Correspondence Analysis and West Mexico Archaeology: Ceramics from the Long-Glassow Collection

Introduction

1 Introduction By C. Roger Nance, Jan de Leeuw, and Phil C. Weigand vvvRelative to its vast territorial expanse and the complexity of the prehistoric cultures represented there, West Mexico is an area of North America that has received little attention from archaeologists. As a result, portions of the different prehistoric ceramic sequences for the region remain incomplete (see Beekman 1996; Mountjoy 2000; Pollard 2000; Weigand 2000). Much of the basic fieldwork that has been reported occurred more than twenty-five years ago, when ceramic type distributions were summarized and tabulated by hand. It occurred to us that study of pottery collections using computers and statistics might render some site excavation data more amenable to chronological control and, hence, interpretation. With this question in mind, we approached the Fowler Museum and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. These institutions gave us permission to study a sample of potsherds from the vicinity of Etzatlán, Jalisco, that had been excavated during the 1960s by UCLA archaeologists and curated since that time at the university. Over the course of this project, in constructing a ceramic sequence for Etzatlán, we employed correspondence analysis (henceforth, CA), a statistic little used in North American archaeology, including the Mesoamerican region (see Nance and De Leeuw 2005; Nance et al. 2003). In introduction / 2 Figure I-1. A map of the Laguna de Magdalena basin, Jalisco. Map by Stanley Long (1966:45); redrawn by Sandra Wong, 2009. C. Roger Nance, Jan de Leeuw, and Phil C. Weigand / 3 chapter 2, we discuss the history of CA, both in statistics and archaeology. We then give the basic equations defining CA as either a multivariate exploratory technique or as a statistical model–fitting technique. Similar applications in psychometrics and ecology are discussed as well. As an illustration, we apply CA to one small and one more realistic example. But, of course, the main applications of the technique are given in other chapters of the book, where we analyze typed ceramics from Etzatlán. The ceramics we selected derived from sites near the town of Etzatl án and in proximity to the dry lake bed of the Laguna de Magdalena in the lake district of northern Jalisco (fig. I-1). In 1963 Stanley Long and his assistant, Michael Glassow, investigated seven sites there through the excavation of randomly spaced pits, usually 1.5 by 1.5 m in dimension and almost always by 20 cm deep arbitrary levels. Apparently, these excavations were to form the basis of Long’s dissertation research, but instead he studied elaborate burials from the area (Long 1966), and pottery from the pits in question remained mostly unstudied. Except for an article by Glassow (1967) on one of these sites, Huistla, no one had systematically studied this UCLA collection. This is not to say, however, that archaeological research has been nonexistent in the Laguna de Magdalena basin. On the contrary, Phil Weigand began his own archaeological and ethnohistorical research program there and at nearby localities in north-central Jalisco soon after the Long-Glassow fieldwork. He was active in publishing archaeological fieldwork on the region and conducting pertinent library/archival research from that point up to the completion of this book. In chapter 1, Weigand provides a picture of late prehistoric cultures at Etzatlán and a narrative of key events surrounding the conquest and its socioeconomic and demographic consequences. He also describes archaeological resources in the Etzatlán basin, both as they existed thirty years ago as well as their present, more degraded condition. Chapter 1 also summarizes historical evidence for indigenous languages in this portion of Mexico. The Collections The collections and especially the records pertaining to these collections deteriorated to some extent during the thirty-seven years between excavation and the time we began our research. Table I-1 lists extant records for the four sites investigated in this study. Documentation for introduction / 4 Figure I-2. A contour map of the excavated portion of Anona. Compiled by Michael Glassow, 1963; redrawn by Sandra Wong, 2009. Table I-1: Surviving documents for the Etzatlán Project Site Feature, Burial Drawings Artifact Catalog Discard Sherd Catalog Site Survey Form Field Notes Profile Drawings Contour Map Anona + + + + + Fig. I-2 Las Cuevas + + + + + + Fig. I-4 Santiaguito + + + + + Tiana + + Fig. I-3 C. Roger Nance, Jan de Leeuw, and Phil C...