Andrew K. Balkansky

Archaeological Survey in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract We summarize the 3,000-year period of Prehispanic settlement in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, based on our regional surveys. We focus on episodic transitions to compare regional trajectories in the Mixteca Alta and elsewhere in Oaxaca. The regularities in settlement pattern changes over so large an area suggest a common causal chain. The project was a full-coverage survey that recorded over 1000 sites in a 10-valley macroregion. The project boundaries adjoined prior surveys, thereby offering the widest available scale of analysis. Mixteca Alta and Valley of Oaxaca survey blocks were conjoined into a single universe of sites. Significant results included the high regional population densities for the earliest settled villages; the eventual consolidation of some extended communities into urban and state societies; the timing and spread of urbanism into adjacent valleys; and the variation and interconnections among late Prehispanic settlements. We conclude that changing community patterns in the Mixteca Alta arose from the interplay of societies on both regional and macroregional scales. Our results underscore the need for still larger spatial perspectives on early civilizations.

Pottery Kilns of Ancient Ejutla, Oaxaca, Mexico

AbstractIn contemporary Mesoamerica, traditional methods of ceramic production are highly variable. Tracing this diversity to its prehispanic antecedents has been limited by a major empirical difficulty: the identification of production sites, especially kilns and other firing features, in archaeological contexts. As a consequence, Mesoamerican archaeologists have rarely recognized technological variation in firing methods, thereby limiting their capacity to discern spatio-temporal variation in ceramic production. The discovery and excavation of relatively ephemeral ceramic firing features at the Ejutla site in Oaxaca, Mexico, offers an archaeological perspective into the variability of pottery production techniques that were employed in ancient Mesoamerica. The excavated firing features and associated indicators of ceramic production at Ejutla are described and compared to similar features at other sites. An experimental study was conducted to understand how these firing features worked and the nature of...

On the logic of archaeological inference: Early Formative pottery and the evolution of Mesoamerican societies

The 2005 articles by Stoltman et al. and Flannery et al. to which Neff et al. (this issue) have responded are not an indictment of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) but, rather, of the way Blomster et al. (2005) misuse it and of the hyperbolic culture-historical claims they have made from their INAA results. It has long been acknowledged that INAA leads not to sources but to chemical composition groups. Based on composition groups derived from an extremely unsystematic collection of sherds from only seven localities, Blomster et al. claim that the Olmec received no carved gray or kaolin white pottery from other regions; they also claim that neighboring valleys in the Mexican highlands did not exchange such pottery with each other. Not only can one not leap directly from the elements in potsherds to such sweeping culture-historical conclusions, it is also the case that other lines of evidence (including petrographic analysis) have for 40+ years produced empirical evidence to the contrary. In the end, it was their commitment to an unfalsifiable model of Olmec superiority that led Blomster et al. to bypass the logic of archaeological inference.

Monte Negro and the urban revolution in Oaxaca, Mexico

This paper is about Monte Negros origins, and how this site fits the emerging pattern in studies of Oaxacan urbanization including the Zapotec capital at Monte Albdn. Our settlement data from a multivalley regional survey in the Mixteca Alta including Monte Negro allows comparison with other urban centers that we have surveyed. Monte Negros origins are due to internal settlement shifts, but occurred in the external context of widespread militarism and multiple urban transitions. Examination of local, regional, and macroregional settlement systems through time reveals variation in urban trajectories that current models were not designed to explain.

Human cremation in Mexico 3,000 years ago

Mixtec nobles are depicted in codices and other proto-historic documentation taking part in funerary rites involving cremation. The time depth for this practice was unknown, but excavations at the early village site of Tayata, in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, recovered undisturbed cremation burials in contexts dating from the eleventh century B.C. These are the earliest examples of a burial practice that in later times was reserved for Mixtec kings and Aztec emperors. This article describes the burial contexts and human remains, linking Formative period archaeology with ethnohistorical descriptions of Mixtec mortuary practices. The use of cremation to mark elevated social status among the Mixtec was established by 3,000 years ago, when hereditary differences in rank were first emerging across Mesoamerica.

SETTLEMENT PATTERN ANALYSIS

This article discusses the uses of settlement pattern surveys to understand the long-term development of ancient civilizations. The major general point considers the changing views of those civilizations that have received significant and broad settlement pattern coverage, emphasizing the discovery of far greater ranges of variation among constituent sites and regions. Case studies from Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and the Southwest are used to illustrate.

PEDESTRIAN SURVEY TECHNIQUES

This article covers generic issues common to most regional archaeological or pedestrian surveys. There is discussion of the ways that archaeological sites are delimited in the field, and how differing intensities of survey coverage are integrated in regional research designs. Most issues concerning survey methods can be solved with reference to the anthropological questions of interest.