SUNY Oswego anthropology faculty member Alanna Ossa will dig into a project that probes the history of open market exchange and economic development in the Gulf Coast area of Veracruz, Mexico –- while also providing student research opportunities and shedding light on what this means for modern communities.

A National Science Foundation grant, for $180,000 for three years, will allow Ossa and SUNY Oswego students to conduct field research, work with Mexican researchers and college students, and build a database that can serve people around the world.

“El Sauce, Los Azuzules and El Zapotal are all small ancient cities, where individualized market exchanges happen,” Ossa said, as the current population in the nearest village is around 1,200 people. “So it’s a really interesting case study to look at economic development.”

Challenges exist when looking at civilizations from centuries, or even a millennium ago, as it can be difficult to determine if families’ possessions were the result of purchases, gift exchanges or top-down distribution from a state or empire.

“Mexico is known for its open-air markets, and has been involved in commercial market exchange development for a long time,” Ossa noted.

The project will analyze individual household data from the Late Classic (700 to 900 A.D.) era with Middle Classic (1200 to 1350) conditions, using evidence provided by prior research and new fieldwork. The data will come from the examination of mounds in the region and findings related to market development and political fragmentation, Ossa said.

Having a healthy and established sample size also provides an excellent starting point, as “65 households is a huge sample for an archeologist,” she explained. “It’s an exciting study, I think.”

Student experiences

Students from SUNY Oswego and Mexico’s Universidad Veracruzana will be able to conduct field research in January, when the climate is favorable to do so, as well as data work throughout the year.

“We’re buying some computer equipment to support the effort,” Ossa said. “I also envision having students get training in setting up processes and digitalization of data. So they will have a lot of training but get to do science work as well.”

Ossa said the refinement of mathematical methods and building the database are important, as well as solving some central questions researchers have pondered for centuries.

“I think we tend to vastly underestimate the degree of economic development in these early states,” Ossa said. “That’s going to be really interesting to see how early this happened, and how individual craft development happened outside of borders. The household really is the primary producing and consumption unit for millennia, until we get factories.”

In addition, Ossa hopes to look at the role of political fragmentation, population movement, and migration plays in development.

“Political competition and population movement seem to be really important factors,” Ossa said. “New networks always create bigger markets, and in-migration, new people, new cities, and new networks tend to drive development with new products and new food ideas. That time period that I’m looking at is when populations are moving in and out of Veracruz, and these new connections are really key.”

Wide research base

When Ossa started the project, she originally was aiming to study conditions in the 1200s. But she realized she had an opportunity to create even more context and a wider research base.

“I realized I really wanted to compare to a few hundred years earlier,” Ossa said. “It’s also trying to set up a sustainable framework for larger efforts in the region. Looking at the development of larger interaction networks, and what’s supporting production.”

Expanding the research base will help better solve questions and build a larger archive of knowledge.

“People have been arguing about these theories for a long time –- what happens when trade changes,” Ossa said. “We’ve had so many cycles of boom and bust. Understanding that on the ground is a powerful thing.”

Moreover, the findings and patterns –- and the creation of a framework and data archive that will support future researchers across the globe –- have applications in any society. 

“I really want to understand local economic development better,” Ossa said. “And I think understanding those dynamics, how they work, how they change with political change, is important. It’s a very important point.”

Connecting to modern times

Ossa sees modern correlations related to those booms and busts she’s trying to study.

“It’s a question we can ask about areas like Central New York –- after such a widespread loss of manufacturing, why did people stick around?” Ossa posited. “People stayed because of small community dynamics.”

The process repeats as neighborhoods rise and fall. Efforts like the Oswego Renaissance Association (ORA) in Oswego, which provides small grants primarily for homeowner revitalization while uniting neighborhoods, provides an example that can work, Ossa said.

“In the U.S., many neighborhoods are dying, and people don’t know their neighbors,” she said.  “With its incentives, ORA forces people to interact with their neighbors. That’s the backdrop too, where the interaction really happens. In not studying everyday people and small places, we miss a lot of the processes and how things change.”

Ossa said that studying the everyday activities of regular people –- a contrast to the classical presentation of history through the lives of the rich and famous –- provides a much more useful lens that translates across time periods. 

“Archaeology is important because you’re looking at the things people aren’t normally talking about, actions that are not written down,” she said. “How people interact, what they’re physically doing. You certainly can see economies and how they develop, and that’s a key tool to understand how local economies work in modern communities.”