Unintended Consequences? Monumentality as a Novel ...townsendgroups.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/joyce_2004... · Unintended Consequences? Monumentality As a Novel Experience

P1: KEE/LOV P2: GCR/LOV/GDP

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory [jamt] pp1114-jarm-481119 January 20, 2004 20:38 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2004 (C© 2004)

Unintended Consequences? Monumentality Asa Novel Experience in Formative Mesoamerica

Rosemary A. Joyce1

To contribute to creation of a model for the initial steps in monumental construc-tion in Formative period Mesoamerica (ca. 1100–700B.C.), this article employsconcepts from theories of structuration. It treats evidence of differential durabilityof construction materials as sources of insight on possible intended and unintendedconsequences of the construction of earthen platforms by the generations of peo-ple who lived through these new construction projects. It explores the changes inspatiality, connection to place, and materialization of time at multiple scales thatthese construction projects produced.

KEY WORDS: Mesoamerica; monumentality; structuration; architecture.

How can we model ancient processes with attention to the intentions of pastactors and the role of existing structures in shaping their actions? In this article,I apply concepts from Giddens’ (1979) discussion of structuration in an exami-nation of the development of early monumental architecture in Mesoamerica. Tofully model structuration, archeologists need to consider both the agency of actors(whether individual or collective) and the constraints of the structures within whichthey act, and which they transform and reproduce through their actions. Actors arealways knowledgeable, that is, they act with intention. But their knowledge is notalways (or ever) perfect, and as a result, their actions often have unintended conse-quences. From our present perspective, looking backward, we are apt to interpretwhat we can see were the outcome of actions as those intended by past actors. Butwhat we see is as likely to be a result of unforeseen effects of decisions made withother goals in mind. By instead “looking forward” (Vitelli, 1998), we can bettermodel the possible intended and unintended consequences of actions by agents inthe past, taking into account aspects of the structures within which they operated.

1Department of Anthropology, University of California, Kroeber Hall #3710, Berkeley, California94720-3710; e-mail: [email protected]

5

1072-5369/04/0300-0005/0C© 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation



6 Joyce

Specifically, I examine here how archeologists working on nonliterate societiescan establish that part of structure represented by the knowledge that could haveinformed the decisions and actions of agents in the past.

I make my argument through an examination of the emergence of monumen-tal architecture in early Mesoamerica, drawing specifically on my own fieldworkin Honduras. The first monumental construction projects in this region were under-taken by agents with a long history of architectural manipulation of clay as a rawmaterial. Their earliest innovations on the path leading to 20-m tall pyramids werebroad and relatively low platforms that probably did not reflect a radically altereduse of space or the invention of a new category of building. But the performanceof the familiar material at this enlargened scale led to changes in durability thatgreatly transformed the temporal persistence these people could expect of build-ings. These more durable buildings permanently changed the spatial arena withinwhich agents lived and worked, and these arguably unintended consequences ofthe first building projects furnished new sites for innovative practices that, throughrepetition, became standardized parts of Mesoamerican practices as they were de-scribed centuries later by the first European chroniclers. The practices describedfor monumental architecture later in Mesoamerican history cannot be taken asthe intended outcomes of the actions of Formative Period builders. But neitherare the intentional actions of these original builders entirely lost to us, since wecan, through meticulous archaeological examination, establish some of the struc-turing forces, including differential knowledge, that came into play when earlyMesoamericans exercised their agency.

STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND THE LONG TERMIN MESOAMERICAN MONUMENTALITY

In 1519, Spanish troops accompanying Hernan Cortés became the first Euro-peans to see the impressive cityscape of Tenochtitlan, capital of the tribute empireof the Mexica, or Aztecs. Located in the center of Tenochtitlan was a walledprecinct over which loomed a massive pyramid supporting twin temples dedi-cated to the solar patron deity of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, and the ancient andwidely venerated deity of earthly fertility and rainfall, Tlaloc. In the late twen-tieth century, archeologists working around the main plaza of modern MexicoCity reexposed the remains of this great pyramid and its multiple predecessors(Matos, 1988, 2000). They located carefully built chambers placed at the cor-ners and on the centerline during episodes of remodeling, with highly structuredcaches that intimate complex cosmological orderings (López Lujan, 1993). Theanalyses of these material remains support interpretations that parallel knowl-edge generated from the intensive study of documents created during the sixteenthcentury using the introduced European alphabet, in both native and Europeanlanguages. The great temple of Tenochtitlan today is understood, as the Mexica



Monumentality in Formative Mesoamerica 7

people described it in the sixteenth century, as a sacred mountain (León-Portilla,1978).

Built as a replica of Coatepec, “serpent hill,” the site of key events in storiesof the wanderings of Nahuatl peoples on their journey to the center of the physicalgeography and social landscape of the Valley of Mexico, the temple recreateda natural feature charged with ideological significance in a location under thecentral control of the ruling elite of the city. Mesoamericanists argue that suchidentifications of the built environment with the natural and supernatural landscapewere part of the repertoire of strategies of ruling classes in a wide variety ofPrecolumbian Mesoamerican societies (Stone, 1992). The decipherment of writtentexts on earlier Classic Maya (ca.A.D. 250–850) sculptures, for example, hasallowed the recognition that temple platforms were often individually named,and as a class were labeled “mountain” (Schele and Mathews, 1998; Stuart andHouston, 1994). An equation of temple enclosures built on top of these artificialmountains with caves has been suggested as well, based on a number of differentlines of evidence (Bassie-Sweet, 1991, 1996). Many Maya temples were in factsited over actual caves, and at least some of these caves were either partly orentirely constructed (Brady, 1997; Brady and Ashmore, 1999; Brady and Veni,1992).

The builders of Classic Teotihuacan in Central Mexico, contemporary withthe Classic Maya, did not leave the same kind of textual documentation, but some oftheir temple platforms were also located over constructed caves, and appear to havebeen identified with mountains in the surrounding landscape (Heyden, 1975; LópezAustinet al., 1991; Manzanillaet al., 1994; Sugiyama, 1993). A regional historicaltradition of building monumental platforms as effigies of sacred mountains whoseinterior caves were home to ancestral spirits or other supernatural beings has beenposited based on these and other data from Classic and Postclassic Mesoamericansocieties.

Two and a half millennia before the construction of Coatepec, 1500 years be-fore the builders of Teotihuacan and contemporary Classic Maya centers, earlierMesoamerican people built the first great pyramids in the history of Central Amer-ica. No written records survive from these early times. The contemporary visualrepresentations created by these Formative period peoples predate the developmentof writing and calendrical systems that provide information for later precolumbiansocieties. The very identity of these builders is highly contested, with scholarsdivided over the question of whether all such monuments stem from inspiration ofthe Olmec archeological sites of the Mexican Gulf Coast (Clark, 1997; Clark andPye, 2000; Flannery and Marcus, 2000; Grove, 1989, 1993, 1997).

Despite the long span of time and the significant developments that separatethese moments in Mesoamerican history, understanding of the earliest monumen-tal construction projects owes most to specifics of the later situations, projectedback in time. Explanations of new forms of monumental construction in FormativeMesoamerica emphasize the identification of monumental buildings as features of



8 Joyce

“sacred landscapes,” artificial mountains sheltering the bodies and spirits of de-ceased ancestors. An alternative approach, often complementary to and combinedwith the first, is to explore the role of would-be “big men” in mobilizing the laborneeded for these projects. In the pages that follow, I suggest that such argumentstake as cause what may be consequences of the first monumental constructions.

To begin to create a model for the creation of initial monumental construc-tions in Formative Mesoamerica, I explore what we can assume about the agencyand knowledge of the generations of people who lived through these novel con-struction projects. People engaged in making these monuments and those simplywitnessing the events would have experienced profound changes in spatiality, con-nection to place, and materialization of time at multiple scales as a result of thenew constructions. But these changes cannot automatically be taken as the intendedconsequences of these projects. Rather than adopt the perspective of a charismaticdirector of these projects whose intentionality they realize, my goal is to iden-tify possible intended and unintended consequences of these projects and theircontribution to structuration of the early societies that produced these monuments.

Undoubtedly, Formative period monumental construction projects did pro-vide a model that was reiterated by later peoples in the region (see Clark andHansen, 2001). All of the distinctive forms of architecture and public art found inlater Mesoamerican societies, such as ballcourts, stelae and altars, can be tracedto prototypes in the Formative period (e.g. Grove, 1999; Hillet al., 1998; Joyce,2000b). But at the same time, it is difficult to be comfortable with the assumptionthatfrom the beginningMesoamerican monumental architecture was fully realizedas an intentional effigy of sacred mountains establishing a tradition that remainedunchanged for almost three millenia (compare Pauketat and Alt, 2003). To go be-yond such a static and functionalist view, we need to begin to take the specificdetails of Formative Mesoamerican practices seriously in the way exemplified byBradley (1998) in his studies of Neolithic European monumentality. A number ofresearchers working on the Mesoamerican Formative period have begun to explorethe specific effects early monumental constructions would have had on the experi-ences of those who circulated in the spaces framed by such monumental buildingsin different places and at different times (Clark, 2002; Grove, 1999; Hillet al.,1998; Joyce, 1992, 1996, 1999; Love, 1991, 1999; Ringle, 1999). In this paper,I add to this body of work a consideration of the experience of those for whomthese were unprecedented projects, imagined landscapes whose realization surelyhad both intended and unintended consequences.

I draw in this discussion on social theories of structure and agency, which arereceiving serious attention in contemporary archeology. Most of the initial attentionhas been directed at outlining the conditions of agency (Dobres and Robb, 2000;Pauketat, 2000; Saitta, 1994; Silliman, 2001): what individuals or groups maybe said to be agents? and under what conditions is action the exercise of agency?Somewhat less attention has been paid in archeology to the necessary second term,structure (Barrett, 2001). As Giddens (1979: 59–73) describes it, the key virtue of




theories of structuration is their ability to overcome the dichotomizing of agencyand structure, the equation of agency with the individual and structure with socialsystems, that requires the assumption of structuring institutions external to humanagents. Giddens uses the term “duality of structure” to signal the indivisibility ofstructure and action:

the structural properties of social systems are both the medium and the outcome of the prac-tices that constitute those systems.. . .Structure is both enabling and constraining.. . .Thesame structural characteristics participate in the subject (the actor) as in the object (soci-ety). Structure forms “personality” and “society” simultaneously-but in neither case ex-haustively: because of the significance of unintended consequences of action, and becauseof unacknowledged conditions of action. (Giddens, 1979: 69–70)

By positing that through the exercise of agency human actors reproduce andtransform social structure, structuration theories dispense with problematic notionsthat superorganic institutions ensure the persistence of specific cultural practices,ideas that pose serious analytic problems for understanding change. Structurationtheory places the ultimate responsibility for the reproduction of social structurein the hands of more or less knowledgeable agents, and makes the persistence ofstructure less automatic, more clearly a result of the actions, if not the intentions,of social agents:

there is no circumstance in which the conditions of action can become wholly opaque toagents, since action is constituted via the accountability of practices; actors are alwaysknowledgeable about the structural framework within which their conduct is carried on,because they draw upon that framework in producing their action at the same time as theyreconstitute it through that action. (Giddens, 1979: 144)

Archeological analyses of the structuration side of the equation ask questionslike, to what extent is differential knowledge (Giddens, 1979: 72–73) presentwithin specific societies, and a basis for differential impacts on the reproductionof social structures (Hendon, 2000)? and how is knowledge reproduced among agroup of people over time, such that their actions tend to reconstitute recognizablysimilar structures (Joyce, 2000a, 2003a; Joyce and Hendon, 2000; Pauketat, 2000,2001; Pauketat and Alt, 2003)? In directing attention to the way that shared anddifferential knowledge is reproduced, consideration of structuration introducesthe possibility that agents may, through their goal-oriented choices to act, producenot only those outcomes they intend, but also, or sometimes instead, produceunintended consequences (Giddens, 1979: 56–59). Rather than be required to actas if ancient people intended to change their social world every time they in factdid change that world through their actions, we can explore the possibility thatoutcomes we can see, from our long term historic perspective, were unforeseen bythose who produced them.

From the perspective of structuration, agents enact structure, and thus asarcheologists interested in structuration we need to turn our attention from in-stitutions to the processes by which traditions were maintained and transformedthrough the actions of agents over generations. This reorientation highlights the



10 Joyce

ways that actors learned how to get on within their society, and the knowledge,both discursive and nondiscursive, that they brought to bear whenever they acted.I thus begin my exploration of the utility of exploring unintended consequenceswith the question of what the builders of the first monumental architecture inMesoamerica could have expected of the materials they used to create these en-during marks on the landscape. In other words, when these early people exercisedtheir agency through the decision to participate in these construction projects, andin the process reproduced a transformed social structure, what knowledge guidedtheir actions?, what could they have expected to be the outcome of their labor?and what outcomes might have been unexpected, but once produced, integratedin the new social structures that were a product of the actions of the workers whoraised the first of these monumental works?

IMAGINED MONUMENTS

I am not, of course, literally claiming to examine the single original monu-mental building of which all others in Mesoamerica were copies. But I do want toexplicitly think through the situation of the would-be builders who were success-ful in mobilizing the efforts of enough people to quickly create earthen platformsmeasuring up to 100 m on a side and 20 m in height where no such projects hadpreviously been accomplished.

In northwest Honduras, for example, the Middle Formative period (900–400B.C.) pyramids of Los Naranjos (Baudez and Becquelin, 1973) were the largestprecolumbian buildings ever constructed (Fig. 1). Even today, platforms of thisvintage in Honduras, like that constructed at Yarumela further south (Dixonet al.,1994), are visible over broad areas. The visual ubiquity of these structures is stilleffective today in distracting our attention from fundamental questions about theirconstruction. We tend to act as if, because they have lasted for three millennia, andare visible at great distances, they were built with those intentions (Joyce, 1992).Reinforced by the explicit narration of stories recorded in sixteenth-century textsidentifying temple pyramids with sacred mountains, we also make the seeminglycommon-sense assumption that the earliest Mesoamerican monumental platformswere constructed to convey similarly explicit messages. Put together, these twoassumptions lead us to interpret the persistence of these earthen platforms as thesuccessful projection of a message to people in the future, like us, which we needonly decode (compare Pauketat and Alt, 2003).

But we today are in the position of already knowing that such monumentalmarks on the landscape exist and are ancient. Similarly, Mesoamerican people ofthe late prehispanic era, as well as at least some of their literate predecessors ofearlier centuries, left unequivocal testimony that they were aware of abandonedmonumental constructions that they interpreted as traces of the activity of earlierpeoples (Hamann, 2002; Umberger, 1987). Monumental buildings surviving from




Fig. 1. Map of southern Mesoamerican showing Formative period sites discussed in text. Courtesy ofJohn S. Henderson, used by permission.

much earlier periods were part of the material world in which Classic Maya, Teoti-huacanos, and Postclassic Mexica lived, obtrusive presences there to be explainedand related to later ongoing experience. Our experience today, like that of Post-classic, Classic, and even later Formative Mesoamerican peoples, is fundamentallydifferent from the experience of those who lived through the initial constructionprojects that resulted in the pyramids of Los Naranjos, Yarumela, and a host ofother sites extending from El Salvador to the Mexican Gulf Coast. Abandoned



12 Joyce

monuments provide a point of reference for us and for later Mesoamerican peoplethat was literally absent from the landscape of the earliest Mesoamerican monu-ment builders.

In order to begin to imagine the circumstances in which these early construc-tion projects took place, we have to forget that there ever were such buildings, fullydeveloped as mimetic representations of creation mountains, homes to deceasedancestors, and central pivots of an axially oriented universe (compare Bradley,1998: 73). Given the lack of texts, and paucity of visual records, if we hope toask questions about the early period of construction that can in any way informour understanding of the experience of those for whom these were unprecedentedthings, we need to exploit our few points of intersection with that premonumen-tal experience. For this purpose, the first question I would put is, what might theoriginal builders have expected to happen when they built the first monumentalearthen platforms, rising 5–15 m above the village ground surface?

THE EXPERIENCE OF MONUMENTALITYIN FORMATIVE HONDURAS

The phenomenon I am attempting to understand took place across a widearea, extending from Mexico to Honduras and El Salvador, over a period of abouttwo centuries (ca. 1100–900B.C.). The published record of the excavations ofStructures I and IV, monumental earthen platforms at Los Naranjos, Honduras(Baudez and Becquelin, 1973), can be compared to information from contemporaryand earlier village occupation at Puerto Escondido in the adjacent lower UluaRiver Valley, where I am currently conducting excavations (co-directed with JohnS. Henderson) under the authority of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropolog´ıa eHistoria (Joyce and Henderson, 2001, 2002a,b). The juxtaposition of these twosite records provides a way to historicize the construction of the first monumentalearthen platforms in the region, placing these projects in the context of a moregeneral consideration of architecture as technical practice (following Stevanovic,1997: 341–343).

Structure I at Los Naranjos (Fig. 2) was the northenmost of a cluster of largeearthen platforms located on the shore of Lake Yojoa, an upland lake surroundedby volcanic rocks including some relatively recent conical peaks. But Str I does notmimic the surrounding conical peaks. Instead, Str I in its final plan, as it appearstoday, measures 100 by 75 m, rising 19 m tall to a summit platform 25 by 30 m inextent (Baudez and Becquelin, 1973: 21–23). The longer basal dimension gives thestructure a rectangular plan oriented slightly south of east to north of west. Therewere indications on the surface of distinctive treatment on each side, suggestingto the excavators that there was access from every direction. At the same time, thetreatment of the west side was distinctive, singling that direction out as a possiblepreferred access direction, a suggestion in keeping with the elongated axis that




Fig. 2. Plan of Los Naranjos showing Structures I and IV discussed in text. Based on map byBoyd Dixon and George Hasemann, adapted by John S. Henderson. Used by permission.



14 Joyce

runs southeast to northwest. Structure IV, the southern monumental constructionin this area, is more modest in height, measuring about 6 m tall, but is almost asextensive in its basal dimensions as the taller Str I. Str IV supports a group of threeplatforms that rise an additional 3 m in height today (Baudez and Becquelin, 1973:49–51). A stone-faced ramp was present on the west side of Str IV, facing a plazaarea where monumental stone sculptures in Olmec style were originally located(Joyce and Henderson, 2002b). The western orientation of Str IV reinforces thehint of a preference for western orientation seen in the differential treatment of thewest side of Str 1.

Baudez and Becquelin (1973) obtained a single radiocarbon date for the Jaralphase, the earliest they defined at Los Naranjos, on material from a mixed depositin secondary depositional context in architectural fills associated with the earthenplatforms. The carbon sample was not from the deepest stratified levels of thesequence of architectural fills. The pottery in the same depositional contexts wasanalyzed using frequency seriation based on synthetic pottery types, resulting in theidentification of a set of types uniformly present in early deposits and present onlyin trace amounts in later deposits. The excavators assigned dates of 800–400B.C.

to this group of ceramic types, and by extension, to the episodes of constructionresulting in the first stages of construction of the massive earthen platforms builtat the site, based on the single associated radiocarbon date.

In our excavations at Puerto Escondido in the lower Ulua Valley (Joyce andHenderson, 2001, 2002a,b), 100 km north of Los Naranjos, we have developed amore extensive radiocarbon record based on 42 carbon samples from excavation ofwell stratified deposits 3.5 m deep, representing successive episodes of construc-tion, use, and reconstruction of residential buildings beginning before 1400B.C.

(Fig. 3). Based on ceramic cross-ties with this more tightly defined chronologi-cal and stratigraphic sequence, the initial construction of the Los Naranjos pyra-mids probably shortly predates 900B.C. Such a dating is consistent with the finegrained construction sequence and radiocarbon dating obtained by modern excava-tors working at Yarumela, some 125 km to the south, where a similarly impressiveearthen construction was created during the contemporary initial Middle Formativephase of occupation (Dixonet al., 1994).

The excavators of Los Naranjos estimated that in their initial phases, Str Irose to 13 m, while Structure IV was only 6 m tall (Baudez and Becquelin, 1973:23, 49). In this initial phase of construction, no caches or burials were part of theseconstructions. Episodes of remodeling of Str IV that followed, after the initialpyramid was already a marked place on the landscape, did include a complex setof burial features and caches dating from 900 to 400B.C. (Baudez and Becquelin,1973: 91–93), in formats that are replicated repeatedly across Mesoamerica andprovide precedents for later Formative patterns of ancestor interment and vener-ation (Hammond, 1999; Joyce, 1999; McAnany et al., 1999). But by this pointin their history, the monumental platforms of Los Naranjos were already well




Fig. 3. Simplified Harris matrix of Puerto Escondido Operation 4 showing Early to Middle Formativesequence of construction episodes and innovations in technical practices of architecture. Elevationsin meters above sea level (msl). Calibrated radiocarbon dates after Joyce and Henderson (2001).Stratigraphy above and below this section omitted.

established, and had been for as much as several centuries during which we haveno evidence for the burials and caches that provide a basis to infer such practices.

The initial absence of caches and burials in the monumental platforms ofLos Naranjos matches what little data are available for the earliest monumentalconstructions in other areas of Mesoamerica. Unlike the well-known Classic Mayafunerary pyramids that are among their distant descendants, then, initial Forma-tive monumental construction cannot be automatically explained by an intendedfunerary function. Once marked sites on the Formative landscape were available,they did become reference points in burial treatments that stratified populations incomplex ways (Joyce, 1999; Merry de Morales, 1987). Here is the first possibleunintended consequence of the construction of monumental earthen platforms:because they shaped unique and novel spaces, they provided new sites for emerg-ing social distinctions to be inscribed, including through exclusive burial practices(Love, 1999; compare Bradley, 1998: 146).

A new practice of burial in monumental architecture may have contributedto an increase in visibility of burial in the centuries between 900 and 700B.C. inHonduras and elsewhere in Mesoamerica. In our current excavations at Puerto Es-condido, with continuous occupation beginning before 1400B.C., we have failed torecover any evidence of burial before the period contemporary with the conversion



16 Joyce

of Los Naranjos Str IV to mortuary use. I have previously argued that the burialof selected individuals in monumental architecture at Los Naranjos and other sitesat this time was a promotion to a new locale of a previously established prac-tice of burial in house compounds (Joyce, 1992, 1999). I now question the orderof events I previously assumed, basing my understanding on later Mesoamericanpractices of like kind. Empirically, we have no evidence of subfloor burial in build-ings in Honduras that can be dated before the period encompassing Burial T18in Los Naranjos Str IV. Other burial remains have been recovered from caves inHonduras, some with associated radiocarbon dates spanning the end of the EarlyFormative Period and the beginning of the Middle Formative period (Brady, 1995;Brady et al., 2001; Dixonet al., 1998; Gordon, 1898; Healy, 1974; Herrmann,2002; Rueet al., 1989). The pottery found in these mortuary sites includes exam-ples comparable to those made between 1100 and 900B.C. at Puerto Escondido(Joyce and Henderson, 2001, 2002a,b). It would appear possible that disposal ofthe dead in early Honduras took place away from villages, in naturally occurringsites shared by multiple individuals, open to repeated reuse, until some familiestook advantage of the segregation of highly visible but inaccessible spaces withinvillage sites for more exclusive burial of selected individuals. How some membersof local societies were able to legitimately use such spaces for their own practicesis a topic that I cannot pursue here, although elsewhere I have presented argumentsconcerning these social transformations (Joyce, 2000b, 2001). Whether we viewthe creation of burials in subfloor settings within household groups as resistanceto a claim of exclusive privilege materialized in the use of monumental platformsfor burial of a select few, or as the adoption of an ideology promulgated by anelite, subfloor burial in houses, characteristic of the period from 900 to 700B.C.

in Honduras, may also be better understood as an unintended consequence of thefirst monumental construction projects.

But these are still outcomes of the use of monumental architecture, and assuch post-date the first implementation of monumental construction projects. Icontinue to find it difficult to move back and examine that originary moment whenlabor was mobilized to create massive earthen platforms. If I cannot assume thatthese monuments were constructed as messages to a distant future, or as placesintended to sacralize the burial of emergent elites, what can I say about what theirbuilders may have planned, and accomplished? and what could the intentions ofearly Formative Mesoamerican builders have been when they worked to makemonumental places on the landscape?

THE INTENTIONS OF FORMATIVE MESOAMERICAN BUILDERS

Let us imagine the first builder seeking to enlist others in the communityon the project of building Los Naranjos Str IV. We may want to assume that thisbuilder had to have been an adult to have had the ability to persuade others in the




community to take action. We might want to go further and assume, with somestudents of the Mesoamerican Formative, that the builder was a male aggrandizer(Clark, 1991; Clark and Blake, 1993, 1999; Clark and Gosser, 1995; but compareClark, 2000). I part company with my respected colleagues here. Unlike them,I suspect that women are as given to aggrandizing behavior as man, if the cir-cumstances permit. The dominance of representations of the female life course inFormative figurines from Honduras (Joyce, 2003b) suggests to me the possibilitythat social affiliation may have been primarily traced through women, a suggestionthat can be compared to Tolstoy’s (1989) arguments for affiliation of householdresidents through women in the contemporary community of Tlatilco, in CentralMexico. More to the point, I would suggest that everything we know about socialorganization in small scale societies like those of Formative Mesoamerica pointsto, not individual aggrandizers, but social groups as the likely actors legitimatelybeing able to originate such projects. Much of our debates about early Mesoamer-ican monument building have been plagued by the need to explain how, in anegalitarian society, a would-be aggrandizer could violate traditions intended toenforce group-oriented action and stifle self-serving behavior (compare Clark andBlake, 1999). This makes creating a model for the initial recruitment of labor inthe service of an aggrandizer’s project quite difficult.

Let us say, for example, that among the house-based (following Joyce andGillespie, 2000) societies of Los Naranjos, possibly matrilineal, as discussedabove, around 1000B.C., an adult woman awoke one day with the inspirationto engage her housemates in creating a totally new thing: a soaring earthen pyra-mid, that would stand as a visible sign of place across the lake, and distinctivelymark the village from all the others there and in the region. Going to the houses ofout-married brothers, she enlisted enough others in her project to accomplish theconstruction between one harvest and the next planting.

Does this seem remotely realistic? At the risk of presentism, how likely isit that anyone (let’s make the visionary a persuasive male, and try it that way)would persuade his neighbors and affines to spend the months between Octoberand March dragging baskets of mud together to fulfill a dream with no practicalpurpose. Noah, even with divine mandate, was unable to persuade his neighborsto a similarly ambitious project.

Unless we accept the premise that Formative Mesoamerican people weremore easily led and less pragmatic than their later descendants, we cannot simplyassume success for a visionary who tried to enlist a village to make the firstmonumental construction (compare Pauketat and Alt, 2003). Assuming such adifferent consciousness, I might further argue that my visionary builder had adivine mandate that was more effective than that of the biblical Noah, but doing soclearly becomes a simplifying step that lets me avoid the initial difficulty. I mayas well say “assume a pyramid.”

Instead, let’s return to that Formative mud and see what a builder would haveknown and expected about the behavior of that construction material. Starting



18 Joyce

literally from the ground up, from the act of construction rather than assumed goalsfor the project, perhaps we can construct a better notion of our early Formativebuilder, about to change forever not only her own experience, but that of all thegenerations to come, for three millenia (and still counting).

THE MATERIALITY OF FORMATIVEMESOAMERICAN EXPERIENCE

I have referred multiple times now to the initial Mesoamerican constructionsas “earthen platforms.” Literally, the earliest Mesoamerican monumental construc-tions, unlike the stone pyramids that came after, were built of mud, earth, or clay.When the first builders embarked on Los Naranjos Str IV, people in the region al-ready had centuries of experience with clay as a construction material, and with thetransformation of clay through firing into pottery. As Stevanovic (1997) has arguedfor the Neolithic of southeastern Europe, this pervasive use of clay is evidence fora degree of technical expertise and practical knowledge about the behavior of thismaterial. This knowledge framed the actions of early builders responsible for thefirst monumental platforms in the region.

Buildings documented at Puerto Escondido in the stratigraphic levels datingbefore 900B.C. include both relatively perishable wattle and daub houses, andothers with rammed earth walls 15–25 cm thick, perhaps bases for wattle super-structures with or without finishing coats of clay plaster (Fig. 3). In the environmentof Honduras, with its months-long tropical rains, these buildings would have beensubject to erosion and would have required regular maintenance. We find abundantevidence of episodes of remodeling of these residential constructions, includingthe razing down to ground level of thick rammed earth walls. Debris from largerdemolished structures, including structures burned as part of the processes of re-building, was spread around and served as a solid base for renewed construction(compare Fig. 3 and discussion below). Contemporary settlements from the neigh-boring Naco Valley reportedly had similar “incremental” construction of extensiveearthen platforms up to 49 m in diameter, rising initially 20 cm to 1.2 m above thesurrounding ground surface (Urbanet al., 2002: 141–146). Similar sequences ofreconstruction have been documented for Paso de la Amada, on the Pacific Coastof Mexico (Clark and Blake, 1993; Lesure, 1997a, 1999; Lesure and Blake, 2002),where they created subtle differences in elevation for some larger houses identifiedthrough other criteria as possible chief’s residences.

It is possible, then, that the first monumental platforms built were not con-ceived as establishing a new category of building, but were an amplification inhorizontal extension of the kinds of buildings constructed within some (not all)house compounds (compare Bradley, 1998: 162). I argue that the expectations thatthe builders of the earliest Honduran monumental earthen platforms would havehad can be projected from the behavior of materials they already used in domestic




construction. The builders would have understood clay platforms to be imperma-nent constructions which would regularly require refurbishment. In fact, of course,all early earthen monumental architecture was regularly remodeled. Given the his-tory of domestic architectural technology, using clay in any building would haveengaged knowledge of the probability of its erosion and the possibility that, toextend the life of the building, it would need to be renewed.

From this perspective, the actual durability of monumental earthen construc-tions may be seen as another unintended consequence, in this case a product of theincrease in volume of the unexposed mass of earth in a broader platform, relativeto the surface area exposed. It is from this perspective that the initial experiencesin Honduras, with wide, but relatively low, platforms, are most informative. Withless exposed surface to actively erode, broader clay platforms of even relativelymodest increased height, like those at the heart of the early monumental buildingsof Los Naranjos, while still subject to decay, may have been ultimately more stablethan their makers could have envisioned. Indeed, we may need to consider whetherthe earliest stages of most monumental platforms were even intended to persist atall, or if they initially might have been expected to weather away, as abandonedhouses did. It may be most useful to think of the goal of these projects being thecoordination of laborers in the activity of construction, as Pauketat and Alt (2003)suggest for some mound construction at Cahokia, rather than the production of animperishable platform.

As with the transformation in the significance of burial that I suggested mayhave been accomplished by the use of the newly obvious monumental locales forburial of selected individuals, the persistence of monumental earthen platformsmay have recursively influenced the value placed on durability in residential struc-tures as well. A new concept of architecture as something potentially more perma-nent may have shifted the way that residential structures were assessed, placing agreater value on permanency in those as well. At Puerto Escondido, for example,the use of lime plaster and stone facings becomes a feature of monumental earthenplatforms and of residential architecture simultaneously, with the earliest plasteredplatforms dating to 1100–900B.C. Prior to that point, our construction evidencesuggests buildings with post frameworks supported perishable superstructures, andthese buildings were remodeled many times in succession.

LIVING WITH MONUMENTS IN FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA

I am suggesting, in short, that the first stage of the earthen platforms whosemonumentality transformed Formative Mesoamerican landscapes, and becamepart of all later landscapes in the region, may have been constructed without anexplicit intention that the structure endure to convey sentiments to future viewers(compare Bradley, 1998: 104). We can conjecture that these early platforms werebuilt as supra-household spaces for specific activities whose nature may well have



20 Joyce

included hosting feasts, dances, games, and other community activities suggestedby contemporary material culture (Clark and Blake, 1993, 1999; Clark and Gosser,1995; Hill and Clark, 2001; Hillet al., 1998; Joyce, 1998, 1999, 2003b; Lesure,1997b, 1998, 1999; Lesure and Blake, 2002). The labor for the production ofthe original platforms would have been provided by members of social groupssponsoring these activities. In Honduras, there are no signs of superstructuresbuilt on these early broad platforms. The lack of traces of superstructures or otherfeatures on these early platforms may reflect construction of impermanent formsof enclosures on earthen platforms primarily intended to raise participants up andincrease their visibility during some social events.

Once built, however, even the relatively low first stage platforms would havetransformed the space of the communities where they were built. One effect theseearthen structures had, as Love (1999) has proposed, is to create differentiatedspaces within sites, with potential differences in access rights and knowledgestemming from experiences in different zones of these sites. Another effect towhich Love draws attention would be the creation of new visual relations, inwhich the raised platform and anything on it would be more visible through-out the surrounding community. Love emphasizes the primary phenomenolog-ical, visual, and spatial effects of early Formative architecture, in place of thenarrative or symbolic significance documented for much later structures sim-ilar in form, but products of structural reproduction of an already traditionalform.

These structures also would have affected the temporality of the communi-ties in which they were built by challenging the knowledge of the inevitability ofdecay experienced in the physical settings of everyday life. The new, larger-scalestructures were also longer in temporal scale; while they still required remodel-ing to persist, they persisted longer than domestic earthen architecture, even ina collapsed and abandoned state. The series of innovations in construction thatfollowed, including the use of stone and plaster facings, allowed monumentalarchitecture to be made to resist even the partial surface erosion to which fullyearthen architecture was prone.

At Puerto Escondido, our excavations produced evidence in two differentlocations for a transformation in practices of remodelling, dating around 900B.C.

(Joyce and Henderson, 2001, 2002a,b). In both cases, debris from the demolitionof previous architecture was mounded, in at least one case having first been burned,to form platforms higher than any previously noted (Figs. 4 and 5). While relativelylow, these new platforms were quite broad, and in fact we have yet to fully outlineany of them despite excavating transects of up to 18 m across some of these features.Traces of plaster and stone facings were found on these platforms. The earliestexamples of human burials in architectural settings at the site, and caches of wholevessels, in one case containing jade ornaments, were located in one of these new,more formalized earthen platforms (Figs. 6 and 7). Contemporary developmentsin the neighboring Naco Valley also appear to culminate in an episode of more




Fig. 4. Puerto Escondido Operation 4 plan showing overlapping plans of buildings with rammed earthwall bases and wattle and daub superstructure (Structures 4A and 4B), demolished and encompassedwithin the later monumental platform Structure 4C.

intensive, deliberate construction of higher platforms with distinctive constructionmaterials (Urbanet al., 2002: 141–146).

As remodeling increased the height of the original platforms created at theseHonduran sites, it also increased their temporal stability. Mounds became physical

Fig. 5. Schematic section showing superimposition of PuertoEscondido Str 4C over Str 4A.



22 Joyce

Fig. 6. Plan view of Puerto Escondido Str 4C showinglocations of terrace wall trenches, cached whole vesselsand ground stone artifacts, and burials.

marks of communal and individual memory (Pauketat and Alt, 2003; Stevanovic,1997: 388), sites for the construction of narratives like those recorded for Classicand Postclassic temple pyramids centuries later. When Mesoamerican pyramidsfirst enter the textual record in Classic Maya inscriptions (ca.A.D. 250–850), theyare identified with mountains, permanent stone features on the landscape contain-ing caves where ancestral spirits dwelled. But if the earliest platforms were notbuilt as imperishable structures, we cannot argue that they were already ancestralmountains, a narrative that may well be associated with their appropriation forburial after their initial physical persistence was noted.




Fig. 7. Schematic section showing relative depths of Puerto Escondido Str 4C terrace wall trenches,cached whole vessels and ground stone artifacts, burials, and traces of plaster facing.

As visually omnipresent and stable points of reference in their communities,the monumental platforms also created physical centers in these Formative villages,an effect which their later descendants most notably carried on in their practicesof locating temple platforms in central locations in communities. But again, ratherthan assuming that Formative precursors were built to center the community onan already valuedaxis mundi, I suggest we consider that, once these focal pointsexisted, they lent themselves to the elaboration of new spatial stratifications ofcommunities in terms of periphery and center. At Los Naranjos, this is indicatedmost spectacularly by the construction of 5 km of ringing ditches defining the zoneof monumental platforms, during the Middle Formative Jaral phase (Baudez andBecquelin, 1973). At Los Naranjos, Yarumela and many other early sites, initialmonumental platforms are juxtaposed in later construction stages to additionalplatforms framing plaza spaces. The centering effect of monumental platforms, afunction of their heightened visibility, appears to have been reacted to and elabo-rated on, not necessarily intended, planned for, and produced from the beginning.

Once Formative monumental platforms existed, the idea of building to last atthe monumental scale was irrevocably a part of the traditional knowledge of laterMesoamerican peoples. Rebuilding pyramids, both conceptually and in practice,was a fundamentally different operation than first conceiving and accomplishingthe construction of monumental platforms. Because the early examples formedthe ground against which later examples were executed, it is tempting to use ourmore ample knowledge of later construction to explain the earliest examples. Myargument here is that despite apparent formal similarities, the earliest Formativemonumental architecture was different from later construction. As material re-alizations of different intentions, and the enactment of differential knowledge,apparently similar structures are, in the end, not at all the same. Each has effectsthat reproduce and transform the social order of the actors who make and use them.But while Formative monumental architecture was novel, later examples were re-iterations of a historically situated form. Building in the Formative was a meansto invent new society; rebuilding through the Late Postclassic was a medium toreproduce societies.



24 Joyce

RETURNING TO STRUCTURE AND AGENCY

I have argued that it is possible to use the archeological documentation of thehabitual “technical practice” (Stevanovic, 1997: 341–343) of architecture in thecenturies preceding the first monumental construction projects in Honduras as away to model the practical knowledge that would have framed the intentions of thebuilders of these early structures. A long history of working with clay as a buildingmaterial, dealing with its tendency to erode and the requirement to renew rammedearth buildings periodically, is evident in sequences of repeated reconstruction ofdomestic structures. The fact that the early monumental platforms documented inHonduras are broad rather than high immediately calls into question the assumptionthat the goal was building an artificial mountain. Instead, these early platformsappear to have been expanded applications of techniques used in contemporaryresidential structures.

To put it most simply, the intention of the builders seems to have been toraise some activities slightly higher, and/or to create a larger area that would ac-commodate more participants. This is consistent with the suggestions of activitieslikely to have taken place in these locales made by a variety of scholars (e.g.,Clark and Blake, 1993, 1999; Clark and Gosser, 1995; Hill and Clark, 2001; Hillet al., 1998; Joyce, 1998, 1999, 2003b; Lesure, 1997b, 1998, 1999; Lesure andBlake, 2002). The feasts, dances, and games that these authors propose, based onother lines of evidence, as communally significant events likely to have taken placeon and around early monumental architecture, are elaborations or expansions ofpractices that were part of everyday life within residential compounds. Dances,games, and feasts are understood to have already formed part of the domestic lifeof the inhabitants of Mesoamerica’s early villages. This basic repertoire of activi-ties was already part of the structures constituted by the actions of agents in thesecommunities before the first monumental platforms were built.

If we understand structuration to be the process by which agents bring tobear practical and discursive knowledge, reproducing structure, then the buildersof early monumental platforms can be understood as acting within traditionalstructures of technical, ritual, and domestic productive and reproductive practices.But as Giddens (1979) suggests, structuration also involves the transformationof structure; the process of reproducing structure is never without the possibilityof change. Structural reproduction should be construed always as less a kind ofautomatic cloning, than reiteration with variation. Even if the intentions of ac-tors are to reproduce structure with no change, they cannot do so because of theunacknowledged conditions of action and the unintended consequences of theiractions.

In the case of early Mesoamerican monumental architecture, these unintendedconsequences may have included changes in the behavior of the architectural ma-terials when platforms were scaled up. The archeological identification of more




durable, larger earthen platforms coincides with innovations in architectural fin-ishes, particularly the use of plaster and stone, which allowed the intentional con-struction of less perishable buildings. I propose that these innovations are effectsof the incorporation into structure of unintended consequences of action. Theunintended creation of durability as a technical feature of architecture created thepotential for architectural durability to be recognized as a goal of intentional action.

Unexpected outcomes of action, once produced, had to be integrated in therenewed social structures that were a product of the actions of the workers whoraised the first of these monumental buildings. The more durable, broad, raisedplatforms built in early Honduran villages, resistant to weathering, could becomepoints of reference for future action, including augmentation by new buildingprojects. Through visual contrast with other structures in these villages, they re-organized space, creating center points where none had existed. The stratificationof space accomplished within these villages by the production of high broad plat-forms could be reinforced through the building of additional constructions and theplacement of distinctive features, such as the monumental stone sculpture notedat both Los Naranjos and Puerto Escondido.

We cannot know exactly when the people of ancient Honduras began to regardthe pyramids in their settlements as sacred mountains. But it is at least as possiblethat this was a consequence of the first burials placed in platforms instead of incaves in the surrounding mountains, as that the naming of these relatively lowbut broad platforms “mountain” preceded the acts of burial. What we do know,with little room for doubt, is that the builders of these early monumental platformsworked within the traditions of technical practice that were structural for them,traditions that dictated their approach to constructing the broader, relatively lowplatforms that are the first steps toward the sacred ancestral mountains of theClassic Maya and Postclassic Aztec. And our knowledge of the existing traditionof technical practice allows us to frame our understandings of agency and practicein this early society in terms of likely intentions and unintended consequences,thinking forward from the past, not backward from the present.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Excavations at Puerto Escondido, directed by Rosemary A. Joyce and JohnS. Henderson, were conducted under the authority of the Instituto Hondureño deAntropologıa e Historia. Funding was provided by grants from the National ScienceFoundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, HeinzCharitable Fund, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, In-corporated; from the University of California, Berkeley Archeological ResearchFacility Stahl Endowment, Committee on Research, Center for Latin AmericanStudies, and Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program; and from the Cornell



26 Joyce

University Office of Sponsored Programs, Latin American Studies Program, andArchaeology Program. Research and writing for the original draft of this paperwas completed while I was in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in theBehavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, supported by Grant 2000–5633 andHewlett Fellow Grant 98-2124 of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Ithank Brenda Bowser, Julia Hendon, Jeanne Lopiparo, and anonymous reviewersfor their comments on earlier drafts.

REFERENCES CITED

Barrett, J. C. (2001). Agency, the duality of structure, and the problem of the historical record. InHodder, I. (ed.),Archeological Theory Today, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 141–164.

Bassie-Sweet, K. (1991).From the Mouth of the Dark Cave: Commemorative Sculpture of the LateClassic Maya, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Bassie-Sweet, K. (1996).At the Edge of the World: Caves and Late Classic Maya World View, Universityof Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Baudez, C. F., and Becquelin, P. (1973).Archeologie de Los Naranjos, Honduras, MissionArcheologique et Ethnologique Fran¸caise au Méxique, Mexico.

Bradley, R. (1998).The Significance of Monuments,Routledge, London.Brady, J. E. (1995). Reassessment of the chronology and function of Gordon’s Cave 3, Copan, Honduras.

Ancient Mesoamerica6: 29–38.Brady, J. E. (1997). Settlement configuration and cosmology: The role of caves at Dos Pilas.American

Anthropologist99: 602–618.Brady, J. E., and Ashmore, W. (1999). Mountains, caves, and water: Ideational landscapes of the ancient

Maya. In Ashmore, W., and Knapp, A. B. (eds.),Archaeologies of Landscape: ContemporaryPerspectives, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 124–145.

Brady, J. E., Begley, C., Fogarty, J., Stierman, D. J., Luke, B., and Scott, A. (2001). TalguaArcheological Project: A technical assessment: Web-based report, http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/anthro/Talguapre.htm [consulted September 2003].

Brady, J. E., and Veni, G. (1992). Man-made and pseudo-karst caves: The implications of subsurfacegeologic features within Maya centers.Geoarchaeology7: 149–167.

Clark, J. E. (1991). The beginnings of Mesoamerica: Apologia for the Soconusco Early Formative.In Fowler, W. R. (ed.),The Formation of Complex Society in Southeastern Mesoamerica, CRCPress, Boca Raton, pp. 13–26.

Clark, J. E. (1997). The arts of government in early Mesoamerica.Annual Review of Anthropology26:211–234.

Clark, J. E. (2000). Towards a better explanation of hereditary inequality: A critical assessment of naturaland historic agents. In Dobres, M.-A., and Robb, J. (eds.),Agency in Archaeology, Routledge,London, pp. 92–112.

Clark, J. E. (2002). Surrounding the sacred: Geometry and design of early mound groups as meaningand function. In Gibson, J. L., and Carr, P. L. (eds.),Big Mound Power: Faces of SoutheasternArchaic Sociality, Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Clark, J. E., and Blake, M. (1993). The power of prestige: Competitive generosity and the emergence ofrank societies in lowland Mesoamerica. In Brumfiel, E. M., and Fox, J. W. (eds.),Factional Com-petition and Political Development in the New World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,pp. 17–30.

Clark, J. E., and Blake, M. (1999). The emergence of hereditary inequality: The case of Pacific CoastalChiapas, Mexico. In Blake, M. (ed.),Pacific Latin America in Prehistory: The Evolution of Archaicand Formative Cultures, Washington State University Press, Pullman, pp. 55–74.

Clark, J. E., and Gosser, D. (1995). Reinventing Mesoamerica’s first pottery. In Barnett, W., and Hoopes,J. (eds.),The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies, SmithsonianInstitution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 209–222.




Clark, J. E., and Hansen, R. D. (2001). The architecture of early kingship: Comparative perspectiveson the origins of the Maya royal court. In Inomata, T., and Houston, S. D. (eds.),The Maya RoyalCourt, Westview Press, Boulder, pp. 1–45.

Clark, J. E., and Pye, M. E. (2000). The Pacific Coast and the Olmec question. In Clark, J. E., and Pye,M. E. (eds.),Olmec Art and Archaeology in Mesoamerica, National Gallery of Art, Washington,DC, pp. 217–251.

Dixon, B., Hasemann, G., Gomez, P., Brady, J., and Beaudry-Corbett, M. (1998). Multiethnicity ormultiple enigma? archeological survey and cave exploration in the R´ıo Talgua drainage, Honduras.Ancient Mesoamerica9: 327–340.

Dixon, B., Joesink-Mandeville, L. R. V., Hasebe, N., Mucio, M., Vincent, W., James, D., and Petersen,K. (1994). Formative Period architecture at the site of Yarumela, central Honduras.Latin AmericanAntiquity 5: 70–87.

Dobres, M.-A., and Robb, J. E. (2000). Agency in archaeology: Paradigm or platitude? In Dobres,M.-A., and Robb, J. (eds.),Agency in Archaeology, Routledge, London, pp. 3–18.

Flannery, K. V., and Marcus, J. (2000). Formative Mexican chiefdoms and the myth of the “MotherCulture.”Journal of Anthropological Archaeology19: 1–37.

Giddens, A. (1979).Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in SocialAnalysis, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Gordon, G. B. (1898).Caverns of Copan, Honduras, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Grove, D. C. (1989). Olmec: What’s in a name? In Sharer, R. J., and Grove, D. C., (eds.),RegionalPerspectives on the Olmec, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 8–14.

Grove, D. C. (1993). Olmec horizons in Formative Mesoamerica: Diffusion or social evolution? InRice, D. (ed.),Latin American Horizons,Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 83–111.

Grove, D. C. (1997). Olmec archaeology: A half century of research and its accomplishments.Journalof World Prehistory11: 51–101.

Grove, D. C. (1999). Public monuments and sacred mountains: Observations on three formative pe-riod sacred landscapes. In Grove, D. C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Social Patterns in Pre-ClassicMesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 255–299.

Hamann, B. (2002). The social life of pre-sunrise things: Indigenous Mesoamerican archaeology.Current Anthropology43: 351–382.

Hammond, N. (1999). The genesis of hierarchy: Mortuary and Offertory Ritual in the Preclassic atCuello, Belize. In Grove, D. C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamer-ica, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 49–66.

Healy, P. (1974). The Cuyamel Caves: Preclassic sites in Northeast Honduras.American Antiquity39:433–437.

Hendon, J. A. (2000). Having and holding: Storage, memory, knowledge, and social relations.AmericanAnthropologist102:42–53.

Herrmann, N. (2002). GIS applied to bioarchaeology: An example from the R´ıo Talgua caves innortheast Honduras.Journal of Cave and Karst Studies64: 17–22.

Heyden, D. (1975 ). An interpretation of the cave underneath the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán,Mexico.American Antiquity40: 131–147.

Hill, W. D., Blake, M., and Clark, J. E. (1998). Ball court design dates back 3,400 years.Nature 392:878–879.

Hill, W. D., and Clark, J. E. (2001). Sports, gambling, and government: America’s first social compact?American Anthropologist103:1–15.

Joyce, R. A. (1992). Innovation, communication and the archeological record: A reassessment ofMiddle Formative Honduras.Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society20: 235–256.

Joyce, R. A. (1996). Social dynamics of exchange: Changing patterns in the Honduran archeologi-cal record. In Langebaek, C. H., and Cardenas-Arroyo, F. (eds.),Chieftains, Power, and Trade:Regional Interaction in the Intermediate Area of the Americas, Departamento de Antropolog´ıa,Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, pp. 31–45.

Joyce, R. A. (1998). Performing the body in Prehispanic Central America.Res: Anthropology andAesthetics33: 147–165.

Joyce, R. A. (1999). Social dimensions of Pre-Classic Burials. In Grove, D. C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 15–47.



28 Joyce

Joyce, R. A. (2000a). Heirlooms and houses: Materiality and social memory. In Joyce, R. A., andGillespie, S. D. (eds.),Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies,University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 189–212.

Joyce, R. A. (2000b). High culture, Mesoamerican civilization, and the Classic Maya tradition. InRichards, J., and Van Buren, M. (eds.),Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient States, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, pp. 64–76.

Joyce, R. A. (2001).Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, University of Texas Press, Austin.Joyce, R. A. (2003a). Concrete memories: Fragments of the past in the Classic Maya present (500–

1000 AD). In Van Dyke, R., and Alcock, S. (eds.),Archaeologies of Memory, Blackwell, Malden,MA.

Joyce, R. A. (2003b). Making something of herself: Embodiment in life and death at Playa de losMuertos, Honduras,Cambridge Archeological Journal13: 248–261.

Joyce, R. A., and Gillespie, S. D. (eds.) (2000).Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction inHouse Societies, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Joyce, R. A., and Henderson, J. S. (2001). Beginnings of village life in Eastern Mesoamerica.LatinAmerican Antiquity12: 5–23.

Joyce, R. A., and Henderson, J. S. (2002a). Before there was a periphery: Early Formative Honduranarchaeology.Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,New Orleans.

Joyce, R. A., and Henderson, J. S. (2002b). La arqueolog´ıa del periodo Formativo en Honduras: Nuevosdatos sobre el¿estilo olmecaÀ en la zona maya.Mayab15: 5–18.

Joyce, R. A., and Hendon, J. A. (2000). Heterarchy, history, and material reality: ‘Communities’ inLate Classic Honduras. In Canuto, M.-A., and Yaeger, J. (eds.),The Archaeology of Communities:A New World Perspective, Routledge, London, pp. 143–160.

Leon-Portilla, M. (1978).Mexico-Tenochtitlan, su espacio y tiempo sagrado, Instituto Nacional deAntropologıa e Historia, Mexico, DF.

Lesure, R. G. (1997a). Early Formative platforms at Paso de la Amada, Chiapas, Mexico.Latin Amer-ican Antiquity8: 217–235.

Lesure, R. G. (1997b). Figurines and social identities in early sedentary societies of Coastal Chiapas,Mexico. In Claassen, C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Women in Prehistory: North America andMesoamerica, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 227–248.

Lesure, R. G. (1998). Vessel form and function in an Early Formative ceramic assemblage from CoastalMexico.Journal of Field Archaeology25: 19–36

Lesure, R. G. (1999). Platform architecture and activity patterns in an early Mesoamerican village inChiapas, Mexico.Journal of Field Archaeology26: 391–406.

Lesure, R. G., and Blake, M. (2002). Interpretive challenges in the study of early complexity: Economy,ritual, and architecture at Paso de la Amada, Mexico.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology21: 1–24.

Lopez Austin, A., Lopez, L., and Sugiyama, S. (1991). The Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan:Its possible ideological significance.Ancient Mesoamerica, 2: 93–106.

Lopez Lujan, L. (1993).Las ofrendas del Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan, Instituto Nacional deAntropologıa e Historia, Mexico, DF.

Love, M. W. (1991). Style and social complexity in Formative Mesoamerica. In Fowler, W. R. (ed.),TheFormation of Complex Society in Southeastern Mesoamerica, CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp. 47–76.

Love, M. W. (1999). Ideology, material culture, and daily practice in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica: APacific Coast perspective. In Grove, D. C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Social Patterns in Pre-ClassicMesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 127–153.

Manzanilla, L., Barba, L., Chávez, R., Tejero, A., Cifuentes, G., and Peralta, N. (1994 ). Caves andgeophysics; an approximation to the underworld of Teotihuacan, Mexico.Archaeometry36: 141–157.

Matos M. E. (1988).The great Temple of the Aztecs, Thames and Hudson, New York.Matos M., E. (2000). From Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlan: Their great temples. In Carrasco, D., Jones,

L., and Sessions, S. (eds.),Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs,University of Colorado Press, Niwot, pp. 185–194.

McAnany, P., Storey, R., and Lockard, A. K. (1999). Mortuary ritual and family politics at Formativeand Early Classic K’axob, Belize.Ancient Mesoamerica10: 129–146.




Merry de Morales, M. (1987). Chalcatzingo’s burials as indicators of social ranking. In Grove, D. C.(ed.),Ancient Chalcatzingo, University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 95–113.

Pauketat, T. R. (2000). The tragedy of the commoners. In Dobres, M.-A., and Robb, J. (eds.),Agencyin Archaeology, Routledge, London, pp. 113–129.

Pauketat, T. R. (2001). Practice and history in archaeology: An emerging paradigm.AnthropologicalTheory1: 73–98.

Pauketat, T. R., and Alt, S. M. (2003). Mounds, memory, and contested Mississippian history. In VanDyke, R., and Alcock, S. (eds.),Archaeologies of Memory, Blackwell, Malden, MA.

Ringle, W. M. (1999). Preclassic cityscapes: Ritual politics among the Early Lowland Maya. In Grove,D. C., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.),Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks,Washington, DC, pp. 183–223.

Rue, D. J., Freter, A., and Ballinger, D. A. (1989). The Caverns of Copan revisited: Preclassic sites inthe Sesesmil River Valley, Copan, Honduras.Journal of Field Archaeology16: 395–404.

Saitta, D. J. (1994). Agency, class, and archeological interpretation.Journal of Anthropological Ar-chaeology13: 201–227.

Schele, L., and Mathews, P. (1998).The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Templesand Tombs,Scribner, New York.

Silliman, S. W. (2001). Agency, practical politics and the archaeology of culture contact.Journal ofSocial Archaeology1: 190–209.

Stevanovic, M. (1997). The age of clay: the social dynamics of house destruction.Journal of Anthro-pological Archaeology16: 334–395.

Stone, A. (1992). From ritual in the landscape to capture in the urban center: The recreation of ritualenvironments in Mesoamerica.Journal of Ritual Studies6: 109–132.

Stuart, D., and Houston, S. D. (1994).Classic Maya Place Names, Studies in pre-Columbian Art andArchaeology No. 33, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Sugiyama, S. (1993). Worldview materialized in Teotihuacan, Mexico.Latin American Antiquity4:103–129.

Tolstoy, P. (1989). Coapexco and Tlatilco: Sites with Olmec materials in the Basin of Mexico. In Sharer,R. J., and Grove, D. C. (eds.),Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, pp. 85–121.

Umberger, E. (1987). Antiques, revivals, and references to the past in Aztec art.Res: Anthropology andAesthetics13: 63–106.

Urban, P., Schortman, E., and Ausec, M. (2002). Power without bounds? Middle Preclassic politicaldevelopments in the Naco Valley, Honduras.Latin American Antiquity13: 131–152.

Vitelli, K. D. (1998). “Looking up” at early ceramics in Greece. In Skibo, J., and Feinman, G. (eds.),Pottery and People, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 184–198.

Documents

Unintended Consequences? Monumentality as a Novel ...townsendgroups.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/joyce_2004... · Unintended Consequences? Monumentality As a Novel Experience