10 - The Ecological Perspective in Highland Mesoamerican Archaeology

Abstract

This chapter reviews the prevalent ecological perspectives in highland Mesoamerica archaeology. The growth of the early civilizations represents one of anthropological archaeology's most challenging but unmanageable problems. It is unmanageable because the complexity and variety can overwhelm. There are two strategies that researchers can adopt. One strategy is to ignore the complexity and try to find one factor or only a few that cut right to the core of things and offer a maximum of explanatory power with a minimum of bother. The other strategy is to try to match the complexity of the reality with complexity and richness in theory and method. At present, in Highland Mesoamerican archaeology, a debate is going on concerning the relative merits of the two strategies. An important byproduct of the new intellectual impetus came about through the realization that the traditional site-oriented archaeological methods used in Mesoamerica were largely inappropriate in the light of the new questions being asked. Since the 1960s, the complexity, eclecticism, balance, and anthropological sophistication characteristic of the thinking of the group consisting of Wolf, Palerm, Armillas, and the others who had brought about the new problem orientation have given way to the simplicity, reductionism, and unilineal determinism of many contemporary cultural ecologists.