Introduction: Issues in the Archaeology of Tropical Polities

• DOI: 10.1525/ap3a.1999.9.1.1
• Publication Date: 2004-11-24T01:31:07Z
• Authors: Elisabeth A. Bacus; Lisa J. Lucero
• Keywords: 11. Sustainability; 0601 history and archaeology; 06 humanities and the arts; 15. Life on land

The term "tropics" generally invokes images of sweltering heat, heavy rainfall, lush forest and exotic animals, and until relatively recently, small-scale societies subsisting on swidden farming and hunting. These areas of the world have often been perceived, vis-a-vis temperate regions, as presenting unique environmental conditions that constrain the formation and organization of complex polities. With the exception of a few regions, such as lowland Mesoamerica and Polynesia, polities located in tropical regions have generally been considered of little relevance to our theories of the formation and transformation of complex society. This may partially reflect the previous focus on the earliest cases of state formation, which primarily occurred in temperate regions, combined with the primacy, until recently, of the ecosystem approach in American archaeology. The emphasis on populationenvironment interaction to explain stability and change in behavioral systems (see e.g., Brumfiel 1992) may have facilitated a view of complex polities in tropical regions as less than relevant to understanding the earlier development of complex societies in temperate areas. Current theoretical approaches (see e.g., Bourdieu 1977; Brumfiel 1992; Ellen 1996; Mann 1986), while not denying the importance of environmental conditions, place greater emphasis on human agency and historical contingency in explaining change. Such explanations, combined with a recognition of the cultural perceptions of nature, thus warn against any reification of the "tropics." These approaches facilitate theoretical demarginalizing of tropical societies and, as the papers in this volume show, studies of polities located in tropical regions provide insights into our anthropological understanding of complex society. At the same time, the papers highlight aspects of tropical environments that may have presented unique conditions affecting the formation, structure and transformation of complex polities. The studies of tropical polities in this volume draw upon a range of theoretical perspectives in contemporary archaeology. More importantly, they engage theoretical issues based on results of research by archaeologists actively involved in field investigations in areas of Belize, Brazil, the Hawai'ian Islands, Indonesia, peninsular Malaysia, the Philippine Islands, Uganda, West Africa, and Venezuela (Figure 1.1). They also attest to the ability to overcome major obstacles faced in conducting archaeology in the tropics (e.g., diseases, seasonally constrained field opportunities, logistical problems, poor surface visibility and preservation [e.g., Meggers and Evans 1957; Sinclair et al. 1993; Stahl 1995]). Unfortunately, tropical-forest regions still remain poorly represented in studies of complex societies (Trigger 1989:400).