Stephen A. Kowalewski

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.

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.

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.

Ecological Theory and Cultural Evolution in the Valley of Oaxaca [and Comments and Reply]

A number of researchers have recently challenged the usefulness of cultural ecology for explaining pre-Hispanic ultural evolution in the Valley of Oaxaca. We address those criticisms and attempt to show how a rather traditional ecological model is at least consonant with the data. Our aim is not so much to demonstrate the greater explanatory power of our model in comparison with the arguments of the researchers of the Valley of Oaxaca projects as to show that the published data do not permit he rejection of either.

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.

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.

The Spread of Literacy in a Latin American Peasant Society: Oaxaca, Mexico, 1890 to 1980

In colonial times Latin American societies restricted literacy to a small elite but in the nineteenth century this restriction began to ease. Today, about threefourths of the people in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, can at least read and write. This article explores how the change from illiteracy to literacy came about and contributes a Latin American case to general comparative historical research on the causes of the literacy aspect of modernization. Because literacy in 1991 is by no means widespread in rural and urban settings around the world or in the United States, explanations of the phenomena have implications for contemporary understanding and policy.

Circular Architecture and Symbolic Boundaries in the Mixtec Sierra, Oaxaca

Systematic survey of 1,000 km 2 in a mountainous zone of the Mixteca Alta in Oaxaca, Mexico, has produced detailed architectural data at a large number of pre-Hispanic settlements. One unusual architectural form, circular stone foundations, apparently dates to the Late Postclassic period. Comparisons to similar architectural forms described in the archaeological and ethnographic literature of Mesoamerica and in the Mixtec codices suggest that they may have been sweatbaths. Analysis of their regional distribution and site contexts leads to interesting conclusions about additional contexts for sweatbath ritual. The symbolic link between royal birth, marriage, and sweatbath ritual is clear in the Mixtec codices. An additional use may have been in rituals affirming community identity and marking community boundaries. We suggest a further connection to the use of sweatbaths in Mixtec toponyms and their association with sacred places on the Mixtec landscape, both of which reflected the importance of marriage alliance and female royal inheritance in the territorial strategies of Postclassic Mixtec kingdoms.

Prehispanic colonization of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico

A decade ago in a seminal monograph, Anne Kirkby proposed a model of colonization for the prehispanic Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, in which settlement location was determined by the distribution of prime agricultural land. The model was tested against the corpus of known prehispanic settlements and tentative support was found. In the years since this study, a systematic archeological settlement pattern project was completed, making a more adequate test of the model possible. Reexamination of the colonization process suggests that, although agricultural considerations were important, they were less determinant of settlement location than had been implied previously. The adoption of a broader perspective toward regional colonization is suggested.

A spatial method for integrating data of different types

Systematically recording archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and other information in a geographical-temporal frame has great advantages. The method allows the logical ordering of disparate facts, error checking, making connections that might otherwise go undetected, better comparison, manipulating temporal and spatial scales, and specifying the fields within which causal processes do and do not operate. The application of this spatial method in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, generated new hypotheses about the late prehispanic-earlies colonial transition; it brings us closer to a single history, as opposed to segregated prehistory and history.