The Archaeology of Complex Societies in Southeastern Pacific Coastal Guatemala

Book excerpt: This volume presents the results of research conducted from 1995 to 1997 in an area of Guatemala previously overlooked by archaeologists and whose obscure prehistory had been the topic of many speculative culture-historical syntheses. The significance of its results lies in the finding of several important pre-Hispanic settlements and a web of trade interactions linking their populations with neighboring areas of the Maya region. The primary objective is to provide a chronological framework for cultural processes that go from the development of sedentary life to the emergence and decline of complex social organization. The work also discusses the internal composition and dynamics of hierarchical social organization as reflected in settlement patterns and artifact distributions. The archaeological findings include survey and excavation data from early villages and hierarchically organized polities centered at densely populated settlements, as well as the locating and documenting of several 'lost' historical places of the Spanish Conquest.