The Evolution of Complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This article is directed toward those interested in the comparative study of how complex societies develop~urban and historical geographers, urban historians and sociologists, social and economic historians, or anthropologists in or out of Mesoamerican archaeology. It concentrates on aspects of complexity that can be most readily compared cross-culturally. Specifically the article describes formal characteristics of settlement hierarchies in the Valley of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, from their beginnings at about 1500 Be until the Spanish Conquest 3000 years later. I omit the archaeological and analytical details and the intricate variations since a book-length review of the prehistory of the Valley and the adjacent Mixteca Alta and a technical monograph on the archaeological settlement patterns have recently been published (32, 45). Even without their details, the new archaeological studies of regions make it apparent that social science theories about state and urban evolution need to be upgraded to account for unexpected variation and unforeseen regularities. By complexity I mean the multiplicity of different parts in a social system (12; cf 52 for a formal approach to cultural complexity). To monitor complexity one must be able to identify parts, specify that they are different, be sure that one has all the parts, count them, and ascertain that they form a system. Meeting these five data requirements is not easy, with either historical or archaeological data. The realm of the social is complex in this sense with its

Faceless Hierarchy at Nixtun-Ch'ich’, Peten, Guatemala

“…A third way in which aggregation would have been achieved was through the settlement hierarchy. The fact that T'up and Tayasal were much smaller than Nixtun-Ch'ich’ and that the latter had far more ceremonial architecture suggests that the city dominated social interactions in the region, following a pattern similar to early developments in the Valley of Oaxaca (Kowalewski 1990:47–48). The primate settlement distribution would have made visits to Nixtun-Ch'ich’ necessary as people in outlying areas would have been dependent upon its goods and services (Blanton 1976:258–261).…”

Return to Moxviquil: Form and Function in a Small Maya City

“…At the regional level, Moxviquil maintained exchange relationships with the Valley of Ixtapa, the Upper Grijalva River Valley, the Gulf Coast, and highland Guatemala, exchanging ceramics (and locally imitating foreign ceramic styles), obsidian blades and blade cores, Totonac sculptures, copper, shell tinkler currency, jadeite beads, and bone ornaments. This suggests that Moxviquil and the other small cities of highland Chiapas may have served as nodes in a “city system” similar to those proposed by Kowalewski (1990) and Smith (2005). These centers could have hosted small and/or periodic markets that served their surrounding hinterlands and also attracted regional and long-distance traveling merchants.…”

“…Although many scholars have traditionally defined ancient cities through criteria of large size and high population density (Childe 1974; Marcus 1983; Sanders and Webster 1988; Sjoberg 1960; Webster and Sanders 2001), they may also be defined by their spatial and social heterogeneity (Marcus 1983; Wirth 1938), the variety of functions, including economic functions, that they fulfill for both urban and hinterland residents (Childe 1974; Fox 1977; Smith 1989, 2002; Weber 1958), and the diversity of activities performed at them by both residents and visitors. This complexity and diversity are reflected in the ways that ancient cities functioned as economic core centers, serving as commercial centers with marketplaces, shops, and/or peddlers, as well as nodes in “city systems” of long-distance trade networks with other cities (Kowalewski 1990; Smith 2005); serving as administrative centers for the collection and redistribution of taxes or tribute payments (Childe 1974); enabling specialized artisan and merchant professions (Childe 1974); exerting direct and indirect influence over hinterland areas (Nichols and Charlton 1997; Yoffee 1995); and representing a spatially concentrated population of urban consumers.…”

8 The “Othering” of Maya Political Economies

“…Research in the Aztec area has not been immune from assertions doubting the importance of commerce. For many years, it was assumed that the empire was founded primarily on a tributary economy (Kowalewski 1990), and the extent of Aztec commercial development is still conservatively framed (Hirth and Pillsbury 2013b, 15; Isaac 2013, 436–37; but see M. Smith 1980). Michael Smith (2004, table 1) classifies the Aztec economy as having an intermediate level of commercialization compared to other premodern states, a fair estimation.…”