John Hodgson, a UW-Madison PhD candidate in anthropology, and his team are the first archaeologists to discover and examine an intentionally constructed 5,000-year-old shell platform on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.
Hodgson has worked in Latin America for the last 15 years and on the coast of Chiapas, Mexico for the past five years. He suspected Archaic sites might have been preserved in the area he was working, along the border between Mexico and Guatemala because of its unique geology.
\There was an area that was protected from the ocean by a dune system and was far enough away from river mouths that it was protected from disturbance. This area of land has changed very little for the last 10,000 years.??It was clear on the maps that this was a very likely place to find early sites in well preserved condition. People also told us that there were shell mounds in the area,"" Hodgson said.'?
Last October, he and his team canoed along rivers into edges of swamp systems and then walked through marsh for hours with 50 to 60 pounds of drinking water and equipment on their backs and in 100 degree heat to reach the site of Alvarez Del Toro.
A trench, made with explosives by gold-seeking Mexican fishermen, revealed the top half of the mound. It was constructed with floors made of clam shells to form a mound 240 feet long, 90 feet wide and 21 feet tall.
Results of radioactive carbon tests suggest that the highest floor layer of the platform dates to 2575 B.C. and the lowest floor layer dates to 3024 B.C.
""This platform was built over about a five hundred year period in different episodes of construction and resurfacing of floors,"" said Hodgson.
The finding of the old shell mound bears great significance on the reconstruction of prehistoric chronology for the region.
""The distinct floor layers that comprise the mound is evidence that the people intentionally constructed the platform by building and rebuilding it through time,' said Hodgson.
John Clark, who is an archaeologist at Brigham Young University and works with Hodgson in Mexico, says this evidence could highly overthrow the current anthropological belief that people in this period of time on the coast of Chiapas were primarly nomadic and could indicate the people were stationary 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Based on its large size, Hodgson and Clark said they think the platform may have been used for ceremonial purposes. Hodgson said it is also likely that the people built wooden structures on top of each floor layer much like modern houses. On their trip back to the site in September, they will strip off the top layers of the platform and look for post holes as evidence of wooden house structures.
More shell mounds have also been reported in the areas nearby and will be investigated by Hodgson in September.?? These have been described as smaller shell mounds that are of the size and type normally used in prehistoric Latin America for individual family houses.?? Hodgson says that if the unvisited site is as described by local residents it may be a village dating to the same time period where people who built who built Alvarez Del Toro lived.??
The finding of the new shell mound and further investigations by John Hodgson, John Clark and others will provide revelations about the prehistory of Mesoamerica, its people, their social behaviors, and religious activities.
""Right now, we are holding are a lot of maybes. All we know for sure right now is that it was intentionally constructed and it is much earlier in time then we expect this to have occured, Hodgson said. ""These things by themselves make the mound very important. Now we just have to wait until September to start attempting to answer the other questions.\
