a ritual economy and attendant economic specialization as fundamental to emerging Mesoamerican urban systems and polities while grounded in domestic concerns; the particular and fundamental Mesoamerican cosmological conceptions that shape the rhetoric and structure of power in Mesoamerica’s earliest cities and polities; the question of centralization of power in Mesoamerica’s earliest kingdoms. In La Venta’s ca. 800 BCE development as a powerful kingdom—and perhaps singular power—in the Sotavento region of the Mexican Gulf Coast, we see a flexion point and preeminent engine in Mesoamerica’s inexorable first millennium BCE transformation from a geography of largely villages to a landscape of cities and polities. While the tropical lowland towns and cities of Mexico’s Gulf Coast were particularly precocious, Guerrero, too, saw sharp transformation. Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán is not a small site. Nor are immediately adjacent sites located in the Chilapa-Zitlala valley, in which Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán is located. Nor is Teopantecuanitlán, connected to Quiotepec- Oxtotitlán over a difficult to traverse but ancient route binding a long chain of Formative cities and towns from Chalcatzingo to Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán, a corridor perhaps extending all the way down to the Pacific coast. Like Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán, people at 2 Pohl, von Nagy, Schmidt Schoenberg Teopantecuanitlán deployed monumentality to center a town—perhaps even emergent city—composed of a striking series of domestic terraces that climb encircling hillsides. Teopantecuanitlán’s monumentality is architectural and sculptural recalling statements of social power at a plethora of contemporary emerging centers. Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán’s monumentality is strikingly and almost uniquely painterly. There is still much to learn in Guerrero. A changing security situation there attenuated our field research efforts after 2015, though fortuitously when we needed to refocus on laboratory analysis. Modern Mexico continues to undergo difficult and challenging social changes. Particularly emblematic of these changes and attendant struggles is highland Guerrero. Quite close to our site lies the small teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa where the dormitory rooms of 43 students were left empty with their murder and disappearance in 2014. Violence has touched many of those we have come to know and cherish through the course of our research in Guerrero—in Acatlán, in Chilapa de Álvarez, in Chilpancingo. We can only hope that the tide of violence will recede sooner than later. May the people of Guerrero live in peace. Perhaps then, we too will be able to return to Guerrero and to the question of the distinctively Mesoamerican city and its origins. Technological objectives Our research combines traditional archaeological approaches with innovative approaches to archaeological and art historical documentation. Oxtotitlán cave paintings The Oxtotitlán Cave paintings are foundational in nature. They are especially significant because they represent the earliest example of an artistic tradition that would later become a hallmark of Mesoamerican culture. The methods for digitally enhancing photographs of the paintings in Oxtotitlán Cave we employ have facilitated ongoing analysis of the art. Previously unknown aspects of the compositions are emerging, especially the representation of early rulers and their powerful animal alter egos known as nahuals. Co-PI.s Pohl and von Nagy have been working with Heather Hurst on the interpretation of imagery to be incorporated into her artistic renderings. We adapted a number of computational imaging techniques, applying both better known algorithms, such as decorrelation stretch, but also lesser known approaches drawn from computer vision studies and computational microscopy to reveal new details in the Oxtotitlán cave paintings using multispectral data drawn from UV through visible 3 Origins of the Mesoamerican City: Ritual and Polity (RZ-51497-12) light to near IR photography. Our image workflow integrates several software image processing systems, principally open source RawTherapee, OpenCV, and Fiji (ImageJ), as well as commercial DxO, and Wolfram Mathematica. Drawing from our success with the cave paintings, we apply computational imaging techniques to more systematically characterize material culture excavated at Quiotepec-Oxtotitlán and in Tabasco, for instance in the analysis of ceramics color. We anticipate that particular technological approaches we have chosen to employ in our research work flows will prove of utility to other scholars.. Close range UAV and 3D photogrammetric studies At the onset of the project in 2012, we committed to extensive photogrammetric three- dimensional documentation of sites and excavations in an integrated GIS. We combine publicly available LiDAR data and space borne radar altimeter data with multi-band remote-sensed (LandSat ETM+, GeoEYE-1, and ESA Sentinel), historic aerial photographs, and
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