Anthony James DeLuca

This project examines the political organization, labor mobilization strategies, and nature of power in the Late Formative to Classic period (300 B.C. – A.D. 450) Teuchitlán Culture of West Mexico through an analysis of labor needed to build monumental public architecture at site of Los Guachimontones in Jalisco, Mexico. By analyzing excavation data previously collected by the Proyecto Arqueológico Teuchitlán, a 3D photogrammetric reconstruction of the site, and analysis of the daub recovered there, I will create volumetric estimates for construction material used to build each component of the site’s circular temples and ball-courts. Architectural energetics analysis, using rates of work gathered from replicative experiments, will be applied to the volumes to estimate the amount of labor needed to construct each building. My previous research suggests labor requirements to construct the second largest temple at the site supports a collective governance model, as the construction utilizes two forms of labor mobilization: labor collective and corvée labor. However, a feature of collective governance is the fluctuation of exclusionary and corporate strategies between ruling groups. To more fully understand how political strategies, power, and labor mobilization changed over time, this study applies these methods to all excavated monumental architecture at Los Guachimontones.