ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE LOWER MOTAGUA VALLEY, IZABAL, GUATEMALA: A STUDY IN MONUMENTAL SITE FUNCTION AND INTERACTION

The Lower Motagua Valley Project initiated in 1977, as a component of the Quirigua Archaeological Project, and was designed to provide information on prehistoric development within the wider regional setting of the major Classic period Maya site of Quirigua. Between 1977-1979 research was conducted on the nature and distribution of monumental centers within the densely settled southern portion of the lower Motagua valley through a program of survey, mapping, and test excavations at an opportunistically selected sample of sites. The results of this work point to the rapid growth of a series of monumental centers within the Late and Terminal Classic era, comparable in size if not complexity with Quirigua, which served as the residential and administrative foci of at least four independent polities. Earlier (pre-Late Classic) settlement in this portion of the valley was difficult to document, leaving the impression of a very swift development of socio-political complexity from unknown roots. Interactions among these political units and between them and Quirigua would appear to have been cooperative, but Quirigua seems to have maintained leadership in local economic and socio-political development. Interactions with cultures outside the lower Motagua valley would appear to have been important to these wider valley centers, especially trade connections to the northeast into Honduras. Nevertheless, the investigated centers maintained distinctive material and cultural patterns, resisting acculturation to adjacent Maya and non-Maya systems of behavior alike. Factors underlying this resistance appear to relate to the nature of the wider valley societies and of their interaction partners inside and beyond the Motagua valley, as well as the conditions of interaction. The collapse of the wider valley polities was as percipitous as their rise, and while the causes of both developments remain unknown, both may have been related to fluctuations in the importance of trade routes passing through the valley from the east, north, and south