Crafting the Complex: Material Culture and the Rise of Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was home to several distinctive cultural groups. While these cultural groups were sometimes separated by hundreds of years, they were all united by several common features, including, but certainly not limited to: the creation and use of stylistic cultural and ritual objects, the construction of monuments such as stone pyramids, hieroglyphic writing, and a similar world-view conceptualizing ritualized blood sacrifice for the long-term benefit of the community. Before each of these cultural groups became the state-level organizations for which they are best known, they existed as small communal groups, likely bound to one another by kinship and reciprocal obligation. These cultural groups created similar types of artifacts and used them in similar ways in their daily lives. Over time, sometimes a long time, these cultural groups grew more and more complex, both socially and politically, eventually becoming the type of societies in which they are best known today. This session explores the creation and use of material culture among some of the various cultural groups that lived in Formative Period Mesoamerica and how the use of material culture can illustrate growing social, economic, and political complexity.