Reassessing Chupicuaro - Cuicuilco relationships from the perspective of ceramic productions (Formative Mesoamerica) – CHUPICERAM

This project focuses on the relationships between two regions considered key to understanding major sociopolitical processes in Mesoamerican Highlands: Western Mexico and the Basin of Mexico. The study of the inter-regional social relations is a subject extensively explored by Mesoamerican archaeology, which traditionally relies for this purpose on the similarities between their respective material productions, especially pottery. Since the highlighting of a Tertium Quid in the Mexico Basin associated with Western ceramic traditions during the Early Formative (1000-800 BC), it has been a recurring topic of discussion. However, the nature of these links is still poorly understood because the proposals remain generally based on stylistic correspondences. Therefore, the CHUPICERAM project proposes to renew our comprehension of these relations by fully exploiting the information potential of the ceramic material in a comparative perspective. The project focuses on the Late Formative period (600 B.C. - 250 A.D), which witnessed the development of two cultural cores: Chupícuaro in the Lerma valley (Guanajuato) and Cuicuilco in the Basin of Mexico. During the XXs, stylistics analogies on ceramic materials between these two regions led to diverse interpretations, involving population movements, commercial interactions and political and ideological influences, which often granted Chupicuaro a primal position as a possible area of emigration or as a prominent ceramic production center disseminating its beautiful products over long distances. In order to clarify the nature and intensity of these relationships, CHUPICERAM will focus on the ceramic production processes from the raw materials acquisition strategy to the finished product. The project’s goals are to characterize the technical traditions specific to each region, understand the variations over time, establish and question the links between the different ceramic assemblages and discuss the topic in terms of economic, social and cultural proximity.
One of CHUPICERAM's strengths is its willingness to apply a methodical comparative approach based on a representative sampling and integrating recent archaeological assemblages from the Chupícuaro region, and museum collections built up during excavations carried out in the first half of the twentieth century, both in the Chupícuaro region and the Mexico Basin. This is the first time that these different collections will be evaluated following the same analysis framework with high-performance instrumentation adapted to sherds and/or complete objects: techno-stylistic study based on the analytical tool of chaîne opératoire, petrographic and mineralogical characterization, a wide range of chemical analyses and a full set of non-invasive techniques including hyperspectral imaging, X Ray Radiography, 3D Imaging, X-ray fluorescence, visible-infrared light reflectance and Raman. We consider that only the crossing of all these data will make it possible to overcome the limits induced by stylistic analogies.
The project brings together archaeologists, museum curators, geologists and specialists in applied physics and analytical chemistry from Mexican and French institutions, who will work on the same sample to answer the same questions. By pooling the French and Mexican expertise, CHUPICERAM is taking up the challenge of bringing to the forefront two still little-known cultures considered to be among the most singular and creative Formative Mesoamerican traditions.