Jeffrey R. Parsons

Specialization, Market Exchange, and the Aztec State: A View From Huexotla [and Comments and Reply]

Archaeological data from Huexotla, an Aztec-period site in the Valley of Mexico, are used to test the proposition that Mexican states arose and expanded to facilitate specialization and market exchange. By and large, this proposition is not supported by the Huexotla data. During Early Aztec times, the Valley of Mexico was divided into a number of small, autonomous city-states. The Huexotla data suggest that the local economies of these city-states were not characterized by a complex division of labor. Thus, their existence does not seem to have depended upon their facilitating specialization and exchange at the local level. During Late Aztec times, most of Central Mexico came to be dominated by the territorially extensive, administratively complex Aztec empire. The Huexotla data provide evidence of more intensive participation in market exchange, but they also suggest that urban demand for rural foodstuffs and urban control of imperial tribute goods were factors of primary importance in determining the Late Aztec pattern of market exchange. More intensive specialization, or greater complexity in the division of labor within the Valley of Mexico, seems to have played a minor role in the growth of the Late Aztec market system despite the environmental diversity of the marketing region.

SUNKEN FIELDS AND PREHISPANIC SUBSISTENCE ON THE PERUVIAN COAST

A series of hypotheses concerning the subsistence role of prehistoric sunken field agriculture are developed and evaluated in light of distributional studies of sunken fields along the entire Peruvian coast and excavations at one sunken field locality in the Chilca Valley. Our data suggest that (1) sunken fields occupy distinctive natural topographic lows; (2) sunken field agriculture developed late in the prehispanic sequence; (3) sunken field cultivation was a minor field system which, except at Chilca, was never extended to anywhere near the limits of its small potential; and (4) the factors which stimulated the initial construction of sunken fields at Chilca remain poorly understood. SUNKEN FIELDS are old agricultural plots found at several localities on the Peruvian desert coast (Fig. 1). They have been formed by excavating a planting surface to a depth close enough to the watertable so that moisture is available to seeds and plants without the necessity for irrigation canals. Documentary sources indicate that such fields were being cultivated in the Chilca Valley and in the Pampa de Villacuri (Pisco-Ica Valley) during the mid-sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Rowe 1969; Armillas 1961; Cieza de Leon 1959; Vasquez de Espinosa 1948). Published reports in more recent times have described similar abandoned fields at the mouth of the Viru Valley (Willey 1953) and near the ancient urban center of Chan Chan at the mouth of the Moche Valley (Tello 1942). In Viru the proximity of sunken fields to prehispanic residential sites suggested a dating of their construction and use to near the end of the first millennium A.D. In the adjacent Moche Valley, the close proximity of sunken fields to the Chan Chan ruins suggested a similar age.

The Archaeological Significance of Mahamaes Cultivation on the Coast of Peru

Recent observations on the Central and North Coasts of Peru indicate the previously unrealized importance of a prehispanic agricultural technique ( mahamaes ) which permits effective cultivation of sizable areas without canal irrigation. Mahamaes cultivation may well have been significant in the origins of agriculture on the coast, and as a supplement to canal irrigation in later prehispanic times. Its apparent ability to support relatively large, sophisticated political structures suggests some reorganization of our thinking about the utility of the hydraulic agriculture model for coastal Peru.

The Pastoral Niche in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica was the world’s only ancient primary civilization that lacked a domestic herbivore. With domestic camelids (llamas and alpacas) in Andean South America, and sheep and goats, cattle, camels, horses, yaks, and water buffalo in the Old World, food producers in virtually all other regions where Archaic States existed were able to significantly extend their productive landscapes into drier and colder zones and over a full annual cycle – i.e., some of them became full- or part-time herders, and herder–cultivator relationships became important in the long-term development of socio-political complexity. Furthermore, protein from domesticated animal sources would have been scarce in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica by comparison to other parts of the ancient urbanized world. How could ancient Mesoamericans, with their seemingly much more limited capacity to generate and manipulate energy, have attained such a comparably high level of organizational complexity and population density?

An Estimate of Size and Population for Middle Horizon Tiahuanaco, Bolivia

Recent opinions as to the size and character of ancient Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, vary greatly. On the basis of published information, it is impossible to assess these important aspects of the site. A two-day survey during November, 1966, strongly suggests a true urban character for Middle horizon Tiahuanaco. At that time the urban core covered approximately 2.4 km 2 . A range of population between 5,200 and 10,500, and possibly up to 20,000 people, is suggested. Tiahuanaco’s strategic location with respect to three major environmental zones is regarded as a crucial factor in the site’s economic and political importance.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF THE CODICE XOLOTL

A recent settlement pattern survey in central Mexico offers a useful perspective from which to view the first part of an ethnohistoric document-the Codice Xolotl-which deals with the same area. Regional settlement patterns from the Early Postclassic period seem to correspond most reasonably with events depicted in the Codice. It is suggested that the first part of the Codice Xolotl is most useful to anthropologists when considered within a framework of relevant archaeological information.

An appraisal of regional surveys in the basin of mexico, 1960–1975

Abstract In this paper I focus on the regional surveys undertaken in 1960–1975—their development, implementation, key accomplishments, and major shortcomings. I also point to how resulting survey data and surface collections have provided the foundations for subsequent research on a variety of specific problems, sites, and locales, and how complementary historical and ethnographical studies have contributed to interpretations of pre-Columbian settlement patterns. I consider how off-site survey can, and should, complement the more extensive regional surveys that have been carried out in the past. While lamenting the archaeological record lost to modern development, in a more positive vein I suggest lines of productive future investigation that might still be undertaken to extend the significance of past results, evaluate a series of questions and hypotheses defined by the surveys, and help conserve archaeological sites and collections for future study.