Horizonal Integration and Regional Diversity: An Alternating Process in the Rise of Civilizations

Willey, Gordon R.

doi:10.2307/281415

Cited by 43 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Widespread synchronous change and common horizons are part of the New World prehistoric record (Willey, 1991), but in the new thinking about macroregions the local differences are crucial to understanding the larger-scale processes at work. One early result from the regional surveys of the 1960s and 1970s illustrates the meaning of concordant change: the differing trajectories of urbanization at Teotihuacan and Monte Albán (Blanton, 1976a(Blanton, , 1983.…”

Section: Symbiotic Region World System and Concordant Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm

Balkansky

2006

J Archaeol Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article is a review of regional archaeological surveys in Mexico, emphasizing published full-coverage surveys from the last 20 years. The geographic focus is non-Maya Mexico terminating at the Tropic of Cancer. The temporal focus is the 3000-year period from the earliest settled villages to the Spanish conquest (A.D. 1521), with emphasis on long-term evolutionary trajectories. The main argument is that explanations of regional-scale settlement patterns are proving to be incomplete now that archaeologists are confronted with site distributions on the macroregional scale. Implications of the emerging macroregional paradigm are discussed for current debates in Mesoamerican archaeology.

show abstract

Section: Symbiotic Region World System and Concordant Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm

Balkansky

2006

J Archaeol Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For reasons yet unknown, the Wari empire came to an end approximately four centuries after its inception. The subsequent era (Late Intermediate Period) has been generally described as a time of political and social instability characterized by a political power void within which various polities jockeyed for authority (Willey, 1991;Arkush, 2005). In the Wari imperial heartland in particular, there was a concomitant increase in violence, as evidenced by antemortem cranial trauma frequencies of more than 70% (Tung, 2009).…”

Section: Background On the Wari Empire And Its Collapsementioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic continuity after the collapse of the Wari empire: Mitochondrial DNA profiles from Wari and post‐Wari populations in the ancient Andes

Kemp

Tung

Summar

2009

American J Phys Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Wari empire flourished in the central, highland Peruvian Andes from AD 600-1000, and although the events that led to its demise are unknown, archaeological evidence indicates that Wari control waned at the end of the first millennium. Here, we test the hypothesis that, despite the major shift in social and political organization at the fall of the Wari empire, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) composition of populations from the Ayacucho Basin, the former imperial heartland of the empire, remained essentially unchanged. Results show that mtDNA haplogroup frequencies among the Wari and post-Wari groups differ, but the difference is not statistically significant (chi2 = 5.886, df = 3, P = 0.1172). This is the first study in the Andes to use haplotypic data to evaluate the observed genetic distance between two temporally distinct prehispanic populations (F(ST) = 0.029) against modeled expectations of four possible evolutionary scenarios. None of these simulations allowed the rejection of continuity. In total, at both the haplogroup and haplotype levels these data do not allow us to reject the hypothesis that post-Wari individuals sampled in this study are the maternal descendants of those sampled from the Wari era site of Conchopata. However, genetic homogeneity in the mitochondrial gene pool, as seen in the late prehispanic southern Andes, may also characterize our study region. But, prior to this research, this was unknown. If our new data show mtDNA homogeneity, then this could limit the detection of female migration if, in fact, it occurred. Nonetheless, the novel mtDNA data presented here currently do not support the hypothesis that there was an influx of genetically distinct females into the former Wari heartland after the Wari collapse.

show abstract

“…The existence of at least two distinct cycles in Maya political history, at least in terms of system size and membership, is strongly supported by our findings. These cycles of the Maya political system resemble other cases of "pulsations" in world system history (Wilkinson, 1986;Willey, 1991;Frank and Gills, 1993;Thompson, 1995;Chase-Dunn and Hall, 1997), making the Maya more comparable and less unique (Marcus, 1995) with respect to other Old and New World political systems. Moreover, both cycles are marked by punctuated phases of development (H11), not just the major cycle.…”

Section: New Cycles Of Maya Political Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Failure in political integration as the cause of collapse. The interesting scientific question about the Maya collapse is not why did it occur, because it is a truism that given enough time, all political systems eventually collapse (Olson, 1982;Kennedy, 1987;Willey, 1991;Eisenstadt, 1993). Rather, as noted at the outset, the questions are, first, why did the system collapse when it did (i.e., around A.D. 800) and, second, why did it collapse in such a precipitous mode, as opposed to some other way.…”

Section: Broader Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Studies by Austin (1893), Carneiro (1970), Eisenstadt (1985Eisenstadt ( , 1993, Eisenstadt, Abitol, and Chazan (1987), Ferrill (1985), McNeill (1993), Wesson (1978), and Wittfogel (1957)-most of them not produced by political scientists-are among the few existing works on the origins of polities in the ancient world. Some are outdated (empirically and conceptually) by recent research advances (Wright, 1977;Spencer, 1990;Willey, 1991;Marcus, 1992;Midlarsky, 1996Midlarsky, , 1998. 4 Earlier attempts to assemble data sets are found in Culbert (1991) and Lowe (1985), both important at the time but now in need of updating.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evolution of Maya Polities in the Ancient Mesoamerican System

Cioffi‐Revilla

Landman

1999

Int Studies Q

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The analysis of politics in antiquity presents new opportunities for political science and international relations, particularly the ancient New World (c. 2000 B.C. to A.D. 1521). Governance through leadership and institutions, collective action, war and peace, alliance dynamics, regional hegemonies, interstate rivalries, and other universal patterns of world politics existed in Mesoamerica, antedating the modern state system. We report findings from a study to record systematically the rise and fall of Maya polities in the Mesoamerican political system, using sources from archaeology and epigraphy. Based on tests of competing hypotheses and new distribution statistics and hazard rates (survival analysis) for 72 Maya polities, our findings support a model of Maya political dynamics based on Preclassic origins, punctuated phases of development, multiple cycles of system expansion and collapse, and weaker political stability for increasingly complex polities. We draw two main implications: (a) a new theory of the Maya political collapse(s), based on their failure to politically integrate; and (b) confirmation for a new periodization of Maya political evolution, different from the traditional cultural periodization, based on several cycles of rise-and-fall, not just one. Our findings may also make possible future investigations in areas such as the war-polarity and war-alliances hypotheses. China also spawned pristine polity systems. As one prominent Mayanist notes, "since 1960 we have moved Maya archaeology and texts from myth to history" (Marcus, 1996). Although much speculation has characterized our thinking on the evolution of Maya polities, few if any studies have measured and compared their evolutionary rise and fall as a cohesive political system, using the most valid and reliable data available today. The systematic measurement and comparison of Maya polities are important because they will advance our understanding of early political dynamics and their comparison with the modern system of world politics. In the last thirty years, archaeology, epigraphy, and ethnohistory, together with other allied sciences and humanities, have begun to show a more precise (albeit disciplinarily fragmented) understanding of the long-range evolution of the Maya and other early polity systems. 1 Our new data set and analysis builds on these earlier efforts from anthropology and proposes some new ideas for testing competing explanations using political science theory and research methods.In this six-year study we developed a new data set to measure and compare the rise and fall of individual Maya polities, including all those that eventually evolved into major states, obtaining the first distribution statistics and associated survival analysis results. Our measurement used primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, provided by contemporary archaeological, ethnohistorical, and epigraphic evidence. Our main findings and tests of competing hypotheses, based on the identification of 72 Maya polities with sufficiently accurate dates ...

show abstract

Horizonal Integration and Regional Diversity: An Alternating Process in the Rise of Civilizations

Cited by 43 publications

References 23 publications

Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm

Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm

Genetic continuity after the collapse of the Wari empire: Mitochondrial DNA profiles from Wari and post‐Wari populations in the ancient Andes

Evolution of Maya Polities in the Ancient Mesoamerican System

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About