The explanation of the development of ancient Mesoamerican civilization is in need of a new theoretical approach to replace the sterile debates between, for example, materialists and cognitivists or region-centered versus world-systems theorists. The foremost source of theoretical difficulty is that all of the arguments take place within the conceptual confines of a flawed neoevolutionism. Current theory has proved inadequate to the study of sociocultural evolution in Mesoamerica and elsewhere because it focuses on a directional development through evolutionary stages (from bands to states) (Flannery I972, Service I975) that are static societal types. In neoevolutionary theory the administrative subsystems of chiefdoms and states respond to socioenvironmental stresses by increasing political centralization (Flannery I972, Wright and Johnson I975), but there is no convincing theory of human behavior, especially the crucial behavior found in political competition (Brumfiel I992). Researchers should abandon its static ideal-type stages and instead investigate the varying strategies used by political actors to construct and maintain polities and other sociocultural institutions. In this Current neoevolutionary theory is inadequate to the analysis of past social change because it lacks a suitable behavioral theory and because its simple stage typology fails to account for variation among societies of similar complexity and scale. We propose a remedial program for neoevolutionary theory that will help it avoid these shortcomings. To accomplish this, we lay out a preliminary behavioral theory grounded in political economy, point to comparative situations from various world areas that illustrate the processes involved, and then apply the approach to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. We argue that a productive explanatory framework for Mesoamerica will be a dual-processual theory that elucidates the interactions and contradictions of two main patterns of political action, one exclusionary and individualcentered and the other more group-oriented. i. We were stimulated to write this paper after reading the insightful comments found in Willey (i99I).
This is a critical review of regional settlement pattern archaeology published in the last decade. The regional approach proves to be highly productive of new ideas and lasting results. Cultural resource/heritage databases are increasingly important. Notable advances have been made in regional studies of Paleolithic and Holocene foragers, the reciprocal relations between Neolithic communities and their regional societies, and in understanding states and empires. There are new research potentials in comparisons, macroregional analysis, long-term change, and alternative pathways. Research designs should specify systematic coverage at the regional scale and carry out spatial analysis in which social groups are the primary focus.
When we speak with the public or beginning students about the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of Mesoamerica, they generally are familiar with the Aztecs, the Maya, and even the great Classic-period central Mexican site of Teotihuacan. There is less recognition of the ancient societies of Oaxaca. This lack of familiarity is somewhat peculiar because the earliest evidence for Mesoamerican writing, dating to 600 B.C., has been found in the Valley of Oaxaca (see box 3). Likewise, Mesoamerica's earliest city, Monte Albán, scenically situated on a 400-meter-high hill at the core of one of Mesoamerica's first states, was founded at the center of the valley around 500 B.C. This early urban center was the capital of a state that endured and remained influential for more than 1000 years.Archaeologists have long been interested in Monte Albán and its history, antecedents, and surroundings (see Whitecotton 1977). Nineteenth-century archaeological explorers described the famous hilltop city and its carved stones and monumental architectural ruins (e.g., Holmes 1895-97). These pioneers recognized that the glyphs carved on stones at Monte Albán are different from those of the ancient Maya in the eastern lowlands of Mesoamerica. They also noted certain shared conventions between these two sets of hieroglyphs, such as a numerical system in which a bar stood for five and a dot for one.In the 1920s, the pathbreaking Mexican anthropologist Alfonso Caso first identified the Oaxacan stones as culturally Zapotec, carefully describing the differences between Zapotec writing and that found in other regions (Caso 1928, 1965a and b). During his fifty-year career, Caso established that the ancient Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca developed one of the most powerful and important societies in all of ancient Mesoamerica. By the 1950s he had cleared and reconstructed Monte Albán's Main Plaza. Together with his student Ignacio Bernal, he established the basic ceramic chronology that is still used to date sites in the Valley of Oaxaca (Caso, Bernal, and Acosta 1967). Caso also excavated more than 100 pre-Hispanic tombs, including one of the richest (tomb 7) 22
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