Further Research

There remain many unanswered questions in the archaeology of Chupícuaro, which can be answered only by further excavations and study of previously excavated objects. Excavation data is not always sufficiently well documented, especially in terms of photos and illustrations. For instance, McBride suggested an extension Chupícuaro site with heavy occupation located to the Southwest of the excavated site, near Lake Cuitzeo (38). He based this interpretation on figurines found in Queréndaro, Michoacán (near Lake Cuitzeo) with a style related to yet distinct from that of Chupícuaro (38). These figurines are accompanied by typical Chupícuaro ceramics vessels (38). This Queréndaro site was published with few figurine pictures, prohibiting such an interpretation without significant additional research (38) .

In addition to their stylistic connection with other regions, McBride notes that “figurines are excellent time markers” (41), their features indicative of stylistic horizons. However, he complains that figurines’ “usefulness has been greatly limited by the lack of clear and abundant illustrations” (McBride 41) that will allow new finds to be matched to previous ones. He explains that “this is a result of the great emphasis placed on architecture and ceramics to the exclusion of other aspects of culture: figurines and other clay artifacts, stone objects, projectile points and scrapers, bone tools, etc.” (41). McBride describes one exception to this troublesome trend, that of George Vaillant, an archaeologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History whose work focused on the chronologies of societies and sites of Central Mexico (“George Clapp Vaillant CV”). McBride laments that “the example Vaillant set in publishing illustrations of these items has not been generally followed in articles on archaeological sites of Central Mexico” (McBride 41). The reference compilation in which McBride’s article is published follows his advice by including a detailed photographic catalogue of Chupícuaro ceramics and figurines (López 52-77).

The situation has improved since McBride’s commentary, but photographs in articles and catalogues often remain concentrated on specific types of materials, most often ceramics, rather than illustrating the whole of a site’s corpus. This is as much a function of the materials collectors and museums choose to highlight as it is any negligence on the part of excavators, whose published works are often less known or less available than those of prestigious museums. López’s catalogue, in the same publication as McBride, focuses exclusively on ceramics. The search for articles from which to build this history brought up almost as many catalogue descriptions for single figurines as it did full length scholarly works.

Other research topics that have been left in question by recent excavation include crops, household archaeology, and Chupícuaro’s abandonment (Darras and Faugère, “Chupícuaro” and “Proyecto”).  Darras and Faugère, although they suggest flooding of the valley due to the effects of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on the flow of the Lerma River, call for further scholarship to definitively understand the abandonment of the settlement area in the middle Classic period (“Chupícuaro”, par. 20). They also question the final location of the population after its migration from the Chupícuaro area, whether in Central Mexico or elsewhere (par. 20).