Patricia Urban

Modeling Interregional Interaction in Prehistory

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the modeling of interregional interaction in prehistory. The review of intersocietal interaction frameworks begins with the diffusion for several reasons. Diffusion research clearly lays out the problems of studying contact among societies that one still has to face and that later research has tried to deal with. Further, the examination of the rise and fall of diffusion as a framework reveals processes in anthropological thought relevant to the question of intersocietal frameworks but not obvious from purely synchronic studies. The chapter also discusses the interactions among societies, which are trade studies of the late 1960s and 1970s, and the use of world systems models borrowed from historical sociology, which have begun to appear in the 1980s. It discusses how these different approaches have contributed to the understanding of processes of intersocietal interaction and the construction of the schema needed for the study of such contacts. There has been a tendency in the past to envision a focus on intersocietal interaction as antithetical to the investigation of individual societies and their relations to their physical environments.

Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies

Ongoing debates over the significance of specialized production in ancient political economies frequently hinge on questions of whether elites or commoners controlled craft manufactures and whether the material or ideological import of these production processes was more significant in deciding power contests. Though long recognized, such queries were traditionally answered in relatively straightforward economic terms. Recently, these time-honored approaches have been questioned. An ever increasing number of authors are promoting varied takes on the causal linkages between political forms and processes, on the one hand, and patterns of production, distribution, and use of craft goods, on the other. The literature generated by these discussions is extensive, vibrant, and often confusing. Rather than trying to synthesize all reports and essays dealing with specialized manufacture, this paper highlights general interpretive trends that underlie and structure current debates. The concluding section offers suggestions for how studies of relations among crafts, power, and social heterogeneity might be pursued profitably in the future.

The Place of Interaction Studies in Archaeological Thought

The last several decades have witnessed a renaissance of archaeological concern with the effects of intersocietal interaction on processes of sociopolitical change. This interest is so pervasive that we see within it the development of a distinct interaction “paradigm” that is focused on the domain of sociopolitical change processes (cf. Schortman and Urban 1987). By paradigm we mean a coherent system of interrelated assumptions, unresolved questions, analytical units, and criteria for evaluating research results which focus and guide study (cf. Kaplan and Manners 1972; Kuhn 1970; Trigger 1989:22). Interaction studies, in turn, refers to research founded on the notion that individual societies, or “cultures,” are not viable but depend on inputs from other societies for survival and reproduction from generation to generation (e.g., Kohl 1987, 1989). The form, structure, and changes observed within any society cannot be understood without recourse to these extraregional inputs. Finally, the “domain of sociopolitical change” is concerned with shifts in power relations usually characterized by centralization, hierarchy building, and the incorporation of diverse ethnic and occupational units within a polity or, of course, the reverse (e.g., Tainter 1988:23–24).

Opportunities for Advancement: Intra-Community Power Contests in the Midst of Political Decentralization in Terminal Classic Southeastern Mesoamerica

Archaeologists traditionally investigate the emergence of complex sociopolitical formations at microand macroscales. As fruitful as these analyses have been, they ignore insights garnered from studying how the diverse members of individual communities contested for power and material resources during periods when former political capitals were in decline. Such volatile circumstances provide ample opportunities for those seeking power to experiment with novel political forms while their would-be subordinates maneuver to undermine these overweening ambitions. Site 128 in the Naco Valley, northwestern Honduras, witnessed these struggles during the Terminal Classic. Taking advantage of the waning power of the Naco Valleys Late Classic rulers at La Sierra, magnates in this small community competed for control over clients and their labor. The resulting political configuration pitted corporate institutions against individual aggrandizers, each using a limited suite of valuable resources to capture the loyalty and labor of supporters. The inability of one faction to vanquish the other created an unstable situation ultimately undermined by unresolved tensions. Though studies of political decline usually highlight the falls of dynasties, there is much to be gained by studying those who scrambled, with varying success, to cobble together sociopolitical structures in the shadows of former states.