Sum 05 Ritual 39-43
5/24/05
10:58 AM
Page 39
The Oldest Ritual? An interpretation of new data suggests that ritual activity took place in southern Mexico more than 9,000 years ago. But the interpretation has sparked a debate among Mesoamerican scholars. By Andrew Lawler
MARCUS WINTER
O
This urn was found at San José Mogote, a site in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico that has yielded evidence of ritual activity.
american archaeology
n a balmy summer evening more than 9,000 years ago, a couple of dozen people gathered outside their oval huts on a small plaza demarcated by two rows of boulders. There was quiet anticipation in the soft air of ancient Mexico. The modest plaza, a rectangular area 60 feet long and 21 feet wide, had been carefully swept clean during the day in preparation. After a meal of squash and beans, cooked nearby over gathered twigs, the inhabitants began to play music and dance in a ritual that echoes down thousands of years of human habitation in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico. That compelling picture of what may be the oldest known ritual space in the region comes from new data recently gleaned from a 40-year-old excavation. The husband-wife team of Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor see in that data an early link in the chain of societal development that led to the Zapotec culture that even today dominates the valley. But a host of other archaeologists aren’t convinced that the data supports their vision. They say that the results published in December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are an example of using data to fit a preconceived theory. The debate centers on a nondescript agave field just off the highway that runs from Oaxaca City to the town of Mitla. During the mid-1960s, Flannery conducted a survey 39
