Gary M. Feinman

Ancient Mesoamerica : a comparison of change in three regions

1. The growth of Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory 2. Preceramic Mesoamerica 3. The Valley of Oaxaca 4. The Valley of Mexico 5. The eastern lowlands 6. Comparisons and conclusions.

Social Differentiation and Leadership Development in Early Pithouse Villages In the Mogollon Region of the American Southwest

This paper examines the development of social differentiation and simple decision-making organizations in the Mogollan region of the prehistoric American Southwest. We suggest that intensifying managerial problems associated with the transition to sedentism may have selected for suprahousehold sociopolitical organizations. Based on cross-cultural data, a set of theoretical expectations concerning social differentiation and leadership development is formulated which focuses on regularities in the regional settlement pattern and intrasettlement distribution of architectural features and material goods. These expectations are then used to generate a set of propositions which are evaluated archaeologically using data from early pithouse villages. On the basis of a test of these propositions it appears that simple suprahousehold decision-making organizations were present in the American Southwest by A.D. 600. The implications of this interpretation for understanding subsequent developments in Southwestern prehistoric sociopolitical organization are then discussed.

The Production Step Measure: An Ordinal Index of Labor Input in Ceramic Manufacture

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The Emergence of Inequality

In the history of the human species, there is no more significant transition than the emergence and institutionalization of inequality. Yet strangely, until recently, this critical issue has received less direct concern in archaeological discussions of social change than two other important evolutionary questions, the origins of agriculture and the rise of the state. In part, this lack of focused attention accounts for the pessimism cited above, especially when the enormity of this general issue is considered. Yet, in part, these comments also may stem from the inability of ecologically oriented scholars, like Binford and Kelly, to define a specific and parsimonious suite of exogenous conditions (e.g., environment, population) that can convincingly explain this key socioeconomic transition.

At the Margins of the Monte Alban State: Settlement Patterns in the Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico

A recent systematic archaeological survey in the Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico, enables us to examine long-term settlement-pattern changes in this small region and its shifting Prehispanic relation with the larger, adjacent Valley of Oaxaca. Throughout the sequence, Ejutla was settled less densely than Oaxaca, though the degree of difference varied through time. Ejutla was not a simple microcosm of Oaxaca; rather the former region shifted from a sparsely inhabited frontier to a more-dependent periphery that maintained different degrees of autonomy over time. Through a multiscalar examination of this contiguous area larger than a single valley, new perspectives are gained concerning political and economic relations and processes at the macroregional scale for the southern highlands of ancient Mesoamerica.

Political Hierarchies and Organizational Strategies in the Puebloan Southwest

This paper offers a new perspective for the study of prehistoric Pueblo political organization in the American Southwest. In reviewing salient developments in Puebloan archaeology over the last 20 years, we discuss shortcomings in previous studies that argued for either “simple” or “complex” societies without recognizing the potential for hierarchy and equality to coexist simultaneously in all human societies. An alternative approach is outlined that considers corporate and network strategies of political action as a continuum for examining the organizational structure of Southwestern societies. Consideration of the corporate-network dimension is not seen as a replacement for the dimension of hierarchy, but as an analog to it. We consider the utility of this approach in analyzing the community organization of historic Pueblos and argue that the corporate-network continuum may have “deep” time depth in the broader region of the Desert West. Our findings suggest that a diverse range of corporate and network strategies were employed among residents of pithouse villages (A.D. 200-900) and that the pithouse-to-pueblo transition (ca. A.D. 700-1000) marked a significant organizational shift to more corporate forms of political action that also characterize historic and modern Pueblos.

Monumentality and the Rise of Religious Authority in Precontact Hawai'i [and Comments and Reply]

Changes in temple labor investment and sacrificial offerings indicate that the rise in religious authority of the Hawaiian chiefly hierarchy correlates with an increase in political centralization and the intensifying role of the chief as divine intermediary through time. Initially, temples were small public courts akin to traditional Polynesian shrines used to reaffirm genealogical ties. During a period of internecine warfare and political instability and conflict in the I5th century A.D., temples became extremely large, a practical symbol of the burgeoning power of elites as they used ritual labor obligations to reaffirm chiefly genealogical relationships and enhance class cooperation. After island unification in the i6th century, chiefly religious activity shifted to sacrificial ceremonies and the consumption of surplus goods and foodstuffs as a result of status competition. By the time of European contact in the igth century, divinely sanctified rituals associated with war and levying taxes were instituted to enhance the status and power of the paramount chief through personal displays of material wealth. The Hawaiian case appears to follow a common trajectory among complex societies, where religious authority is increasingly expressed through the political economy, and serves as a contextual model of a complex chiefdom undergoing rapid political stratification.

Chichen Itza and Its Hinterland

For too long, Mayanists working in northern Yucatan have retained a focus on the single site. Although a few recent papers have begun to examine this area in regional terms, the world-systems perspective has yet to be applied. In this paper the world-systems framework is used to examine the post-Teotihuacan core center of Chichen Itza and its hinterland. Various lines of information are combined to achieve the fullest possible picture, including new settlement-pattern data, related ethnohistoric material, and a brief consideration of existing iconographie studies. Comparative examples from contemporary sites in other parts of Mesoamerica are provided to illustrate the systemic interconnections that characterize a “world system.”

Typological Schemes and Agricultural Change: Beyond Boserup in Precolonial South India [and Comments and Reply]

A diffusible-dye releasing type dye consisting of a radical which reacts with an oxidation product of a color developing principal agent in a color development process to yield a substantially colorless compound and a dye residue carrying water-soluble radicals. Its photographic uses are also disclosed.

Boundaries, scale, and internal organization

Abstract The abstract systems properties of size, centralization, and boundary permeability are related in a theoretical model, wherein size and permeability are positively associated and these two properties are in turn negatively associated with centralization. The model is tested with regional archaeological survey data for 1500 B.C.–A.D. 1520 from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. The results point out the conditions under which the model does and does not hold in the cultural evolution of this complex society.