Property, Identity, and Macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest

Abstract

Archaeology provides a compelling perspective on the evolution of property rights and macroeconomy in precapitalist societies that lacked systems of writing. Most interpretations of macroeconomy in the Prehispanic Southwest have focused on interaction networks that emanated from "heartlands" where intensive agriculturalists were aggregated in towns along major streams. Although archaeologists are aware of communities in "hinterland" territories, they rarely consider their political economies. As a remedy, we apply common-pool-resource (CPR) theory to investigate hypothesized linkages between property rights and social identity in two hinterlands in Arizona: the Papagueria and the Grand Canyon. Our analyses indicate, first, that from circa C.E. 850 to C.E. 1350, local communities negotiated their social identities in a macroeconomy of fluctuating resource values and, second, that incentives for privatizing peripheral territories intensified in some areas during periods of economic competition. These findings underscore the critical role of archaeology in modeling property rights in precapitalist societies. [

Theoretical and Socioecological Consequences of Fire Foodways

“…Based on ethnohistoric accounts that describe the ubiquity of amaranth and chenopodium production in New World economies, widespread archaeological occurrences of cheno-ams in the American Southwest, and the environmental constraints on maize farming, particularly for densely occupied upland locales after AD 1000, Dobyns proposed that upland groups “depended upon amaranth and perhaps chenopodium cultivation,” in contrast to populations living in lower elevations that “grow more corns, beans, squash, and cotton, and less chenopodium and amaranth” (1972:45; see Bohrer 1991:232–233 on the use of fire for ruderal production in the Sonoran Desert). The results of our and other modern archaeological investigations broadly align with the Camp Follower and Altitude Sorting hypotheses (e.g., Merrill et al 2009) and indicate that maize dependency was localized and uneven across the prehispanic American Southwest (Bayman and Sullivan 2008; Rocek 1995; cf. Spielmann et al 2011).…”

A cost surface model of volcanic glass quarrying and exchange in Hawai‘i

“…Bayman and Sullivan (2008) point out that in the American Southwest large tracts of hinterlands unsuitable for agriculture were often accessed freely as a 'common pooled resource' due to the inability of households, or groups, to exclude others from the land. It is not difficult to see why volcanic glass would have been treated as a common pooled resource in Hawai'i.…”

Identifying the Origin of Southwestern Shell: A Geochemical Application to Mogollon Rim Archaeomolluscs

“…The northern Gulf of California coast that we identify as procurement sub-region 2, and from which almost all the shell at Bailey Ruin was obtained, was frequently utilized by the Hohokam (Mitchell and Foster 2000) but may have been contested by Trincheras groups (Bayman and Sullivan 2008). Shell may have been obtained through direct or down-the-line exchange with Hohokam groups.…”