Kyle Warlich Anthropology 114P Professor Lesure 10-12-16
Midterm 1 Response 1 The spread and development of agriculture in early societies has revolutionize how modern people live today. However, there is much debate on how agriculture began and what role it played in the development and change in hunter-gather societies. Flannery and Bellwood have proposed different models on the emergence of agriculture.
The model developed by Flannery was created in part to show the relationship between the spread of information and agriculture (Flannery 1986:20). He also noted that by using a looping model it is easier to see and figure out what needs to be planted because there are seasonal and annual variations that effect the growth of …show more content…
This development in the size of a population leads some society to form a hierarchy to maintain social order.
However, in some cases other structures of social organizations were put in place that would also function to maintain social order with the needed for a hierarchy. Mesoamerican villages in the
Valley of Oaxaca and Soconusco regions are geographical different and yet they share similar traits in the way they organized their society.
The Valley of Oaxaca has undergone different types of development over the course of the initial early formative. Building placement is a key when looking at the purpose of a structure. In San Jose Mogote, excavation on Area C revealed that the different structures 3,5,6, and 7 are each orientated in different ways which might propose planning (Clark 2004:50). …show more content…
Clark (2004:48) defines a house in the village of San Jose Mogote as a
“hamlets 1-3ha in size”. Public buildings where much larger and could hold much more people.
It is hypothesized that these structures could have been used by a select group of people to preform rituals (Clark 2004:49). The difference in size between Public buildings and houses may have be created to signify that there was a difference in status between people. Change in the villages in the Valley of Oaxaca that vertical integration was not used and that horizontal integration was a better to a sedentary agriculturalist society. The region of Soconusco changes reflect the need for order is a rapidly growing population. Excavation of village Paso de la Amada reveals that the placement and layout of huts were too well planned to be just a coincidence (Clark 2004:53). The placement of the huts must have been planned by some social or political organization in Paso de la Amada. In fact, Clark
(2004:53) asserts that evidence for the houses were found “a meter below the current,