ARVELO B., LILLIAM MARGARITA; PHD

                         UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, 1995

                         ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY (0324)
 

                         The goal of this project was to test the hypothesis that prehispanic chiefdoms emerged in the Quibor
                         Valley, northwestern Venezuela, as a consequence of environmental change and the arrival of maize
                         agriculture. The sequence studied runs from ca. 1500 B. C. to 1600 A. D. The research included a total
                         coverage survey of the 400 square km of the valley, and intensive surface collections and test pit
                         excavations at some selected sites. The analysis of settlement patterns is consistent with two different
                         evolutionary trajectories toward social complexity. Neither of the two, however, depends on
                         environmental factors or subsistence practices, which appear not to have changed radically during the
                         period under study. Indeed, there is little indication at any point of the social hierarchy or centralization
                         characteristic of chiefdoms. Instead, interaction between 'tribal' societies through a large area, and the
                         appearance of a new economic activity, salt production, appear to be the factors underlying such
                         tendencies toward social complexity as occur during the sequence studied.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603