Phil Weigand
1969(or so)-present Settlement and Ecology of the Lake Basins of Central Jalisco
Phil Weigand
A discussion of this project sets the stage for much of what we know about highland Jalisco today. Weigand's work has been focused on the lake basins in the center of the state, including the basins of the Cienega La Vega and the Laguna de Magdalena in the Tequila valleys, Lake Chapala, and Lake Sayula. By far most of this work has been located in the Tequila valleys, and began with a desire to document the settlement pattern and cultural ecology of the society that built the shaft tombs of the region. The lake basins, with their wide array of natural resources, have been the center of gravity for the most elaborate shaft tombs and offering assemblages. Yet Isabel Kelly's surveys in the 1930s found remarkably little in the way of settlement (her overwhelming focus on pottery to the exclusion of other materials is evident in her reports), and Stanley Long's surveys in the 1960s were left unpublished after his untimely death.
Weigand has carried out mostly survey over the years, with minor surface collections and still more minor excavations. On the other hand, his work has included extensive documentation of profiles of looters' trenches, more controversial interviews of looters, and attempts to recontextualize this information. This work has been carried out with the aid of various fieldworkers, but most later decided to leave the region to continue their careers elsewhere.
The primary result of the project has been to document that a society, more complex than that assumed in earlier studies, had existed in these lake basins during the Formative and Classic periods. Evidence for this is to be found in the presence of complex, circular monumental architecture referred to as guachimontones, as well as in the remains of mining operations and possible agricultural fields.
The simplest examples consist of four platforms in the form of rectangles (or more clearly in some examples, a section of a ring) arrayed around a low circular altar.
The most complex examples are dramatically larger, sitting atop a circular platform that serves as a patio, and the central circular altar has become a circular, stepped structure. Examples of each extreme in a site context can be found at the Earth Measure site, which has a few of Weigand's published maps. The circular architecture is virtually duplicated in ceramic models looted from shaft tombs in the area, but this potential source of additional information has barely been touched on by qualified art historians familiar with Mesoamerican imagery, as opposed to archaeologists dabbling in the topic (including myself).
Weigand has located nearly 300 circular complexes within the Tequila valleys, and has proposed a chronological sequence based upon changes in the architecture, with some reference to ceramic changes that he has observed from collections associated with the structures, either on the ground surface or within their fill. He has also offered a cultural-historical reconstruction of the region, seeing it as a core to a wider cultural entity spanning several states in western Mexico, focused on mortuary ritual involving shaft tombs in the early part of its history, and with an increasing emphasis on public surface architecture as time went on.
Weigand has given us a tremendous baseline of information, and his project is the starting point for all of those that follow. There are several weaknesses with this database, however, and I'm sure that Phil would agree with all of them. First, we are in need of a detailed ceramic chronology, with radiocarbon determinations and stratigraphic excavations to support it. An architectural chronology is more difficult to support with chronometric methods, and does not allow effective correlation of the remains in central Jalisco with those in other areas. Second, the paucity of excavations in the Tequila valleys has meant that Weigand's reconstruction is lacking some credibility. Excavation is not magic, of course, and poor excavations can easily provide less chronological information than good survey. Other excavations in the same region, such as those by Javier Galvan of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Centro Regional Jalisco, have provided considerable information regarding chronology. The chronology for the Late Formative through the Classic periods has been shored up recently by the publication of a monograph combining my sherd data from the La Primavera Project with Weigand's photographs of whole vessels. Weigand and Efraín Cárdenas in fact began excavations in 1999 at the Guachimonton site to help offset this problem. The Tequila Valley Regional Archaeological Project is also geared towards recovering substantial chronological information in addition to its other goals. All these steps forward have concerned the Late Formative through Classic period, however. The Epiclassic through Postclassic is still very weak.
But besides chronology, there are other questions regarding the function of the Teuchitlan tradition architecture, and the activities associated with it, that need to be addressed through excavation. In addition, the focus on public architecture has meant that residential structures have been less adequately mapped and studied. Finally, Weigand's reconstruction has at times made effective use of core-periphery theory, seeing central Jalisco as the core region of a wider cultural (economic? political?) entity. But apart from this example, there has been a lack of theoretical research in the region, proposing specific hypotheses and testing them through fieldwork. Sheer accumulation of data increases knowledge much more slowly than problem-oriented research with specific objectives.
In sum, researchers interested in central Jalisco have a rich baseline of information about the area, clear targets for future research, and a testable cultural-historical framework in which to work.
Comments to Chris Beekman