SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF A SPECIALIZED COMMUNITY IN CHENGUE, PARQUE TAIRONA, COLOMBIA. by Alejandro Dever B.A. Antropología, Universidad de los Andes, 1998 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2007 m3 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Alejandro Dever It was defended on April 3, 2007 and approved by: Dr. Mark Abbott Dr. Marc Bermann Dr. Olivier de Montmollin Dr. James T. Richardson III Dr. Robert D. Drennan Dissertation Director ii Copyright © by Alejandro Dever 2007 iii SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF A SPECIALIZED COMMUNITY IN CHENGUE, PARQUE TAIRONA, COLOMBIA Alejandro Dever, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2007 The primary intention of this research has been to establish how the specialized Tairona community of Chengue was formed and how social inequality plays a role in socio-economic change from 200BC to 1650AD. The main questions are organized around two opposing scenarios designed to test top-down and bottom-up processes for community formation. In the top-down scenario the community would be the result of an external agent that had sufficient authority to “create” a community with the intention to extract a highly concentrated resource, marine salt. In the alternative scenario, the bottom-up process, the community would become specialized as a result of a slower process in which the changes that led to specialization are the product of decisions of the individuals who resided in Chengue and natural environmental changes. Consequently specialization would have been the role of individual agents (individuals and households) at a very small scale. Although the observed sequence had components from both scenarios, the bottom-up process appears to be the primary force in the formation of a specialized community and the production of surplus that led to social inequality. Study of soils, lagoon and coastal sediments, flora and fauna allowed the climatic reconstruction the last 2500 years. During this long span of time communal units larger than households but smaller than villages had great stability and appear to have been the motors of socio-economic change. The evidence from Chengue suggests that progressive specialization in the context of environmental limitations produced a group of people less well-off than others. Elites do not; however, appear to have had much range of political action during most of the sequence. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................XII CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY .......................................................1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................1 THE TAIRONA.................................................................................................................................................2 SPECIALIZATION AND SOCIAL COMPLEXITY ....................................................................................4 THE VILLAGE OF CHENGUE......................................................................................................................7 A History of Specialized Salt Production in Chengue ..........................................................................8 Determining Specialization...................................................................................................................12 THE TAIRONA ECONOMY.........................................................................................................................16 Elite control over resources. .................................................................................................................17 TWO SCENARIOS FOR THE EMERGENCE OF TAIRONA CHIEFDOMS........................................18 Scenario 1: Community Specialization as an Entrepreneurial Bottom-Up Strategy ......................18 Scenario 2: Community Specialization as a Centralized Top-Down Strategy .................................18 EVALUATING THE SCENARIOS FOR CHENGUE ................................................................................19 Evidence for a Bottom-Up Process.......................................................................................................19 1) No elite control initially...........................................................................................................20 2) Management of production at the household level...............................................................20 3) Dispersed settlement during the earliest stages of the occupation. .....................................20 4) An abundance of small water reservoirs. ..............................................................................20 Evidence for a Top-Down Process........................................................................................................21 1) Status differences from the moment the community was founded. ....................................21 2) Management of production by groups larger than a single household...............................21 3) A very compact settlement during the earliest stages of the occupation. ...........................21 4) A small number of large well-constructed wells for use by more than a single household. .......................................................................................................................................................22 THE PROGRAM OF RESEARCH ...............................................................................................................22 Phase 1: Archaeological and Topographic Base Map ........................................................................23 Phase 2: Detailed archaeological survey of Chengue..........................................................................23 Phase 3: Test pit excavations ................................................................................................................25 Phase 4: Analysis ...................................................................................................................................25 CHAPTER 2: CERAMIC CLASSIFICATION......................................................................................................27 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................27 A Typologically Oriented Analysis.......................................................................................................28 A CHRONOLOGICALLY ORIENTED ANALYSIS OF CERAMIC ARTIFACTS...............................29 Ceramic a Classification Method .........................................................................................................31 Creating Ceramic Types for Chengue .................................................................................................32 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................35 Chengue’s Chronology in the Context of other Research Projects in the Region............................37 Ceramic Phase Duration .......................................................................................................................42 Comments on the Nehuange Period.....................................................................................................43 CHAPTER 3: STRATIGRAPHIC EXCAVATIONS ............................................................................................44 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................44 EXCAVATION METHODS...........................................................................................................................45 v Some Assumptions and Facts about Soils in Dry Tropical Environments .......................................46 EXCAVATION RESULTS.............................................................................................................................48 Sampling of the lagoon in Sector 1.......................................................................................................48 Excavation 16...............................................................................................................................52 Sector 2 Excavations..............................................................................................................................56 Excavation 1.................................................................................................................................56 Excavation 2.................................................................................................................................58 Excavation 3.................................................................................................................................60 Excavation 4.................................................................................................................................61 Excavation 5.................................................................................................................................62