Roger D. Mason

Weighing vs. Counting: Measurement Reliability and the California School of Midden Analysis

The California School of Midden Analysis represents a long-standing tradition of using weight, rather than minimum number of individuals (MNI), to analyze shell recovered from archaeological sites in California. This method originated at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early twentieth century and continues to the present, in spite of the advent of counting measures such as MNI and NISP (number of identified specimens) in faunal studies. We argue that MNI estimates are more reliable than weight as a measure of taxonomic abundance for most research issues being addressed with California shell data. Examples using both weight and MNI measures for shell from California coastal sites produced divergent results. This disparity shows that weight measures produce potentially misleading interpretations regarding the importance of marine habitats exploited and the diet of the sites occupants.

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.

The Economic Systems of Ancient Oaxaca: A Regional Perspective [and Comments and Reply]

Archaeological data from a regional settlement pattern survey of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, are used to monitor how scarce goods and resources were allocated to members of society through eight phases from 600 B.C. to A.D. 1520. The goal is to determine how distinct historical social structures performed economically in terms of the goods and resources recoverable archaeologically. Measures utilized include land use and settlement characteristics, domestic architectural space, public architecture, pottery, obsidian, and a number of other artifact classes. The results show consistent linkages between specific land use and population variables and specific artifactual items in ways suggesting that political control, or lack thereof, structured the economy in patterned ways. Other factors, including urbanization and boundary permeability, are influential but not as persistently involved as political power. These results show how regional-scale archaeological data can be used to sharpen theoretical understanding of the evolution of political/economic systems.

Functional analysis of water control features at Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract Agricultural water distribution systems in the Highlands of Mexico have received considerable attention. Functional analysis of water control features at Monte Alban, Oaxaca demonstrates the potential of a classification system which treats both agricultural and residential‐civic public works, such as drains, filters, catchment structures, and reservoirs.

An Archaeological Survey on the Xoxocotlan Piedmont, Oaxaca, Mexico

Surface survey on the piedmont near the present village of Xoxocotlan, Oaxaca, Mexico, has revealed the pattern of prehistoric settlement around an irrigation canal that distributed water from a dammed reservoir located on the flanks of Monte Alban. Intensive systematic collection techniques have permitted quantitative statements to be made about the density of occupation and the contribution of the irrigation system to the food supply of Monte Alban.

Historic Settlement Patterns

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the patterns of location of pioneer farmsteads with respect to two major classes of dimensions or variables: (1) environmental and (2) social. It also explores a third dimension—agricultural specialization—to determine whether the location of settlement varies directly with different kinds of specialized activity. These aspects of settlement location are at the heart of the settlement system and form the nucleus for investigations of other portions of the system. The chapter presents the background of the typical project area immigrant and describes the correlation between location of land entry and the three aforementioned dimensions. To facilitate the study of land entry decisions in relation to environmental variables, especially in terms of internal variability within the timber zone, a multiple regression was carried out in a study described in the chapter. The number of days a tract of land remained unsold was the dependent variable, and a series of environmental dimensions were used as independents. Four environmental dimensions that vary with soil series and that were significant to early 19th century pioneer agriculturists were used to create 26 environmental classes. A paradigmatic classification was used to order the soil series in terms of attributes of the environmental dimensions. The four dimensions were slope, vegetation, topography, and soil drainage.

The Structure of Historic Communities

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a model of land purchasing strategies through time. In the model, environmental variables were weighed against social variables such as kinship and marriage ties, and these in turn were weighed against other variables such as logistics and mobility. Data consisted of land purchases by the Smith siblings, the Mappins, and the McKameys, all of whom immigrated to the middle Salt River area during the 1820s. The Smith settlement, paralleling the Mt. Prairie settlement, never contained a commercial center. During the 1820s, the nearest distribution points for goods and services were New London and Palmyra, well to the east and northeast of the project area. In the 1830s, after the founding of Paris to the west and Florida to the east, it became much easier to get needed supplies. The decisions about land purchases in and around the Smith settlement involved five considerations: (1) tree density, (2) proximity to the prairie–timber boundary, (3) soil fertility, (4) distance to kin, and (5) compactness of landholdings.