JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Maney Publishing is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Field Archaeology.Recent research into settlement patterns in the Valle de la Plata, sw Colombia, has provided information on the regional social context of the long-famous statues and tombs of the Alto Magdalena (the "San Agustin Culture"). The region witnessed the development, soon after the time of Christ, of a series of small-scale chiefdoms, each consisting of a few thousand people and centered on the elaborate burial place of its chiefs. These burial places themselves were not used residentially, but were each at the heart of a concentration ofpopulation. The correspondence between the locations of these settlement concentrations and the distribution of agricultural resources suggests control ofprime agricultural resources as an economic force in the development of these chiefdoms, although it remains to be seen how well this suggestion holds up to further and more complete analysis. As for otherpopular notions of chiefdom development, neither redistribution in diverse environments nor population pressure receives much support from the Valle de la Plata data.Regional settlement pattern study also clarifies the developmental sequence of which the period of statue carving (A. c. 1-850) is a part. Similar settlement concentrations in earlier times suggest precursors to these chiefdoms, and the failure of these concentrations to break up in later times is inconsistent with popular notions of broad social decline corresponding to the cessation of statue carving. This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 20:32:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 298 Regional Dynamics of Chiefdoms, Colombia/Drennan et al. often even locality) are lost. It is nevertheless clear that they were characteristically associated with stone slab tombs in earthen barrows, and, indeed, many were incorporated into the barrows (FIG. 4; Cubillos 1980: 47-48, Lnmina VII; Duque G6mez and Cubillos 1983: 44-45). At the core of such a barrow was the principal tomb chamber, as large as about 2 m x 4 m and 1.5 m high, with walls and roof of stone slabs (Duque G6mez and Cubillos 1979: 27, 62-63; 1983: 61, 77). Offerings in the tomb chambers were quite modest compared to their architectural and sculptural elaboration. Most common were ceramic vessels, but a fairly rich tomb might have only a half-dozen vessels or fewer. Gold ornaments, common in prehispanic burials in many parts of Colombia, occurred only rarely (Duque G6mez 1964: 35-214). Such special attention to the burials of certain individuals indicates a degree of social hierarchy that we find convenient to label a chiefdom.' Ce...
