recent trends in theorizing pre his panic me so american economies [wells, christian]

8/8/2019 Recent Trends in Theorizing Pre His Panic Me So American Economies [Wells, Christian]

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/recent-trends-in-theorizing-pre-his-panic-me-so-american-economies-wells 1/48

J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

DOI 10.1007/s10814-006-9006-3

O R I G I N A L PA PE R

Recent Trends in Theorizing Prehispanic

Mesoamerican Economies

E. Christian Wells

Published online: 2 November 2006C Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract Theoretical frames for modeling prehispanic Mesoamerican economies have been

informed mostly by political economy or agency approaches. Political economy models ex-

amine the ways in which power is constructed and exercised through the manipulation of

material transfers, mainly production and distribution. Research along these lines empha-

sizes regional redistribution, wealth and staple finance, debt and reciprocity, and regional

integration through core/periphery relations. Agency models, on the other hand, explore the

social aspects of manufacture, circulation, and consumption to infer the processes by which

power is negotiated and contested. Work using this framework focuses on the manner by

which meaning and value are assigned to, and become fixed in, social valuables, as well as

the moral and emotional dimensions of allocation and consumption. Political economy and

agency approaches are converging in Mesoamerican research to forge a new, hybrid theoret-

ical construct, “ritual economy,” which strikes a balance between formalist and substantivist

views by considering the ways that belief systems articulate with economic systems in the

management of meanings and the shaping of interpretations.

Keywords Mesoamerica . Political economy . Agency . Ritual economy

Introduction

Economists increasingly have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory is its

reluctance to incorporate human values and emotional propensities as motivational factors in

decision making (Elster, 1998; Frank, 1988; Loewenstein, 2000). However, recent theoretical

developments in the field (e.g., Ensminger, 2002; Jacobs et al., 1998; Laffont, 1995) continue

to “underconceptualize our constantly experienced knowledge of the complexity of humanmental processes and action” (Cowgill, 1993a, p. 555). In other words, the methodological

individualism of neoclassical microeconomics (where rational actors are the primary units

E. C. Wells ()

Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620

e-mail: [email protected]

Springer



266 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

of analysis) remains insufficient to account for formal and functional variability in economic

behaviors and the cultural matrices in which they are embedded. One solution has been to

use folk models from cultural economics (e.g., Geertz, 1963; Robben, 1989; Wilk, 1991),

but these tend to be historically contingent and synchronic and, therefore, limited in their

ability to address change over space and time. Alternatively, Halperin (1994, p. 9) and others(Earle, 2003, p. 19; Feinman, 2004, p. 5; Isaac, 1996, p. 331) declare that the only suitable

remedy is to incorporate archaeological studies, which can offer more holistic perspectives

by way of long-term, comparative approaches among groups of similar historical tradition

(e.g., Brander and Taylor, 1998; Henry, 2004; Temin, 2001).

Recent archaeological research on prehispanic Mesoamerican economies is making

essential—yet unrealized—contributions to informing and enriching economic theory by

investigating the diverse pathways in which belief systems articulated with economic sys-

tems to fashion and fix structural inequalities. Drawing from varied approaches to political

economy and agency, these studies form an emerging theoretical construct that focuses on

the manner by which cultural agents materialize and challenge socially negotiated values

and beliefs through ritual action and, in the process, express what Wolf (1990, p. 587) calls

“structural power.” I refer to this construct as “ritual economy” and view it as a historical

outgrowth of the central questions asked by social scientists about relations among human

agency, worldview, economy, and power.

In examining and synthesizing the contemporary literature on economic processes in

ancient Mesoamerica, my goal is to reconcile economic theory with social theory by showing

that many economic choices and corresponding activities are diacritically marked by ritual

practice. To do so, I first review the prominent behavioral models for social change generated

by political economy approaches since their introduction to Mesoamerican studies in theearly 1970s. Many of these models developed out of the formalist/substantivist debate

of the 1950s and 1960s (Dalton, 1967; Polanyi et al., 1957; Sahlins, 1965) and variably

emphasize the relative importance of economic or social factors in determining patterns

of production, distribution, and consumption. These models examine both the degree of

social content versus economic rationality in individual transactions (a formalist approach)

and how economic processes relate to social structure and how institutions shape economic

arrangements (a substantivist approach).

Next I examine current trends in economic studies that take political economy ap-

proaches to task for not granting enough attention to the social aspects of produc-tion, the cultural contexts of the circulation of socially valued goods, and the moral

barriers to appropriating these items for expressing social distinctions. Recent studies

address these shortcomings by emphasizing agency approaches that consider the eco-

nomic dynamics of craft manufacture, gift exchange, and festive consumption involving

a wide social spectrum. I conclude that current theories of Mesoamerican economies

appear to be converging to forge a new, hybrid conceptual framework, ritual econ-

omy, which takes into account nonmaterial motives of production, distribution, and

consumption.

The literature reviewed here focuses on theoretical studies published over the past five

years and is not necessarily representative of different geographical areas of Mesoamerica.As a result, there is a slightly greater emphasis on work conducted in central Mexico and

southern Mesoamerica. My review emphasizes the conceptual tools used to investigate

and interpret archaeological materials rather than specific case studies of production or

exchange; the literature published on the latter topic is voluminous—even over the past few

years.

Springer



268 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

behavior as culturally constituted and embedded in broader social and political institutions,

where the tensions between self-interest and socially shared values contextualize individual

choice as it is confronted with technological or ecological constraints (e.g., Charlton, 1984;

Clark and Lee, 1984; Freidel, 1983; Spence, 1982; Weigand, 1982; Zeitlin, 1982). Doing

so made archaeological political economy generally less formal and more substantive, suchthat it could escape from being “too economic, too strictly materialist” as Ortner (1984,

pp. 142–144) once complained.

Second, Mesoamericanists had to take Hirth’s (1984a, pp. 284–291) advice and study

economic systems as integrated phenomena (see chapters in Bey and Pool, 1992; Costin

and Wright, 1998; Ericson and Baugh, 1993; Feinman and Nicholas, 2004a; Isaac, 1986;

Masson and Freidel, 2002; McAnany and Isaac, 1989; Smith and Berdan, 2003a), where

appropriation of raw materials, production of both staples and durables, circulation, and

consumption are understood as interdependent, coevolving processes that are variously

contingent on changing social, political, and ecological conditions. Many Mesoamericanists

no longer find Polanyi’s (1957) generic distinctions—redistribution, reciprocity, marketing,

and householding—useful for characterizing economic systems (Smith and Berdan, 2003b,

p. 11; see also Yoffee, 1977), although some continue to use the terminology (Foias, 2002;

Sheets, 2000). Smith (2004, pp. 75–76, 84–85; Smith and Berdan, 2003b, pp. 11–12; Smith

and Schreiber, 2005, p. 197) criticizes this scheme; because Polanyi believed noncapitalist

economies are organized around the exchange mechanisms of reciprocity and redistribution,

there is no possibility for noncapitalist commercial exchange, such as that of many Late

Postclassic Mesoamerican economies. Most Mesoamericanists recognize that households in

more or less complex societies provision themselves through a variety of acquisitive acts,

including trading and bartering, marketing, reciprocal gifting, redistributive exchanging, andvarious kinds of resource sharing, all at the same time (Hirth, 1998; McAnany, 1991, 1992,

1993, 2004a; McKillop, 1996; Smith, 1987; Smith et al., 1999).

The third adjustment was scalar. Integration of political economy, especially world-

systems perspectives (e.g., Alexander, 1999; Berdan and Smith, 1996; Blanton and Fein-

man, 1984; Feinman and Nicholas, 1992; Kepecs et al., 1994; Nelson, 1994; Pailes and

Whitecotton, 1979; Rathje, 1971; Santley and Alexander, 1996; Schortman and Urban,

1987, 1994, 1996; Urban and Schortman, 1999), into archaeological explanation required

archaeologists to redefine the fundamental unit of analysis as the total social system rather

than as a bounded cultural entity (Wolf, 1982, pp. 18–19). By recognizing that societies arenot “incarcerated” by space or culture (Appadurai, 1988, p. 37) but emerge as historically

changing, multiple, and branching alignments of social groups and segments, without fixed

boundaries or stable internal constitutions, Mesoamericanists moved away from studies of

cultural evolution (e.g., Sanders and Webster, 1978). Instead, they turned to considerations of

how, and to what extent, such properties as inequality, differentiation, scale, and integration

can vary independently (e.g., Feinman, 1999), along the lines of what de Montmollin (1989, p.

9) calls “bundled continua of variation.” This shift led researchers to acknowledge explicitly

the polythetic character of complexity (e.g., Feinman, 1998; McGuire, 1983; Nelson, 1995).

As a result, recent work has revealed a great deal of organizational diversity in economic

systems, both at the community or polity level and on a regional scale (compare chaptersin Fedick, 1996; Hirth, 1984b; Killion, 1992; Masson and Freidel, 2002; McAnany, 2004b;

Pool, 2003; Scarborough et al., 2003). This perspective also fostered appreciation for how

groups with different economic organizations experiencing different degrees of complexity

were linked across space, for instance, how rural subsistence economies supported market

systems of towns and cities (e.g., Berdan et al., 1996; Hassig, 1985; Hodge and Smith, 1994;

Marcus and Flannery, 1996; McKillop, 2002; Stark et al., 1998; Voorhies, 1989; Voorhies

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 269

and Gasco, 2005). Such interconnectedness and “economic layering” (Upham, 1992, p. 145)

is seen as imposing a dynamic on regional systems that results in a fabric of alliances and

oppositions facilitating or impeding interaction and the flow of goods and information at

different tempos.

Despite these advances, political economy in prehispanic Mesoamerica is not yet an in-tegrated theoretical movement but, rather, remains a collection of materialist approaches

that share a common concern with documenting and explaining variability in the dialectic

between politics and economics (see Smith, 2004, p. 37). These sundry approaches are valu-

able, nevertheless, because they direct us to consider certain contexts in which individuals

make choices, specifically the political implications of choices made in economic contexts.

As Mesoamerican archaeologists have adjusted political economy to fit the constraints of

an imperfect cultural material record, four suites of models have emerged to explain the

economic basis for political development and social complexity. These are managerial (“re-

distribution”) models and three interrelated sets of political (“control”) models, each variably

emphasizing finance strategies, debt relations, and world-systems theory. Although anchored

in empirical data, these models are theoretical abstractions that do not necessarily account

for any particular case, although some models are certainly more appropriate than others.

Managerial models

One of the reasons why Mesoamerican archaeologists have been interested in the relationship

between economic systems and political organization results from pioneering ethnographic

work on Polynesian middle-range societies in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Sahlins, 1972;

Service, 1962, 1975), which posited a “managerial” or “redistribution” model to explainthe development of centralized leadership in complex societies. This model characterized

power as highly contingent on the mobilization of labor and resources to take advantage of

ecological diversity and to reduce the risk of subsistence failure. In their quest for ascendancy,

Hawaiian chiefs were seen as successful managers of economies based on redistribution (e.g.,

Fried, 1967; Halstead and O’Shea, 1972; Isbell, 1978).

Subsequent historical and archaeological studies have questioned the accuracy of man-

agerial interpretations and challenged their relevance to other parts of the world (e.g., Earle,

1977, 1978; Feinman and Neitzel, 1984; Peebles and Kus, 1977; Rathje and McGuire, 1982).

Still, these models have played an important role in theorizing prehispanic Mesoamericaneconomies, especially from an “adaptationist” (i.e., functionalist) or “ecosystem” perspective

(Brumfiel, 1992, pp. 551–553). Rathje (1971), for example, proposed the idea that lowland

Maya elites had access to surpluses of food and other commodities produced by commoners

as well as to their labor. He argued that long-distance exchange allowed elites to become

managers of trade in deficient resources, such as obsidian, groundstone, and salt (Rathje,

1972, 1973; Rathje and Gregory, 1978). However, others point out that some goods, such as

obsidian, were not necessary, and others, including groundstone, could be obtained locally

(Nations and Nigh, 1980; Puleston, 1976; Sanders, 1973).

Apart from Rathje’s early ideas about regional redistribution, the idea that Mesoamerican

elites emerged as a functional response to the needs of communities has been proposed mainlyto account for water management facilities and the cultivation of food using irrigation. In arid

highland central Mexico, for example, researchers in the 1960s and 1970s posited managerial

models along the lines of Wittfogel’s (1957) hydraulic hypothesis, which advanced the idea

that the organization necessary for the construction, maintenance, and operation of large-scale

irrigation systems required centralized management that eventually yielded coercive power to

irrigation managers (Price, 1971; Sanders, 1968; Sanders and Price, 1968; Wittfogel, 1972).

Springer



270 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

These ideas were challenged in central Mexico by Adams (1966, 1983) and Flannery (1972),

who pointed out that large-scale irrigation appeared only after urban centers had formed.

However, recent research documents floodwater canal irrigation during the Middle (ca. 1050–

650 B.C.) and Late (ca. 650–150 B.C.) Formative periods in the eastern Guadalupe Range

(Nichols, 1982) and in nearby Morelos (Nichols and Frederick, 2001). Doolittle (1989) andothers (Nichols et al., 1991; Parsons, 1991) identify irrigation facilities at Terminal Formative

(ca. 150 B.C.–A.D. 200) Teotihuacan. For some (e.g., Angulo, 1993; Nichols and Frederick,

1993, p. 131), these new data have once again opened up the possibility of a connection

between resource management and political development. Still, large-scale irrigation was

rare in central Mexico, and explanations for political growth tied to water control should not

be generalized outside of these specific cases.

Throughout the 1970s, managerial models also were invoked to explain cultural evolution

in the northern Maya lowlands, where water can be especially scarce (e.g., Harrison, 1977;

Harrison and Turner, 1978; Matheny, 1976, 1978; Matheny et al., 1983; Puleston, 1976).

More recently, Scarborough (1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998; Scarborough and Gallopin, 1991;

Scarborough et al., 1994) and others (Davis-Salazar, 2003; Lucero, 1999, 2002) argue for

some degree of elite management or control of reservoirs, canals, and associated subsistence

resources in water-rich environments in the southern Maya lowlands. These arguments,

however, do not explicitly see elites as resource managers in the traditional way that Service

(1962, 1975) intended, where elites are needed to administer redistributive exchange systems

that articulate locally specialized economies. Rather, these studies view elites as managers

(or “allocators”) of rare and critical resources who strategically exploit their positions to

construct and protect political power: “by placing water and its management apparatus in the

center of their elevated Classic-period communities, the Maya permitted a controlling eliteto manipulate the resource” (Scarborough, 1998, p. 136). In these cases, water management

took place after state development and so is not part of the initial processes associated with

the growth of complex societies. Instead, it is a byproduct of state formation, representing

the efforts of Late Classic community leaders and nascent elite to maintain and extend

their power base by appropriating the labor and products of collective resource management

(Davis-Salazar, 2003, p. 294).

Finance models

In the early 1980s, Earle and D’Altroy (1982) argued that while one function of redistribution

is to coordinate regional exchange of locally specialized products, a more typical function

is to finance the operations of centralized government, as Polanyi (1968, pp. 186–187, 321–

324) described. Redistribution takes place by mobilizing goods from subsistence producers,

“either as a fraction of their production or as the produce from reserved lands worked by

commoners. Goods collected in this way are then used to pay for the full range of elite and

governmental activities” (Earle and D’Altroy, 1982, p. 266). This alternative understanding of

redistribution of staple goods—amended by also considering “wealth finance” (D’Altroy and

Earle, 1985; Earle, 1987, 1994; Earle and D’Altroy, 1989)—prompted some Mesoamerican

archaeologists to focus on the ways in which rulers provisioned themselves and funded their interests and activities, as well as on the forces that weighted and leveled wealth imbalances

and corresponding social inequality.

Wealth finance involves the manufacture and procurement of certain products that are

used as a means of payment for services rendered. These products often have established

values with respect to other goods of similar nature but may vary in their convertibility into

staples (e.g., Bohannan, 1955; Friedman and Rowlands, 1977; Kopytoff, 1986). Wealth- or

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 271

prestige-enhancing items may be amassed as direct payment from subservient populations or

they may be produced by craft specialists attached to central authorities. In the latter case, raw

materials may be given as tribute and are subsequently used in the manufacture of these goods,

and the craftspeople may be provided as part of a labor obligation from local communities

(see Peregrine, 1991). For example, Rathje (1972; see also Chase, 1998, pp. 31–33; Chaseand Chase, 2001, p. 278) proposes that rather than monopolizing aspects of production,

Maya political elite may have been interested in controlling certain types of distribution

through the operation of regional markets, which would have provided opportunities for

tribute extraction and taxation of merchants, retailers, and market participants. Material

wealth is thus collected and held by the ruling elite as payment for political officials and

other personnel, such as ritual specialists and war captains, who work for the polity (e.g.,

Dalton, 1967; Schneider et al., 1972). The items also can be used as payments to other polity

leaders to secure important alliances or in exchange for locally desired staple products (e.g.,

Brumfiel, 1980). Smith (2004, pp. 86–87), however, suggests that wealth finance may not be

a viable explanatory model for understanding government finance in ancient states because

the resolution that archaeological evidence provides tends to be too coarse to make the

kinds of distinctions necessary for determining sources of finance, for instance, the material

differences between tribute, tax, and rent.

These “political models” (Brumfiel, 1987a, pp. 3–4) take a “top-down” approach and

give elite factions (versus the domestic mode of production; see Sahlins, 1972) a key role

in organizing manufacture and exchange, by which they, rather than the populations they

administer, become the primary beneficiaries. From this perspective, rulers and their activities

are focal points of social and political change. Mobilization of surplus labor and goods is a

key factor in political development because it sustains local elites and enables them to fundnew institutions and activities calculated to extend their power (Earle, 1997).

In prehispanic Mesoamerica, understanding production, exchange, and conspicuous con-

sumption of “primitive valuables” (Dalton, 1977, p. 198; Herskovitz, 1952, p. 244) and

other prestige-enhancing items is often seen as an important variable in attempts to discern

how social relationships are created and maintained and how power networks are negoti-

ated and legitimized. The underlying premise is that the movement of prestige goods often

takes place through a maze of interconnected and multilayered networks encompassed by a

variety of social and political relationships. In societies exhibiting social ranking, one way

elites advertise and maintain their social status and finance their political operations is bycontrolling access to and manipulation of basic and critical resources such as food surpluses,

exotic goods, and esoteric knowledge (e.g., Clark, 1986; Frankenstein and Rowlands, 1978;

Helms, 1988; Kipp and Schortman, 1989; Renfrew, 1982). Fundamental to this process, elites

“usurp,” “co-opt,” “preempt,” or “exploit” the labor of dependent producers (McGuire, 1986,

pp. 252–253; Tilley, 1984, pp. 112–114), thereby removing dependents from the appropria-

tion of the results of their own labor and excluding them from any role in determining both

the conditions of production and the amounts of surplus products appropriated (Saitta,1994a,

p. 27). However, primary producers can resist elite demands for labor should conditions war-

rant (e.g., Bender, 1990; Dirks, 1992; Farriss, 1984), and elites also can contribute surplus

labor (e.g., Friedberg, 1977; Helms, 1993; Inomata, 2001a). Schortman and Urban (2004)review the specific role of craft manufacture in these processes and point out some of the

challenges to inferring elite control over production and distribution in the archaeological

record.

Recent models (e.g., Brumfiel, 1996a,b, 1998) place a greater role in social change

to nonelite segments of society, recognizing that the ultimate success of rulers’ efforts at

resource appropriation is dependent on the continued participation of nonelite. From this

Springer



272 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

perspective, Graham (2002, p. 413) argues that it is problematic to think in terms of elite

control; rather it is more productive to examine the relationship between elite demand and

social compliance, since control implies a specific role for elites that cannot be supported on

the basis of present evidence in Mesoamerica (see Potter and King, 1995; Rice, 1987; West,

2002). The degree of social compliance is contingent on the condition that nonelites continueto get what they consider to be appropriate benefits and have a reasonable expectation of

continuing to do so (Aldenderfer, 1993, p. 8). In this manner, these studies explore the

process of political domination as well as resistance to it (Clastres, 1989).

Robin (2003) discusses how economic decisions of nonelites (or “commoners”) impact

political sectors of the economy. Some decisions foster compliance with elite attempts to

consolidate power, while others challenge and erode elite power. New evidence from central

Mexico (Brumfiel, 1998; Otis Charlton, 1993; Rattray, 1988; Smith, 2003a; Smith and

Heath-Smith, 1994; Spence, 1989), the Gulf Coast (Hall, 1997; Stark et al., 1998), the Valley

of Oaxaca (Feinman and Nicholas, 1993, 2004b; Middleton et al., 2002), the Maya lowlands

(Kovacevich et al., 2004; Masson, 2003a,b), and southeastern Mesoamerica (Aoyama, 2001)

supports the view of a broad involvement in prestige economies by nonelites. In some of

these cases, nonelite specialists appear to have been commissioned for certain products, or

their work was patronized or administered by elite personnel. In other cases, high-quality raw

materials and evidence for various stages of manufacture of sumptuary artifacts have been

recovered from nonelite residences. These findings undermine the long-held assumption that

the residential populations of cities were mostly “peasant” farmers, disconnected from the

elite luxury economy.

Debt models

Recognizing the complex relationship between patrons and clients, archaeologists throughout

the 1990s explored the possibility that elites emerged in response to opportunistic possibilities

for self-aggrandizement. Recent attempts to deal with these issues draw largely from the logic

of finance models and the “aggrandizer” concept (Clark and Blake, 1994), which posits that

one of the principal guiding forces behind social action is self-interest. In their quest for

political power, aggrandizers strategically seek to indebt others by controlling production

and distribution in such a way as to create reciprocal obligations (e.g., Godelier and Strathern,

1991). Often, the target of elite interests is prestige goods, which, as Mauss (1990 [1925])demonstrated, have social meaning such that their exchange materializes social relations.

These items are displayed and distributed in the context of elaborate feasts and other public

rituals that provide ostentatious showcases for pomp and pageantry, demonstrating one’s

social status and prestige (see Gosden, 1989). Firth (1983) calls such dramas “indebtedness

engineering.”

The establishment of contractual debt relationships is important because it prolongs and

maintains the status associated with feast and gift-giving as long as the feast or gift has

not been repaid, which may take many years. Unpaid debts can lead to socioeconomic

rupture between social groups (Dalton, 1977) or to opportunities for aggrandizers to convert

debts directly into political power by permitting debtors to default on return obligations inexchange for their acquiescence in political arenas (Wiessner, 1996). Similar to aggrandizers,

“accumulators” (Hayden, 1990), “strivers” (Maschner, 1995), and “entrepreneurial elites”

(Hayden, 1995a) have been identified in many cultural systems, and the political effects of

competitive feasting and gift-giving have been discussed for these and other social groups

(e.g., Dietler, 1996, 2001; Dye, 1995; Hayden, 2001a,b; Junker, 1999; Kan, 1986; Kirch,

2001; Knight, 2001; Kohler and Van West, 1996; Potter, 2000). Hayden (1995a) refers to

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 273

these characters as having “triple A” personalities and provides an insightful essay on how

their behaviors are expressed in nonranked societies.

Debt models in Mesoamerica explain the institutionalization of social inequality as the

result of a protracted process of escalating “competitive generosity” in which ambitious

individuals seek to garner status and prestige through gift-giving and sponsorship of festivities(e.g., Clark, 1997; Clark and Blake, 1994; Fox, 1996; Hayden and Gargett, 1990; Hendon,

2003; Hill and Clark, 2001; LeCount, 2001; Rathje, 2002; Yaeger, 2000). Clark and Blake

(1994) argue that the earliest (Barra phase, ca. 1550–1400 B.C.) pottery in southern coastal

Chiapas, Mexico, represents a foreign “prestige technology” (Hayden, 1995b) adopted and

guarded by Mokaya aggrandizers in their pursuit of prestige. They propose that monopoly

over the manufacture and distribution of fancy pottery, which imitated gourd vessels used in

ritual feasts and other competitive displays of wealth and generosity, allowed aggrandizers

to attract loyal followers and possibly their surplus labor. This idea has since been revised to

recognize the diverse ways that aggrandizers behave and the potential reasons for prestige

building (Clark, 2000, 2004a; Hill and Clark, 2001). More recently, Rathje (2002) proposes

that Formative Maya communities engaged in a sort of “nouveau elite potlatch” where

material investments in socially significant symbols of community (e.g., burial temples,

public plazas, etc.) allowed aggrandizers to demonstrate generosity while also displaying

their “wealth,” or power (i.e., access to surplus labor), within socially acceptable parameters

of ritualized behavior. The economic effect of this kind of strategic investment was to take

sacred or symbolic objects out of circulation and thereby limit competitors’ access to them,

while also creating a lasting legacy for the individual(s) who constructed the symbol.

Despite their substantial contributions, these models hinge on the critical assumption that

it is universally desirable, and perhaps even morally acceptable, for community leaders toindebt their supporters in societies where egalitarian ethics shape the structure of social

intercourse (Mitchell, 1988; Wiessner, 2002). Furthermore, these kinds of models allow only

for the development of hierarchy when individuals act against their own economic auton-

omy by providing surplus labor and by accepting higher levels of sociopolitical integration

(Stanish and Haley, 2004, p. 57). In contrast, many ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts

of modern and historical communities in Mesoamerica indicate that individual distinctions

are often actively stifled and obvious prestige-building, status-seeking displays and creations

of debt-obligation relationships are socially unacceptable practices (e.g., Chapman, 1985;

Hayden and Gargett, 1990; McGee, 1990; Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1934; Rosenbaum, 1993;Vogt, 1969; Watanabe, 1992; Wisdom, 1940), a situation unlike more complex, state-level

entities where this kind of behavior often is required of individuals for success in factional

competitions (Brumfiel, 1994). In these settings, the ethos of egalitarianism nips competi-

tion in the bud, effectively creating formidable barriers to the exercise of social inequality

(Wiessner, 2002, p. 251).

A few recent studies show that long-term debt obligations used for prying concessions

from certain segments of society does not necessarily result from aggrandizing behavior in

nonstate societies (e.g., McAnany, 1995; Monaghan, 1996; Rosenswig, 2000). For example,

I studied the manner by which communal work-party feasts served to mobilize surplus labor

for agrarian tasks and possibly for the manufacture of craft items used in ritual performancesamong historical Lenca groups and at the Terminal Classic (ca. A.D. 850–1100) site of El

Coyote in northwest Honduras (Wells, 2003a). While work-party feasts provide immedi-

ate reciprocity for labor and close the debt incurred by the work project (see Dietler and

Herbich, 2001), I argue that over long periods of sustained practice at El Coyote, the material

requirements and consequences of these kinds of activities created some of the conditions

conducive to the development of inequities in access to resources at the community level.

Springer



274 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Festive labor mobilization, therefore, may have engendered debt relationships among the

participants in the absence of aggrandizing behavior. By exposing some of the variability in

labor mobilization and surplus capture, these studies join Wiessner (2002, p. 249) and others

(e.g., Boehm, 1993; Brandt, 1994; Flanagan, 1989; Poyer, 1993; Saitta, 1994b; Strathern

and Stewart, 2000) in questioning whether “aggrandizers” are meaningful units of analysisin cases where personal welfare is embedded in cooperative egalitarian coalitions. This ar-

gument is thus linked to broader debates about the role of individualizing behavior in the

development of complex social systems (Blanton, 1998; Blanton et al., 1996; Drennan, 1991;

Feinman, 1995, 2000a,b,c; Feinman et al., 2000; Johnson, 1982; Keesing, 1991; Renfrew,

1974; Schneider et al., 1972; Stanish, 2004).

World-systems models

In Mesoamerica, the manufacture and circulation of prestige goods also have been examined

in macroregional economic networks. These studies are based on Wallerstein’s (1974a,b,

1979) “world-systems theory,” which describes the modern world’s capitalist economy in

terms of integrated, intersocietal networks consisting of cores and peripheries (and some-

times semiperipheries) that exchange raw materials, products, and information. Generally

speaking, in a world system the “first world” core extracts resources from an economically

and politically “underdeveloped” (Frank, 1966), “third world” periphery. The sociospatial

pathways through which cores and peripheries interact are complex and often involve multi-

ple, competitive cores that differentially exploit an undercapitalized periphery composed of

a range of sociocultural systems. At the most basic level, the core provides low-bulk, finished

products to the periphery in return for high-bulk, staple resources, thereby creating a hierar-chical system of development and integration based on dependency. Such relations invariably

favor cores while impoverishing peripheries. In this way, world-systems models broaden the

principles of finance and debt models to intersocietal exchange networks. Cores are those

societies whose participating populations monopolize resources that are crucial to the oper-

ation of the entire network, such as staple or durable goods, transportation technologies, or

religious knowledge. Without these monopolies, which are sometimes enforced by military

might, no one society has an edge over others and cannot dictate the terms of exchange to

them; hence, no development of underdevelopment (Schortman and Urban, 1987).

While cores and peripheries are almost invariably defined in economic terms, this may notalways be the most productive way of conceptualizing intersocietal relations (Schortman and

Urban, 1992). Recognizing this possibility, world-systems models for ancient Mesoamer-

ican cases have derived largely from three critiques of their application to noncapitalist

situations (see Chase-Dunn and Hall, 1991; Kohl, 1989; McGuire, 1996; Schneider, 1977).

First, Wolf (1982, pp. 22–23; see also Skocpol, 1977) has pointed out that the core/periphery

relationship favors a hierarchical approach to culture change, where innovations in the core

are passed down to the periphery, itself a “watered-down version” or “pale reflection” of

the core. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1991), however, have suggested an important distinction in

core/periphery relationships—those that are hierarchical versus those that are differentiated.

In hierarchical relationships, one society, either in the core or in the periphery (but usuallythe core), is economically dependent on the other. A differentiated core/periphery is seen as a

mutual interdependency with neither the core nor the periphery necessarily structurally dom-

inating the other. This distinction is crucial for prehispanic Mesoamerica because there were

no politically unified world systems (Blanton and Feinman, 1984), although Price (1971)

has suggested that Teotihuacan may have been one. Instead, prehispanic Mesoamerica was

probably made up of multiple competing cores and multiple competing peripheries, such

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 275

that cores and peripheries were variably differentiated politically, militarily, and/or ideolog-

ically, as well as economically (Carmack, 1996). For Postclassic Mesoamerica, Smith and

Berdan (2003c, pp. 24–31) identify as many as nine core zones (areas of high populations

and concentrated political power) and eight “resource-extraction zones” (areas peripheral

to core zones where important nonagricultural raw materials were extracted) throughoutthe 11th through 16th centuries. In addition, they introduce the concept of “affluent pro-

duction zones,” which they describe as “areas of high populations and intensive economic

activity (both production and exchange) that lacked the powerful polities and large urban

centers found in core zones” (Smith and Berdan, 2003c, p. 26). This useful new concept

draws attention to areas of the Mesoamerican landscape outside of major political centers

that played an important economic role in macroregional economic systems. Smith and

Berdan (2003c, pp. 27–28) divide Mesoamerica into 12 zones, although they neglect the

resource-rich lands of southeastern Mesoamerica, which supplied markets with cacao, salt,

cotton, greenstone, obsidian, and a variety of other highly desired products (Pagden, 1986,

pp. 338–447; Scholes and Roys 1968, pp. 320; Strong, 1935, p. 17; Tozzer, 1941, pp. 94–96).

Second, Blanton and Feinman (1984) and others (e.g., Alexander, 1999; Feinman and

Nicholas, 1992; Kepecs and Kohl, 2003; Kepecs et al., 1994; Santley and Alexander, 1996;

Smith and Berdan, 2000) argue that the definitions for “core” and “periphery” as originally

posed by Wallerstein are not adequate to deal with the tremendous variety of social com-

plexity and intersocietal interactions in prehispanic Mesoamerica. Pailes and Whitecotton

(1979) were among the first to modify world-systems theory for use in noncapitalist set-

tings to describe the relationship between prehispanic Mesoamerican states and groups in

the American Southwest. Schortman and Urban (1987, 1994) conceive of Mesoamerica as

composed of multiple cores and multiple peripheries manifesting different kinds of rela-tionships. Where one core maintained ties with multiple competing peripheries, elites in the

core could dictate the terms of interaction and thereby create true political and economic

underdevelopment (Frank, 1966). Indeed, core economic growth is strongest and most stable

in situations where these states have a diversified economy (Smith, 1984). In cases where

multiple cores existed and competed for resources derived from a single periphery (common

in prehispanic Mesoamerica), societies in the periphery could dictate the terms of exchange,

essentially playing one core off against the other (e.g., McAnany, 2004a; Schortman and

Urban, 1994; Smith, 2003a; Stark et al., 1998). However, there also must have been cases

in which multiple cores and multiple peripheries interacted in very complex social networkssuch that the precise limits or boundaries of cores and peripheries were fluid and constantly

in flux (see chapters in Smith and Berdan, 2003a).

Third, Braudel (1981) and others (e.g., Blanton and Feinman, 1984; Frankenstein and

Rowlands, 1978; Kepecs and Kohl, 2003; Kipp and Schortman, 1989; Schneider, 1977;

Smith, 2003b) have noted that “luxury goods” (Appadurai, 1986, p. 38; Douglas and

Isherwood, 1979, p. 97), as well as other kinds of durable wealth, are sometimes more

important for fueling political development than staples in core/periphery systems, espe-

cially in prehispanic Mesoamerica where transportation technology often limited the long-

distance exchange of perishable items (Cowgill, 1993b; Drennan, 1984a,b, 1985; Hassig,

1985; Sluyter, 1993; Smith, 1990). Moreover, the circulation and consumption of luxurygoods were sometimes crucial to the reproduction of many Mesoamerican societies, since

belief systems often were materialized by ancestor veneration (McAnany, 1995) and external

contacts (Stark, 1999) that required the use of such goods. Pohl (2003) uses information from

eastern Nahua mythohistories, as related in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca and the Mapas

de Cuauhtinchan, to discuss the growth and development of pilgrimage-market centers. He

shows how pilgrimage fairs brought together individuals and groups from diverse geographic

Springer



276 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

locales and provided them with opportunities for trade and exchange in conjunction with

religious festivals, along the lines of Freidel’s (1981, 1983) suggestion for the Maya low-

lands. Thus, most evaluations of world-systems models in Mesoamerica follow Blanton and

Feinman’s (1984) lead and consider luxury goods (Dupre and Rey, 1973) and wealth finance

(D’Altroy and Earle, 1985), while recognizing that some utilitarian goods such as obsidian(Spence, 1996) could have served as either a staple or a luxury item depending on its social

and economic context. Stark and colleagues’ (1998, p. 9) analysis of the prehispanic cotton

industry reveals that “cotton had a dynamic role throughout Mesoamerican history because it

could at once become more widespread in access and still be elaborated as a prestige item.”

Theorizing when, where, why, and how world systems operated in prehispanic Mesoamer-

ica has led to a renewed emphasis on understanding the commercial effects of market systems

(Blanton, 1996, 2001; Blanton and Hodge, 1996; Hirth, 2000; Hodge, 1992; Minc, 1994;

Nichols et al., 2002; Smith and Hodge, 1994) and the identification of marketplaces in the ar-

chaeological record (Chase, 1998; Chase and Chase, 2001; Dahlin and Ardren, 2002; Hirth,

1998; West, 2002). Ethnohistoric sources note the prevalence and importance of markets

in all Aztec cities (Blanton, 1996) and some Maya cities in northern Yucatan (Roys 1957,

pp. 17, 51–52), and recent excavations reveal a high level of nonlocal products in these

settlements. Nichols et al. (2002), for example, use compositional studies of ceramics from

Cerro Portezuelo, Chalco, and Xaltocan in the Basin of Mexico to examine the changing

role of markets in economic systems throughout the Postclassic. They suggest that produc-

tion and distribution of Epiclassic serving wares were highly localized, conforming closely

to a solar market model. Ceramic exchange within the basin increased during the Early

and Middle Postclassic, in some cases paralleling political alliance networks. Finally, the

Late Postclassic marketing pattern incorporated both increased regionalism and increasedexchange between rural and urban locales. Market exchange was thus a critical element of

Postclassic world systems because it served to economically integrate dispersed populations

on a regional scale (Brumfiel, 1980; Blanton, 1983; Carrasco, 1983; Smith, 1979).

Based on work in other areas and periods of Mesoamerica over the past 20 years, mar-

ket exchange also may have played a role in connecting household production to wider

economic spheres and in regionalizing economic systems (Feinman and Nicholas, 2004b).

Recognizing that households are both the primary suppliers and the consumers of commodi-

ties exchanged in the marketplace, Hirth (1998) identifies market exchange at Xochicalco

by comparing household artifact inventories as a measure of differential involvement in acommon distribution network. Blanton (1983) interprets site-size distribution and other data

as indicative of a politically controlled solar marketing system centered on Teotihuacan.

Based on the distribution of different types of serving vessels in the central Maya lowlands,

Fry (1979) suggests that Tikal connected local and regional markets. However, Stark et al.

(1992) raise important questions about the effectiveness of market institutions as mechanisms

for interregional exchange. They caution that while states may have encouraged specializa-

tion and market exchange within their own administrative bounds, this does not necessarily

demonstrate regional articulation of autonomous economic systems.

In northern Mesoamerica, the northwest frontier has been depicted as a zone rich in

natural resources (Smith and Berdan, 2003c, p. 29), which included chalchihuites (mainlygreenstones, turquoise-like stones, and soapstones), obsidian, marine shell, copper, and salt,

among other items (e.g., Braswell, 2003; Hosler, 2003; Kepecs, 2003; Williams, 2004). It

has long been thought that core entities in central Mexico, such as Classic (ca. A.D. 200–

600) Teotihuacan, Early Postclassic (ca. A.D. 900–1200) Tula, and Late Postclassic (ca.

A.D. 1300–1521) Tenochtitlan, extracted resources from north and west Mexico, perhaps

even establishing colonies to do so (Kelley, 1976). One of the more direct applications

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 277

of world-systems models in this region was set forth by Blanton and Feinman (1984),

who use conquest- and colonial-period sources to argue that the Late Postclassic Aztec

empire extracted both staple and luxury goods from its adjacent geographic periphery,

and from sources farther afield in the Maya region and beyond. Others have posited a

hierarchical relationship between core states in central Mexico and peripheral groups in thewest or northwest (e.g., Weigand, 1992). For example, Nelson (1990, 1994) suggests that

the Epiclassic (ca. A.D. 700–900) florescence of social complexity in northwest Mexico

could have been a direct result of societies in this region being released from the “structural

underdevelopment” (Frank, 1966) imposed by a world system. He argues that, after the

dissolution of the Teotihuacan state in central Mexico at the end of the Metepec Phase, around

A.D. 700, Epiclassic societies in northwestern Mexico were able to funnel local resources

into local economies, which spurred local growth (both demographic and economic) on a

scale unprecedented for the region.

In southern Mesoamerica, archaeologists have depicted the southeast frontier zone as

an area rich in resources, which included greenstone, obsidian, “exotic” bird feathers (e.g.,

macaw, quetzal), cacao, and cotton, among other products (e.g., Boone and Willey, 1988).

They have posited a hierarchical “world-system-like” relationship between Maya states and

seemingly less complex non-Maya groups, where Maya states, such as Copan and Quirigua,

extracted raw materials from neighboring non-Maya ranked societies. Schortman and Urban

(1987, 1994, 1996; Urban and Schortman, 1999) use behavioral categories of material culture

(social, technological, ideological, and proxemic; see Schortman, 1986) to evaluate a world-

systems model of the relationship between the Late Classic (ca. A.D. 600–900) capital of

the Naco Valley, La Sierra, and the presumed core entity of Copan in western Honduras.

They find that the Naco Valley was largely politically and economically independent of the Maya core states, yet some interdependencies may have existed; for instance, La Sierra

supported at least one shell-processing workshop, the products of which likely ended up at

Copan. In addition, La Sierra’s rulers appear to have been rather selective in their borrowing

of the trappings of elite Maya culture, perhaps because the Maya etiquette of rulership

involved symbols designed to integrate large, state-level entities, which were not necessary

or particularly useful for the residents of the Naco Valley. Recent work on this model (e.g.,

Schortman et al., 2001) takes into account the politics of identity formation and how symbols

critical to this process were manipulated by those seeking to maintain interaction networks

while creating localized corporate identities. Thus, the so-called “underdeveloped periphery”was actually quite complex and maintained differentiated (versus necessarily hierarchical)

relationships with core states.

In a major new synthesis, The Postclassic Mesoamerican World (Smith and Berdan,

2003a), the authors examine world-systems applications in great detail, concluding that

Postclassic populations were engaged in a highly complex interaction system involving

various modes of commodity exchange that operated simultaneously and interchangeably. In

this work, Kepecs and Kohl (2003) redefine world systems, emphasizing the integration of

numerous economic regions interlocked through a regional division of labor and interregional

exchange. Smith and Berdan, along with the other contributors to the volume, view the

Postclassic landscape in terms of a world system populated by “international trade centers,”“affluent production zones,” “resource-extraction zones,” and “unspecialized peripheries,”

which articulated in complex and often unexpected ways. By deemphasizing problematic

concepts for noncapitalist situations, such as “core” and “periphery,” this new framework

and corresponding vocabulary allow for different kinds of “cores” operating simultaneously

and for “peripheries” to be viewed as potentially complex and powerful in their own right.

This reworked configuration of world systems is more theoretically satisfying than direct

Springer



278 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

applications of the theory because it attempts to capture more of the variation in organizational

strategies of late prehispanic Mesoamerican societies.

Agency approaches

While political economy concerns the behavioral outcomes of agents (e.g., managers, elites,

aggrandizers), the concept of “agency” in these approaches derives ultimately from under-

standings of social action such as those of Parsons (1951; Parsons and Smelser, 1956), who

conceived of individual actors as being “motivated in terms of a tendency to the ‘optimization

of gratification’ and whose relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and

mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols” (Parsons, 1951,

p. 9). The agents in political economy approaches are intrinsically competitive and strive

toward efficiency: “since more is better (more resources = more power), the political econ-

omy is inherently growth oriented” (Earle, 2002, p. 9). Thus, political economy approaches

(especially those with a Marxist orientation) allow for the concept of agency, but only to the

point of examining how people manipulate economic processes for personal gain.

Recent work by Mesoamerican archaeologists departs from this understanding of agency

and instead follows alternative concepts such as “personhood” (Gillespie, 2001; cf. Houston

and McAnany, 2003). This and other concepts are informed by Giddens (1979, pp. 55–65),

who sees action not as an adaptive reflex constrained by culture and personality but as a

repetitive and patterned “flow of conduct” of “situated practices” that are “deeply layered”

in time and space. Although criticized for its lack of attention to the social significance

of interpersonal interaction (Gillespie, 2001, p. 80), this concept of agency is useful for archaeologists seeking to understand economic systems because it has both cultural and

economic components embedded in it. It provides “the theoretical linkage between cultural

ideas and economic behavior” (Robb, 1999, p. 3).

This concept of agency discourages a retreat back to methodological individualism

(McCall, 1999) by shifting the target of study from individual agents to social systems and

how such systems are constituted by agents in the process of “structuration” (Giddens,1984),

that is, the ways in which structure and agency act recursively over time to (re)constitute insti-

tutions (e.g., Lefebvre, 1991; Sahlins, 1981). In practical terms, this means investigating how

everyday practices produce and are produced by cultural norms (Bourdieu, 1990). This doesnot imply, however, that Mesoamericanist agency approaches are not concerned with power,

inequality, and hierarchy. Rather, as Giddens (1984, p. 257) argues, power derives from

human agency because it represents “the capacity to achieve outcomes.” In this view, power

is conceptualized as a negotiated arrangement that can be contested and renegotiated in the

face of conflict and resistance (Bloch, 1977; de Certeau, 1984; Foucault, 1982; Mann, 1986).

This perspective is similar to that taken by Wolf (1990), in which he considers “structural

power” as an aspect of all human relations. For Wolf (1990, p. 587), structural power is

the capacity to define “the social field of action so as to render some kinds of behavior

possible, while making others less possible or impossible.” Structural power can be

generated by control over productive activities in ritual (e.g., Burns and Laughlin, 1979) or the materialization of ideological systems (e.g., DeMarrais et al., 1996) and by dominating

political and economic interests through social coercion or the threat of physical violence.

As an element of political strategy, materialization of specific ideologies can be especially

important, because it can be manipulated to promote, disguise, and justify elite objectives

(DeMarrais et al., 1996, p. 17) and more generally “to guide social action” (Earle, 1997,

p. 10). Control over ritual performance and political ideologies also draws on a second

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 279

form of power, “organizational power,” or “the ability to control a setting in which power

is displayed and enacted” (Wolf, 1990, p. 586). These forms of power are particularly

important in situations where material resources are difficult to control. Mesoamericanist

agency approaches thus treat power as a property of ideational systems and institutional

structures rather than individual actors. In this way, agency perspectives can be thought of as “substantive approaches” to political economy (e.g., Dannhaeuser and Werner, 2002).

This kind of “multicentered” or “depersonalized” view of power implies that inequality

is inherent in all social relations (Foucault, 1982) and not limited to hierarchical political

relations (Robb, 1999, p. 5). Taking this kind of multidimensional perspective has allowed

Mesoamerican archaeologists to explore many different aspects of inequality in economic

systems, for example, the social context and ideologies of production (Inomata, 2001a;

Lesure, 1999a), the role of gender in structuring material transfers (Gillespie and Joyce, 1994;

Joyce, 2000), and the basis for moral authority in storing economic surpluses (Hendon, 2000;

Smyth, 1996). Collectively, these studies challenge political economy models by revealing

that they do not grant enough attention to the social relationships involved in the organization

of manufacturing activities, the cultural contexts in which transactions are made, or the moral

barriers to appropriating socially valued goods for expressing social distinctions. As a result,

Mesoamericanist agency approaches can be divided heuristically into three general themes:

those that deal with the social aspects of production, those that treat the cultural contexts of

circulation, and those that explore the moral dimensions of consumption.

Social aspects of production

Through work on skilled crafting, Mesoamerican archaeologists have begun to explore theways in which the social aspects of production and the meaning and value of the resulting

products are interrelated phenomena. Some social relations, including gender, rank, status,

identity, and kinship, can be recorded in or transcribed onto the physical and technological

properties of finely crafted objects (e.g., Bailey, 1998), making these items “socially valued

goods” (Spielmann, 2002, p. 195). These goods are skillfully crafted products, “whose

principal use is rhetorical and social, goods that are simply incarnated signs” (Appadurai,

1986, p. 38). They represent “high culture” (Baines and Yoffee, 1998, p. 235) and are

characterized by qualitative concepts of “ideal behavior, honor, and eliteness, with persons

of political influence, with aesthetics, and thus with the concept of morality” (Helms, 1993,p. 149). In essence, socially valued goods are materializations of cultural and moral order and

encapsulations of cosmic power, often evidenced by distinctive markings, designs, colors,

brilliance, and sounds. Hosler’s (1994) work, for example, reveals that some West Mexican

societies manipulated the physical properties of metals to produce certain sounds and colors.

Bells made of varying alloys were especially important because they served as costume

elements and musical instruments in rituals to enhance the phenomenological experience of

the performance through reflective golden or silvery colors, which referenced solar and lunar

qualities, respectively. In this way, sound and color combined to constitute an expression of

divine power, such that those who could manipulate these properties embodied supernatural

qualities. These associations would have been significant, particularly for the ruling elite,because such celestial ties underwrote the legitimacy of their more pragmatic activities as

political leaders (Helms 1979, p. 92).

Two projects that have recently employed agency approaches to examine the social

aspects of craft production raise important questions about the manner by which certain

craft items are endowed with prestige-enhancing or sacred qualities and how these qualities

can be transferred to their possessors. The first project is a study of elite involvement in

Springer



280 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

craft activities at the Classic Maya center of Aguateca, Guatemala, by Inomata (2001a;

Inomata and Stiver, 1998; Inomata and Triadan, 2000; Inomata et al., 2002). Informed by

Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of “cultural capital,” Inomata argues that elite families exercised

and demonstrated their competence by engaging in highly skilled craft activities that resulted

in the production of ideologically charged objects. Archaeologists working in other ClassicMaya royal courts also have observed evidence for the manufacture of specialty items, such

as paper, textiles, polychrome pottery, obsidian eccentrics, pyrite mirrors, polished axes, and

shell and greenstone ornaments (e.g., Andrews and Fash, 1992; Ball, 1993; Hendon, 1997;

Kovacevich etal., 2004; Reents-Budet etal., 1994; Urquizu etal., 1999; Webster etal., 1998).

However, in most cases it is unclear precisely how these objects functioned as cultural capital,

apart from statically embodying the knowledge of skilled crafting and possibly some kind of

aesthetic formulation. Unfortunately, the level of archaeological detail may be insufficient

to answer this question. For Inomata, however, the social relations involved in the crafting

process, primarily elite Maya culture based on historically informed aesthetics and esoteric

knowledge, conferred meaning and value upon these products. As a result, these objects

allowed Aguateca’s elite families to materialize, assert, and sustain their political ideologies,

which played a crucial role in power relations and competition among elite factions. The key

to maintaining elites as a distinct group was in limiting the knowledge necessary to encode

and decode messages stored in crafts—an argument that relates to Hayden’s (1995b, 1998)

idea of “prestige technology.” Such technologies are difficult to identify archaeologically,

however, and cannot be demonstrated simply by observing that certain social groups did not

appear to have knowledge of skilled crafting because they did not (or were not allowed to)

express it in the way elites did.

The second project examines women’s involvement in craft production in Aztec centralMexico (Brumfiel, 1987a, 1991, 1996a,b, 1997, 1998). Based on archaeological and ethno-

historical data from Huexotla, Xico, and Xaltocan, Brumfiel argues that women in Aztec

society accessed prestige in the process of making cloth and other politically significant

craft activities. There, the act of production may have held more significance than the final

products, partly because such practices provided opportunities for social evaluation, and also

because the social relationships that structured productive action—gender, occupation, class

(and possibly age and ethnicity)—allowed artisans to invest their products with their own

beliefs and values that were sometimes at odds with those of the state (Brumfiel, 1996a).

For example, “women who cooked and wove competently were women who were most ca-pable of advancing men’s claims to positions of status and power” (Brumfiel, 1991, p. 245)

because men presented political allies with the products of women’s labor, such as cloth,

food, and drink. In this way Aztec women were not always “passive victims of emerging

political power” but sometimes “participated in the definition of its limits” (Brumfiel, 1991,

p. 246; see also Burkhart, 1997). Thus, aspects of social identity were embodied in skillfully

crafted objects, which circulated beyond the household and were used to gain status and

prestige in a variety of ways. This work, and that of Hendon (1995, 1997, 1999a) and others

(Beaudry-Corbett and McCafferty, 2002; Hamann, 1997; Joyce, 1992, 1993; McAnany and

Plank, 2001; McCafferty and McCafferty, 1991, 2000; Nelson, 2002), reveals that some

women’s craft activities are culturally constituted, situated in “prestige structures” (Ortner and Whitehead, 1981), and richly imbued with symbolic meaning.

Cultural contexts of circulation

A second focus of recent research on Mesoamerican economies is the cultural context of

material transfers, specifically, the means of acquiring or provisioning oneself with socially

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 281

valued goods through gift exchange (e.g., Foias, 2002; Garraty, 2000; LeCount, 1996, 1999,

2001; Lesure, 1999b; Stanton and Negr on, 2001). Such contexts can have powerful implica-

tions for determining and fixing the value and meaning of specialty items (Werner and Bell,

2004), as well as for creating, sustaining, and testing social relationships (Osteen,2002). The

importance of this approach is revealed in Mauss’s (1990 [1925], pp. 5–6) observation thatgifting represents a “system of total services,” where the process of reciprocal exchanges

engenders a constant flow of resources and wealth, while at the same time it condenses a

number of different dimensions—political, economic, religious, artistic—into a single mo-

ment or mechanism (Godelier, 2004, p. 11). In this way, gifting provides a way of “giving

something up” while “keeping something coming” (Weiner, 1992). For Mesoamerican ar-

chaeologists, gift exchange systems are important analytical domains because they represent

microcosms, however deeply layered, of the overall society in which they are embedded.

LeCount (1996, 1999) explores the ways in which decorated pottery from the lowland

Maya site of Xunantunich, Belize, and a nearby hamlet, San Lorenzo, served as prestige goods

that circulated through gift-exchange networks during ritual feasts to further elite political

ambitions. She finds that, during the Late Classic II phase (ca. A.D. 670–790), elaborately

decorated pottery was concentrated in elite households at Xunantunich, suggesting that gift

exchange took place horizontally within elite Maya culture. During the Terminal Classic

(ca. A.D. 790–1000), however, when Xunantunich was in decline, these types of pottery

were found dispersed equally among households of all statuses. She argues that to maintain

power local elites abandoned competitive or rival displays of prestige goods and attempted to

consolidate community support by gifting luxury items down through the social hierarchy.

While the spatial and contextual evidence does not necessarily differentiate gifting from

other types of exchange at Xunantunich, this study is still important because it providesa framework for investigating how the economic, political, and religious aspects of gift

exchange can interrelate simultaneously and how gift exchange can be dynamic, changing

over time to meet the needs of shifting social or political conditions.

The observation that gifts can be used to attract and hold clients and to build alliances

with peers (e.g., Cancian, 1965; Ekholm, 1972; Helms, 1979; Strathern, 1971) suggests that

reciprocal exchange systems in noncapitalist economies may be linked to strategic modes

of acquisition that allow one to call on others to accomplish certain tasks. One of these

modes is characterized as a “moral economy” (e.g., Bowles and Gintis, 1998; Cheal, 1989),

where exchange is regulated by traditional norms that define an individual’s social status, andwhere access to goods and services is shaped more by social obligations than by calculated

returns. Although outside the scope of this review because it concerns a historical economic

system, an example by Monaghan (1990a, 1996) is nevertheless useful to consider because

it has potential implications for prehispanic cases. Monaghan analyzes the microeconomic

processes by which fiestas, including both life-crisis events (baptisms, marriages, funerals)

and civil-religious hierarchy duties (mayordom´ ıas or cofrad ıas), have been financed through

the Mixtec saa sa’a gift exchange in Santiago Nuyoo, Oaxaca, since the early 1800s. The saa

sa’a system is structured in such a way that it permits individuals to ask fellow community

members for assistance in the form of “gifts” of money and staples (e.g., tortillas, beans,

firewood) needed to fund a fiesta. Because every household in the community periodicallyhosts a fiesta, asking for gifts is an acceptable way to provision one’s household in preparation

for a fiesta. Written records of gift exchanges are never discarded because they chronicle a

history of reciprocal social relations that can indicate who is likely to reciprocate in the future.

Similar to Appadurai (1986) and others (Gell, 1992; Myers, 2001), Monaghan observes

that the strategic dimension of the gift reveals broad continuities between gift and other kinds

of exchange. This allows him to view goods “not as ‘gifts’ or ‘commodities’ in an absolute

Springer



282 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

sense but as moving through phases, with overlapping social features, such as exchangeability

and alienability, emphasized or de-emphasized at different times” (Monaghan, 1996, p. 501).

The archaeological importance of this observation is that the exchange patterns we observe in

the material record cannot be explained in rigid terms of either gift or commodity exchange

(e.g., Sheets, 2000; Spence, 1996) but rather must be understood as the composite result of a wide range of acquisition choices in response to changing political, economic, social, and

ecological circumstances (e.g., Cancian, 1990). While diverse acquisition strategies might

obscure the material outcomes of gift exchange in the archaeological record, it is nevertheless

important to recognize the crucial role of reciprocity in gifting for local social transactions,

such as marriage, homicide, and funerals. For example, Pohl (1994, 2003, pp. 176–177)

describes the social and economic significance of mutual gift exchange in negotiating bride-

price in Late Postclassic Nahua, Mixtec, and Tlaxcalan marriages in which the relatives of

both the bride and the groom exchanged gifts of cacao, cotton, textiles, and precious stones

and metals that advertised the prestige of the givers, solidified their social standing in the

community, and formalized the bonds between their kin groups.

Moral dimensions of consumption

By examining the structure and organization of feasting and other festive activities,

Mesoamericanist archaeologists have considered the relationship between the contexts of

consumption and the moral dimensions of consumptive behavior. Context and action together

shape the possibilities for asserting claims to positions of status and power and for validating

relationships of hierarchy and alliance (Brumfiel, 2004a; Carrier and Heyman, 1997; Douglasand Isherwood, 1979). Consumption can be viewed as politico-symbolic drama that provides

an arena for highly condensed symbolic representations of social relations (Cohen, 1974).

In Brumfiel’s (1987b, p. 676) study of Aztec elite feasting and gifting at Huexotla, she con-

cludes that consumption provides an “idiom of political negotiation.” Similarly, throughout

Mesoamerica, agricultural festivals, political banquets, tribute feasts, and pilgrimage fairs

offered the potential for manipulation by individuals or groups attempting to make state-

ments about their relative positions in the social order (e.g., Clendinnen, 1991; Dur an, 1971;

Farriss, 1984; Sahagun, 1950; Tozzer, 1941). In recent years, Mesoamericanists have con-

tributed a number of useful studies of the social relations of feasting and consumption (e.g.,Brown, 2001; Brumfiel, 2004a; Clark and Blake, 1994; Fox, 1996; Garraty, 2000; Hendon,

2003; LeCount, 2001; Lesure, 1999c; Masson, 1999; Reents-Budet et al., 2000; Smith et al.,

2003; Yaeger, 2000). Some of these studies combine analyses of consumption with those of

craft production and gift exchange, resulting in novel arguments about long-term changes

in the social relations of economic systems (see Smith and Schreiber, 2005, pp. 202–203).

For example, LeCount (2001) examines the social relations of gift exchange at Late Classic

Xunantunich during “diacritical feasts” (Dietler, 1996, p. 98), which are marked by high

cuisine and styles of consumption that serve to naturalize concepts of ranked differences in

social status. She proposes that specialized serving paraphernalia served as political currency

that was strategically displayed and gifted by their possessors to establish diplomatic tieswhile underscoring social distinctions. Chocolate was especially important in the feasting

process because its high value and cosmological significance endowed its consumers with

prestige and cultural capital: “cacao condensed religious, economic, and social meaning into

a single referent and, as a drink, was the symbolic cue for the consummation of political

rituals” (LeCount, 2001, p. 948). In the end, LeCount suggests that political competition and

alliance building among elite factions at Xunantunich stimulated production of these items

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 283

and possibly increased the frequency and lavishness of diacritical feasts during which they

were exchanged.

In another example, Fox (1994, 1996) examines the ways in which the built environment

articulates with social values and practices related to consumption at ballgames and feasts

among the Lenca in west-central Honduras during the Late Classic. He argues that ballgamesas consumptive events provided strategic settings for the negotiation of power relations.

These rituals centered on the redistribution of food and wealth through wagers and gift

exchanges (see also Hill and Clark,2001) and on the symbolic renewal of agricultural fertility.

Ballcourts, as places of powerful supernatural associations, served as stages for rituals in

which political conflict could be mapped onto and resolved through cosmological drama.

“The sequencing of these dramas included a phase in which social and cosmological conflicts

were acted out in the ballgame, with a feast then offered as a claim to resolution and an attempt

to transform competition and conflict into coordination and allegiance” (Fox, 1996, p. 494).

Thus, these settings were “focused gatherings” (Goffman, 1961, pp. 9–10) that created and

reconstituted communities through orchestrated participation in coordinated labor, shared

ritual, and collective consumption; they enabled certain behaviors while disabling others.

However, while ballcourts most likely were the foci of intense politicking (Santley et al.,

1991), it is hard to imagine that individuals who acquired power and prestige through the

ballgame could avoid the checks and balances that maintained value systems in other social

or economic realms.

The work of both LeCount and Fox indicates that the process of consumption did not

take place as an isolated sector of Mesoamerican economies; it was intimately bound with

demand, preference, and acquisition (see also Evans, 1998, p. 170; Folan et al., 2001,

pp. 251–253; Inomata, 2001b, p. 33; McAnany, 2004a, pp. 154–157). This observationparallels Spielmann’s (1998, 2002) conclusion that ritual consumption can serve as an engine

for economic growth since the ritual context can define “the nature, timing, personnel, and

management of production” (Spielmann, 2002, p. 202). In Mesoamerica, conquest and

colonial accounts of feasts and festivals reveal that many of these proceedings were lavish

affairs that required great quantities of raw and processed materials as well as specialty crafts,

such as those that fashioned elaborate costumes, ritual paraphernalia, and serving dishes.

Such festive labor mobilization variably involves what Rappaport (1968, p. 410) refers to as

the “ritual mode of production,” in which ritual demands for foods, crafts, and gifts embed

productive activities in ceremonial contexts that regulate surplus production and communalconsumption (e.g., Firth, 1967; Friedman, 1975; Malinowski, 1922). In these situations,

production results in inalienable goods (Weiner, 1992), meaning that the social and political

relationships within which they are produced determine their value, circulation, and ultimate

consumption. The rights of allocation belong to the host or sponsor of the rite or ceremony,

which could be an individual patron, a social group (i.e., lineage, clan, sodality, “house”), or

the entire community.

Recent work at Cancuen in the Maya lowlands provides one perspective on how consump-

tion articulated with the ritual mode of production in reinforcing elite political ideologies

that structured the ways in which socially valued goods were produced and used. There,

Kovacevich and colleagues (2003, 2004) present evidence for nonelite participation in thefabrication of ritual paraphernalia, including pyrite mirrors and greenstone ornaments. While

production appears to have been controlled or administered by elite personnel through a

monopoly on ritual and esoteric knowledge, they argue for a multistage or “segmented” man-

ufacturing process, with groups of various social ranks participating in particular production

stages. The resulting skillfully crafted goods were used as status-reinforcing objects during

public display and ritual and in funerary rites. Thus, as Demarest (1992) argues, ritual and

Springer



284 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

ceremony, which were of key importance for building and justifying political power, served

as a motor for the production of wealth and subsistence goods that were required to finance

these affairs and the political elite necessary to manage them. However, within this web of

elite manipulation of ritual and economy, nonelite part-time artisans may have become, to

some extent, empowered actors able, through economic agency connected with production,to negotiate their social and economic positions as well as the cultural restraints placed on

them. Thus, control over the materialization of worldview and ideology can be examined

archaeologically through conjunctive analysis of the social contexts of production and

consumption.

Toward a ritual economy approach

Current theorizing about prehispanic Mesoamerican economies increasingly situates the his-

torical particulars of power and economy in the broader social and cultural contexts in which

they are “entangled” (Thomas, 1991). This is being accomplished with what I refer to as rit-

ual economy, a theoretical construct that concerns the materialization of socially negotiated

values and beliefs through acquisition and consumption aimed at managing meaning and

shaping interpretation (Wells, 2003b). I am not suggesting that there was “a Mesoamerican

ritual economy,” as to emphasize one of many possible sets of economic activities directed at

nonutilitarian ends. Instead, I view ritual economy as a burgeoning theoretical and explana-

tory framework for generating research questions and corresponding test implications for

archaeological study. While the concept of ritual (most often in terms of “religious ritual”)

has long been used to explain certain aspects of economic systems in ancient Mesoamerica(e.g., Conrad and Demarest, 1984; Demarest, 1992; Hammond, 1999; Hill and Clark, 2001;

Lesure and Blake, 2002; Masson, 1999; McAnany, 1995; Pohl, 2003), the concept of ritual

economy has been used much less frequently in anthropology, and usually for examining

the economic aspects of religious ritual (e.g., Hefner, 1983; Kim, 1994; Kockelman, 1999;

Metcalf, 1981) or the ritual structuring of manufacture and exchange (e.g., Piot, 1992;

Starrett, 1995; Teja, 2001).

Alternative to these kinds of studies, I see the ritual economy approach as representing

a newly emerging analytical trend that considers the varied economic pathways by which

worldview and belief are embodied in material culture—sometimes by way of religiousritual but also through other kinds of ritualized practices (e.g., Clark, 2004b; McAnany,

2004b). Here it is useful to follow Rappaport’s (1999, p. 24) understanding of ritual, which

he characterizes as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts

and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers.” Performance is a key aspect of

ritual for economic theory because it emphasizes communication and cultural reproduction,

which Rappaport (1999, p. 144) and others (Geertz, 1977; Turner, 1974) believe are facilitated

through speech as well as through the use and manipulation of material objects with symbolic

content that are sometimes distributed and sometimes withheld (Godelier, 1999, p. 33;

Weiner, 1992, p. 152). Douglas and Isherwood (1979, p. 65) refer to these actions as “marking

services” because “goods, in this perspective, are ritual adjuncts” and “consumption is a ritualprocess whose primary function is to make sense of the inchoate flux of events.” Symbolic

content plays an important role because of the “coherent ties between different kinds of

meanings, which make political participation compelling, identity meaningful, and ritual

effective” (Robb, 1998, p. 330).

Recent discussion of Maya political organization emphasizes the heavy reliance on ritual

performance, symbolic communication of narrative, and the display and consumption of

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 285

sacred objects as a basis of power for Maya rulers (Demarest, 1989; Fox and Cook, 1996;

Freidel, 1992; Harrison-Buck, 2004; Inomata, 2001a; Joyce, 1996; Sharer and Golden, 2003;

Stuart, 1998; Taube, 1998). However, in many of these cases it is unclear exactly how Maya

rulers derived power from these practices. What do performance, communication, and sa-

cred objects do exactly? It has been shown quite convincingly how such practices may havelegitimized power. Demarest (1992), for example, argues that the organizational structure

and the physical form (i.e., built environment) of the Maya state reflects a cosmological

model that reproduces, in microcosm, the ideals and values of Maya society through fantas-

tic ritual performances of Maya narratives in carefully designed ceremonial centers. Pomp

and ceremony thus served to explain and legitimize the world order. But the question re-

mains: Does ritual performance actually create power? Perhaps a more difficult question to

answer is how do certain goods condense and encode narratives as a means of encoding

social values and moral order? A very promising direction for future research on this issue is

Brumfiel’s (2004a, pp. 225–226; 2004b, pp. 241–242) use of the concept of “figured worlds”

(Holland et al., 1998), narratives and objectified moral behavior that materialize values and

beliefs about how the world should work and how people should act in it. She uses this

idea to argue that festive occasions in Postclassic central Mexico not only allowed individ-

uals to make statements about their own relative positions in Aztec society but also offered

opportunities for individuals to define the positions of others within a broader, morally com-

pelling cosmological order. Brumfiel employs pictorial documents and written descriptions

of contact-period Aztec culture to infer the meanings of design motifs and compositions on

pottery vessels. By comparing these attributes with pottery form and function, as well as the

different combinations of dishes used in feasts, she shows the contrasting ways in which the

Aztec expressed narratives—and the social and moral values they embodied—in materialform and through ritual action. She argues that Aztec narratives “were invoked not just to

legitimate actions by appealing to tradition, but to provide orienting models of the way that

the world should and did operate and to provide focus for the formation of identity and the

exercise of agency” (Brumfiel, 2004b, p. 258).

As a theoretical framework, ritual economy builds on political economy and agency

approaches in two ways. First, by viewing specialty crafts as socially valued objects, ritual

economy avoids the tautology of prestige goods, as Robb (1999) and others (Cobb, 1993,

pp. 64–65; Peregrine, 1992, pp. 69–70) point out, “prestige is what is gained through use

of prestigious goods, and prestigious goods are those whose use gives one prestige” (Robb,1999, p. 6). In ritual economy, “prestige goods” are replaced with “social valuables” (Helms,

1993) or “socially valued goods” (Spielmann, 2002), thereby shifting the emphasis from

hierarchical relations of prestige structures to consideration of the diverse ways in which

goods condense and encode social principles, cultural or economic values, and sacred tenets

(e.g., Carrasco, 1999). Mills (2004), for example, argues that the concept of inalienable

goods is more constructive than that of prestige goods for understanding the role of social

valuables in societies where inequalities are based on ritual knowledge. This is an untested

loose end for ritual economy approaches in prehispanic Mesoamerica, however, and needs

to be evaluated systematically with empirical data.

In the ritual economy approach, the focus is on the dynamic and on-going processesof negotiating and materializing a group’s values, morals, and ideals through ritual action.

This can be studied by investigating the conditions, contexts, and practices by which material

objects are endowed with symbolic or sacred characteristics through the nexus of production,

distribution, and consumption (e.g., Godelier, 1999), along the lines of Renfrew’s (2004)

theory of “material engagement” that seeks to expose the ways in which material objects

mediate human interactions with the natural world. Value and meaning of symbolic objects

Springer



286 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

are associative properties and related to their life histories. Sources of value and meaning

derive from a variety of conditions, including their workmanship, associated iconography or

cosmic significance, the rare materials from which they are fashioned, and as evidence for

the owner’s ability to manage distant contacts with foreign cultures (e.g., Brumfiel, 1998;

Clark, 1996; Clark and Houston, 1998; Gillespie and Joyce, 1994; Gillespie, 1999; Helms,1992; Hendon, 1999a; Hosler, 1994; Inomata, 2001a; Joyce, 2000; Moholy-Nagy, 1997;

Stark, 1999). Thus, these goods are significant above and beyond utilitarian or exchange

value because their substance and movement in the economic system materially embodies

and substantiates beliefs about sociality. Helms (1998, pp. 164–173; see also Helms, 2004),

for example, argues that “durable tangible objects” that embody various mystical powers

(such as crafted heirlooms, craft goods obtained from distant sources, and animal remains

that materialize cosmic forces) evidence privileged access to ancestors and thus have the

potential to influence or structure perceptions about social relations.

Lesure’s (1999b) analysis of value in early Mesoamerican hierarchical societies provides

one example. He argues that greenstone artifacts maintained gradations of value according

to their forms, composition, and cultural contexts of consumption, all of which may have

influenced their alienability. In another case, Hendon (2000) proposes that memory of the

history of use may influence an object’s value and its association with sacred individuals

such as ancestors. She suggests that burials, caches, and other kinds of “storage” (including

narratives) at Copan, Honduras, are important mnemonics of built space that remind their

inhabitants of past events and practices, thereby reinforcing or challenging the legitimacy of

claims to value and meaning.

The second way that ritual economy builds on the advances made in political economy

and agency theories is by understanding “power” not as a property or attribute of a personthat allows one to impose one’s will on others (i.e., Weberian views of “power to” and “power

over”) but more broadly as the management of meanings and the shaping of interpretations;

in this way, power is enabling as much as it is restrictive. Individuals and groups, differently

positioned in social relations and processes of domination, use economic resources available

to them to try to fix their interpretations of meanings, to prevent others’ interpretations

from being heard, and to garner the material outcome of these efforts. This is conceptually

similar to Wolf’s (1990) notion of “structural power,” which encompasses the “flow of

action” that enables some kinds of behavior and disables other kinds. Ethnographic and

ethnohistoric research in Mesoamerica (Farriss, 1984; Monaghan, 1996; Vogt, 1976) andbeyond (e.g., Brandt, 1994; Dillehay, 1992; Dye, 1995; Helms, 1979; Junker, 1999; Kertzer,

1988) indicates that individuals can derive a significant degree of power and authority by

organizing and managing ritual situations or “social dramas” in which symbols critical to

legitimizing authority (and their material correlates) are manipulated in public settings. Thus,

creating and expressing social power through ceremonialism in the context of controlling

sacred knowledge, as well as the organization of rituals that materialize it, characterizes one

pathway to power for cultural agents. In Enga society in New Guinea, for example, Wiessner

and Tumu (1998, p. 379) argue that performance and participation in regional ritual cults,

which manifest new ways of thinking about social and exchange relationships, served as a

way (and justification) for big men to obtain socially valued goods, prestige, and power fromother sources.

While this view of power recognizes the “conflicts and compromises among people

with different problems and possibilities by virtue of their membership in different alliance

networks” (Brumfiel, 1992, p. 551), it runs the risk of being equated too broadly with social

identity or the ability to experience (Robb, 1998, p. 339), making it difficult to escape

equifinality in the archaeological record (e.g., Joyce and Winter, 1996). However, if power is

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 287

expressed by materializing worldview and belief, then we may be able to measure it along two

axes: acquisition and consumption. Acquisition of material culture critical to ritual practice

can involve the ritual mode of production (Rappaport, 1968), pilgrimage exchange (Freidel,

1981), and especially gift-giving (Douglas and Isherwood, 1979). Along these lines, Mauss’s

(1990 [1925], pp. 14–17) “fourth obligation” of gift-giving, sacrifice, may be particularlyuseful for Mesoamericanists (see Fox, 1996; Monaghan, 1990b). Consumption can take place

at the household or community level through mortuary ritual (McIntosh, 1999), diacritical

feasting (Dietler, 2001), and potlatching (Codere, 1950), as well as at the larger scale of the

polity such as in theater states (Geertz, 1980) or galactic polities (Tambiah, 1977). These

examples are potential avenues of productive research for Mesoamerican archaeologists

interested in ritual economy (see also Brumfiel, 2004a,b; Demarest, 1992; Hendon, 1999b,

2000; Lesure, 1999a; McAnany, 1995, 2004b). The next step is to develop a unified analytical

vocabulary that can serve as a source of heuristics for future work.

Conclusion

This review of prehispanic Mesoamerican economies is far from complete because it glosses

over an array of complex conceptual issues that deserve more consideration than can be

provided here. Still, it is clear that the recent literature is shaped largely by political economy

and agency approaches. Political economy approaches tend to take the form of models that

variously emphasize the role of redistribution, finance, debt, and core/periphery relations.

The diverse agency approaches consider social aspects of production, cultural contexts

of distribution, and moral dimensions of consumption. Neither approach is an integratedtheoretical movement. However, by variously combining and interchanging methods and

theories, they increasingly share a common concern for the cultural logics of economic

systems and how culturally constituted economies expose opportunities for contests among

people in asymmetrical relations of power.

The approaches are distinct, however, defined by the various ways that production, dis-

tribution, and consumption intersect at any one point in time. Embedded in this equation

are questions such as, Who is involved in production and at what scales and levels of inten-

sity? Who controls the output of productive efforts? Who oversees distribution? and What

determines who gets what quantities of certain items to consume? Each variable defines acontinuum along which values and motivations are constantly shifting. Different political

economy and agency models examine different points in these shifting relations. Finance

or debt models, for example, may focus on situations in which a few full-time artisans

working for elite clients make high-value, low-bulk items whose allocation is strictly under

the control of their patrons. In contrast, agency approaches that consider the social relations

of manufacture may examine the social identity of the craftspeople to reveal the ways in

which artisans empower themselves through economic agency to negotiate the relations of

production. These models are not necessarily in conflict but instead seek to explain different

situations that may apply in some areas at some times.

In addition to studies that take political economy or agency as their interpretive frame for understanding Mesoamerican economies, current research increasingly considers the vari-

ous ways in which material processes and nonmaterial motives intersect to create catalysts

for culture change. I refer to this emerging approach as ritual economy because it knits

together two areas of study that usually are sequestered within separate analytical domains.

The ritual economy approach focuses on the analysis of the process of materializing world-

view and belief, which opens up struggle and conflict over establishing, conveying, and

Springer



288 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

managing meaning and value. Variation in the process of materialization leads to contrasting

developmental trajectories, which give rise to diverse organizational strategies and local,

historically contingent contexts for social action. In a broad sense, this approach questions

the analytical usefulness of dichotomizing human action as “rational” or “nonrational.” It

would be inappropriate and overreaching, however, to suggest that political economy andagency approaches should be abandoned for ritual economy. Instead, I suggest that ritual

economy is viewed as a sort of “paradigmatic experiment” (Kuhn, 1970) that has the poten-

tial to reorient archaeological imagination toward understanding how premodern economic

systems articulated with other social dimensions and how they were involved in long-term

contests over meaning, value, and power.

Ultimately, a cultural theory of acquisition and consumption such as ritual economy must

bridge the essentialist opposition between individual agents and social institutions. This

will require a reformulation or clarification of our ideas of acquisition and consumption

(Douglas, 1982), and recognition that “goods and preferences are both product of and

players in a system of social communication” (Hefner, 1983, p. 675). It also is worth the

effort to devote more energy to discerning precisely which factors underlie the diverse

economic approaches discussed in this review, with the greater goal of exploring how their

complex interplay, driven by the actions of variably knowledgeable cultural agents, may

have shaped the societies we investigate. Moreover, we should take advantage of studying

dynamic and compounded relationships to sharpen our conceptual tools so we can better

imagine how these systems worked in diverse ways under variable circumstances. Finally,

we need to acknowledge much more explicitly that rational economic choice is culturally and

historically constituted and intimately tied to motivation, which presents specific challenges

to archaeological study. In addressing these kinds of problems, the study of prehispanicMesoamerican economies has much to offer economic theory, but only if archaeologists work

more closely with economic anthropologists and economic historians than has been the case.

One way this can be accomplished is by orienting future research toward transdisciplinary

studies that incorporate multiple, comparative perspectives on the operation of ritual and

economic systems over time.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price for their invitation to prepare

this article. Many of the ideas presented here derive from productive dialog with friends and colleagues over

the past few years, especially Frances F. Berdan, John K. Chance, George L. Cowgill, Karla L. Davis-Salazar,

Arthur A. Demarest, William L. Fash, Patricia A. McAnany, Ben A. Nelson, Enrique Rodr ıguez-Alegr ıa,Edward M. Schortman, Barbara L. Stark, Patricia A. Urban, and John M. Watanabe. I am particularly grateful

to Davis-Salazar, McAnany, Schortman, Urban, Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, Heather I. McKillop, and Michael E.

Smith, who shared with me information about their research, copies of their publications, and their thoughts

on Mesoamerican economies. Davis-Salazar, Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Schortman, Smith, and three

anonymous reviewers also kindly read drafts of this article and provided very useful comments that improved

the clarity and substance of my arguments.

References cited

Adams, R. M. (1966). The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico, Aldine

Press, Chicago.

Adams, R. M. (1983). Heartland of Cities, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Aldenderfer, M. (1993). Ritual, hierarchy, and change in foraging societies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12: 1–40.

Alexander, R. T. (1999). The emerging world system and colonial Yucatan: The archaeology of core-

periphery integration, 1780–1847. In Kardulias, P. N. (ed.), World Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, pp. 103–124.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 289

Andrews, E. W., and Fash, B. W. (1992). Continuity and change in a royal Maya residential complex at

Copan. Ancient Mesoamerica 3: 63–88.

Angulo, J. (1993). Water control and communal labor during the Formative and Classic periods in central

Mexico (ca. 1000 B.C.–A.D. 650). In Scarborough, V. L., and Isaac, B. L. (eds.), Economic Aspects of Water Management in the Prehispanic New World , JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 151–220.

Aoyama, K. (2001). Classic Maya state, urbanism, and exchange: Chipped stone evidence of the CopanValley and its hinterland. American Anthropologist 103: 346–360.

Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In Appadurai, A. (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–63.

Appadurai, A. (1988). Putting hierarchy in its place. Cultural Anthropology 3: 36–49.

Bailey, D. (ed.) (1998). The Archaeology of Value: Essays on Prestige and the Processes of Valuation , BAR

International Series, No. 730, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford.

Baines, J., and Yoffee, N. (1998). Order, legitimacy, and wealth in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In

Feinman, G. M., and Marcus, J. (eds.), Archaic States, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe,

NM, pp. 199–260.

Ball, J. W. (1993). Pottery, potters, palaces, and polities: Some socioeconomic land political implications

of Late Classic Maya ceramic industries. In Sabloff, J. A., and Henderson, J. S. (eds.), Lowland Maya

Civilization in the Eighth Century A.D., Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 243–272.Beaudry-Corbett, M., and McCafferty, S. D. (2002). Spindle whorls: Household specialization at Ceren. In

Ardren, T. (ed.), Ancient Maya Women, AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 52–67.

Bender, B. (1990). The dynamics of nonhierarchical societies. In Upham, S. (ed.), The Evolution of Political

Systems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 247–263.

Berdan, F. F. (1977). Distributive mechanisms in the Aztec economy. In Halperin, R., and Dow, J. (eds.),

Peasant Livelihood: Studies in Economic Anthropology and Cultural Ecology, St. Martin’s Press, New

York, pp. 91–101.

Berdan, F. F., and Smith, M. E. (1996). Imperial strategies and core-periphery relations. In Berdan, F. F.,

Blanton, R. E., Boone, E. H., Hodge, M. G., Smith, M. E., and Umberger, E., Aztec Imperial Strategies,

Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 209–217.

Berdan, F. F., Blanton, R. E., Boone, E. H., Hodge, M. G., Smith, M. E., and Umberger, E. (1996). Aztec Imperial Strategies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Bey, G. J., and Pool, C. A. (eds.) (1992). Ceramic Production and Distribution: An Integrated Approach,

Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

Blanton, R. E. (1983). Factors underlying the origin and evolution of market systems. In Ortiz, S. (ed.),

Economic Anthropology, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, pp. 51–66.

Blanton, R. E. (1996). The Basin of Mexico market system and the growth of empire. In Berdan, F. F.,

Blanton, R. E., Boone, E. H., Hodge, M. G., Smith, M. E., and Umberger, E., Aztec Imperial Strategies,

Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 47–84.

Blanton, R. E. (1998). Beyond centralization: Steps toward a theory of egalitarian behavior. In Feinman, G.

M., and Marcus, J. (eds.), Archaic States, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 135–

172.

Blanton, R. E. (2001). Markets. In Carrasco, D. (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures:The Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 168–171.

Blanton, R. E., and Feinman, G. M. (1984). The Mesoamerican world system. American Anthropologist 86:

673–682.

Blanton, R. E., and Hodge, M. G. (1996). Data on market activities and production specialization of Tlatoani

centers in the Basin of Mexico and areas north of the Basin. In Berdan, F. F., Blanton, R. E., Boone,

E. H., Hodge, M. G., Smith, M. E., and Umberger, E., Aztec Imperial Strategies, Dumbarton Oaks,

Washington, DC, pp. 243–246.

Blanton, R. E., Feinman, G. M., Kowalewski, S. A., and Peregrine, P. N. (1996). A dual-processual theory

for the evolution of Mesoamerican civilization. Current Anthropology 37: 1–31.

Bloch, M. (1977). Symbols, songs, dance, and features of articulation. European Journal of Sociology 15:

55–81.

Boehm, C. (1993). Egalitarian behavior and reverse dominance hierarchy. Current Anthropology 34: 227–254.Bohannan, P. (1955). Some principles of exchange and investment among the Tiv. American Anthropologist

57: 60–70.

Boone, E. H., and Willey, G. R. (eds.) (1988). The Southeast Classic Maya Zone, Dumbarton Oaks,

Washington, DC.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Harvard University Press,

Cambridge, MA.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA.

Springer



290 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Bowles, S., and Gintis, H. (1998). The moral economy of communities: Structured populations and the

evolution of pro-social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior 19: 3–25.

Brander, J. A., and Taylor, M. S. (1998). The simple economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus model

of renewable resource use. The American Economic Review 88: 119–138.

Brandt, E. A. (1994). Egalitarianism, hierarchy, and centralization in the pueblos. In Wills, W. H., and

Leonard, R. D. (eds.), The Ancient Southwestern Community, University of New Mexico Press,Albuquerque, pp. 9–23.

Braswell, G. E. (2003). Obsidian exchange spheres. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 131–158.

Braudel, F. (1981). The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century,

University of California Press, Berkeley.

Brown, L. A. (2001). Feasting on the periphery: The production of ritual feasting and village festivals at the

Ceren site, El Salvador. In Dietler, M., and Hayden, B. (eds.), Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 368–390.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1980). Specialization, market exchange, and the Aztec state: A view from Huexotla. Current Anthropology 21: 459–478.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1987a). Elite and utilitarian crafts in the Aztec state. In Brumfiel, E. M., and Earle, T. K. (eds.),

Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 102–118.Brumfiel, E. M. (1987b). Consumption and politics at Aztec Huexotla. American Anthropologist 89: 676–

686.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1991). Weaving and cooking: Women’s production in Aztec Mexico. In Gero, J. M., and

Conkey, M. W. (eds.), Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.

224–251.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1992). Distinguished lecture in archeology: Breaking and entering the ecosystem—gender,

class, and faction steal the show. American Anthropologist 94: 551–567.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1994). Factional competition and political development in the New World: An introduction.

In Brumfiel, E. M., and Fox, J. W. (eds.), Factional Competition and Political Development in the NewWorld , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–13.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1996a). Figurines and the Aztec state: Testing the effectiveness of ideological domination. In

Wright, R. P. (ed.), Gender and Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 143–166.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1996b). The quality of tribute cloth: The place of evidence in archaeological argument.

American Antiquity 61: 453–462.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1997). Tribute cloth production and compliance in Aztec and colonial Mexico. Museum Anthropology 21: 55–71.

Brumfiel, E. M. (1998). The multiple identities of Aztec craft specialists. In Costin, C. L., and Wright, R. P.

(eds.), Craft and Social Identity, American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 145–152.

Brumfiel, E. M. (2004a). Materiality, feasts, and figured worlds in Aztec Mexico. In DeMarrais, E., Gosden,

C., and Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World ,McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, pp. 225–237.

Brumfiel, E. M. (2004b). Meaning by design: Ceramics, feasting, and figured worlds in Postclassic Mexico. In

Hendon, J. A., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Mesoamerican Archaeology, Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 239–264.Burkhart, L. M. (1997). Mexica women on the home front. In Schroeder, S., Wood, S., and Haskett, R. (eds.),

Indian Women of Early Mexico, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, pp. 25–54.

Burns, T., and Laughlin, C. D., Jr. (1979). Ritual and social power. In d’Aquili, E. G., Laughlin, C. D., Jr., and

McManus, J. (eds.), The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Approach, Columbia University

Press, New York, pp. 249–279.

Cancian, F. (1965). Economics and Prestige in a Mayan Community, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA.

Cancian, F. (1990). The Zinacantan cargo waiting lists a reflection of social, political, and economic changes,

1952 to 1987. In Stephen, L., and Dow, J. (eds.), Class, Politics, and Popular Religion in Mexico and Central America, American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 63–76.

Carmack, R. M. (1996). Mesoamerica at Spanish contact. In Carmack, R. M., Gasco, J., and Gossen,

G. H. (eds.), The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization,

Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pp. 80–121.Carrasco, D. (ed.) (1999). Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

Carrasco, P. (1982). The political economy of the Aztec and Inca states. In Collier, G. A., Rosaldo, R., and

Wirth, J. (eds.), The Inca and Aztec States: 1400–1800, Academic Press, New York, pp. 23–40.

Carrasco, P. (1983). Some theoretical considerations about the role of the market in ancient Mexico. In Ortiz,

S. (ed.), Economic Anthropology, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, pp. 67–82.

Carrier, J. G., and Heyman, J. M. (1997). Consumption and political economy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 355–373.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 291

Chapman, A. M. (1985). Los hijos del copal y la candela: Ritos agrarios y tradici ´ on oral de los lencas de Honduras, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City.

Charlton, T. H. (1984). Production and exchange: Variables in the evolution of a civilization. In Hirth, K.

G. (ed.), Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,

pp. 17–42.

Chase, A. F. (1992). Elites and the changing organization of Classic Maya society. In Chase, D. Z., andChase, A. F. (eds.), Mesoamerican Elites: An Archaeological Assessment, University of Oklahoma Press,

Norman, pp. 30–49.

Chase, A. F. (1998). Planeacion cıvica e integracion de sitio Caracol, Belice: definiendo una economıa

administrada del per ıodo clasico maya. In Los investigaciones de la cultura maya, Vol. I, Universidad

Autonoma de Campeche, Mexico, pp. 26–44.

Chase, A. F., and Chase, D. Z. (2001). Ancient Maya causeways and site organization at Caracol, Belize.

Ancient Mesoamerica 12: 273–281.

Chase-Dunn, C., and Hall, T. D. (1991). Conceptualizing core/periphery hierarchies for comparative study.

In Chase-Dunn, C., and Hall, T. D. (eds.), Core/periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, Westview

Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 5–44.

Cheal, D. (1989). Strategies of resource management in household economies: Moral economy or political

economy? In Wilk, R. R. (ed.), The Household Economy: Reconsidering the Domestic Mode of Production, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 11–22.

Clark, G. (1986). Symbols of Excellence: Precious Materials as Expressions of Status, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge.

Clark, J. E. (1996). Craft specialization and Olmec civilization. In Wailes, B. (ed.), Craft Specialization and Social Evolution: In Memory of V. Gordon Childe, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology

and Anthropology, Philadelphia, pp. 187–199.

Clark, J. E. (1997). The arts of government in early Mesoamerica. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:

211–234.

Clark, J. E. (2000). Towards a better explanation of hereditary inequality: A critical assessment of natural and

historic agents. In Dobres, M.-A., and Robb, J. E. (eds.), Agency in Archaeology, Routledge, London,

pp. 92–112.

Clark, J. E. (2004a). Mesoamerica goes public: Early ceremonial centers, leaders, and communities. In

Hendon, J. A., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Mesoamerican Archaeology, Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 43–

72.

Clark, J. E. (2004b). The birth of Mesoamerican metaphysics: Sedentism, engagement, and moral superiority.

In DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., and Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World , McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, pp. 205–224.

Clark, J. E., and Blake, M. (1994). The power of prestige: Competitive generosity and the emergence of rank

societies in lowland Mesoamerica. In Brumfiel, E. M., and Fox, J. W. (eds.), Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 17–30.

Clark, J. E., and Houston, S. D. (1998). Craft specialization, gender, and personhood among the post-conquest

Maya of Yucatan, Mexico. In Costin, C. L., and Wright, R. P. (eds.), Craft and Social Identity, AmericanAnthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 31–46.

Clark, J. E., and Lee, T. A. (1984). Formative obsidian exchange and the emergence of public economies in

Chiapas, Mexico. In Hirth, K. G. (ed.), Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica, University of New

Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 235–274.

Clastres, P. (1989). Society Against the State, Zone Books, New York.

Clendinnen, I. (1991). Aztecs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cobb, C. R. (1993). Archaeological approaches to the political economy of nonstratified societies. In Schiffer,

M. B. (ed.), Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 5, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, pp. 43–100.

Codere, H. (1950). Fighting with Property, University of Washington Press, Seattle.

Cohen, A. (1974). Two-dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in ComplexSociety, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Conrad, G. W., and Demarest, A. A. (1984). Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Costin, C. L., and Wright, R. P. (eds.) (1998). Craft and Social Identity, American Anthropological

Association, Arlington, VA.

Cowgill, G. L. (1993a). Distinguished lecture in archaeology: Beyond criticizing new archaeology. American Anthropologist 95: 551–573.

Cowgill, G. L. (1993b). Comments on Andrew Sluyter, long-distance staple transport in western Mesoamerica:

Insights through quantitative modeling. Ancient Mesoamerica 4: 201–203.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 293

Earle, T. K. (1977). A reappraisal of redistribution: Complex Hawaiian chiefdoms. In Earle, T. K., and

Ericson, J. E. (eds.), Exchange Systems in Prehistory, Academic Press, New York, pp. 213–232.

Earle, T. K. (1978). Economic and Social Organization of a Complex Chiefdom: The Halelea District, Kaua’i, Hawaii, Anthropological Papers No. 63, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Earle, T. K. (1987). Specialization and the production of wealth: Hawaiian chiefdoms and the Inka empire.

In Brumfiel, E. M., and Earle, T. K. (eds.), Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, pp. 64–75.

Earle, T. K. (1991). Toward a behavioral archaeology. In Preucel, R. W. (ed.), Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past, Occasional Papers, No. 10, Center for Archaeological Investigations,

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, pp. 83–95.

Earle, T. K. (1994). Wealth finance in the Inka empire: Evidence from the Calchaqu ı Valley, Argentina.


Earle, T. K. (1997). How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory, Stanford University

Press, Palo Alto, CA.

Earle, T. K. (2002). Bronze Age Economics: The Beginnings of Political Economies, Westview Press, Boulder,

CO.

Earle, T. K. (2003). Anthropology must have archaeology. In Gillespie, S. D., and Nichols, D. L. (eds.),

Archaeology is Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 17–26.Earle, T. K., and D’Altroy, T. N. (1982). Storage facilities and state finance in the upper Mantaro Valley,

Peru. In Ericson, J. E., and Earle, T. K. (eds.), Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange, Academic Press, New

York, pp. 265–290.

Earle, T. K., and D’Altroy, T. N. (1989). The political economy of the Inka empire: The archaeology of

power and finance. In Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (ed.), Archaeological Thought in America, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, pp. 183–204.

Ekholm, K. (1972). Power and Prestige: The Rise and Fall of the Congo Kingdom, SKRIV Service AB,

Uppsala, Sweden.

Elster, J. (1998). Emotions and economic theory. Journal of Economic Literature 36: 47–74.

Ensminger, J. (ed.) (2002). Theory in Economic Anthropology, AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA.

Ericson, J. E., and Baugh, T. G. (eds.) (1993). The American Southwest and Mesoamerica: Systems of Prehistoric Exchange, Plenum, New York.

Evans, S. T. (1998). Sexual politics in the Aztec palace: Public, private, and profane. RES 33: 167–183.

Farriss, N. (1984). Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival, Princeton

University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Fedick, S. L. (ed.) (1996). The Managed Mosaic: Ancient Maya Agriculture and Resource Use , University

of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Feinman, G. M. (1995). The emergence of inequality: A focus on strategies and processes. In Price, T. D.,

and Feinman, G. M. (eds.), Foundations of Social Inequality, Plenum, New York, pp. 255–279.

Feinman, G. M. (1998). Scale and social organization: Perspectives on the archaic state. In Feinman, G.

M., and Marcus, J. (eds.), Archaic States, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 95–

133.

Feinman, G. M. (1999). Rethinking our assumptions: Economic specialization at the household scale inancient Ejutla, Oaxaca, Mexico. In Skibo, J., and Feinman, G. M. (eds.), Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 81–98.

Feinman, G. M. (2000a). Corporate/network: A new perspective on leadership in the American southwest.

In Diehl, M. A. (ed.), Hierarchies in Action: Cui Bono?, Occasional Papers, No. 27, Center for

Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, pp. 152–180.

Feinman, G. M. (2000b). Corporate/network: New perspectives on models on political action and the

Puebloan southwest. In Schiffer, M. B. (ed.), Social Theory in Archaeology, University of Utah Press,

Salt Lake City, pp. 31–51.

Feinman, G. M. (2000c). Dual-processual theory and social formations in the southwest. In Mills, B. J. (ed.),

Alternative Leadership Strategies in the Prehispanic Southwest, University of Arizona Press, Tucson,

pp. 207–224.

Feinman, G. M. (2004). Archaeology and political economy: Setting the stage. In Feinman, G. M., andNicholas, L. M. (eds.), Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies, University of Utah Press,


Feinman, G. M., and Neitzel, J. (1984). Too many types: An overview of sedentary prestate societies in the

Americas. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 39–102.

Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (1992). Pre-hispanic interregional interaction in southern Mexico: The

Valley of Oaxaca and the Ejutla Valley. In Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (eds.), Resources, Power,and Interregional Interaction, Plenum, New York, pp. 75–116.

Springer



294 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (1993). Shell ornament production in Ejutla: Implications for

highland-coastal interaction in ancient Oaxaca. Ancient Mesoamerica 4: 103–119.

Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (eds.) (2004a). Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies,

University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (2004b). Unraveling the prehispanic highland Mesoamerican economy:

Production, exchange, and consumption in the Classic period Valley of Oaxaca. In Feinman, G. M., andNicholas, L. M. (eds.), Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies, University of Utah Press,


Feinman, G. M., Lightfoot, K. G., and Upham, S. (2000). Political hierarchies and organizational strategies

in the Puebloan southwest. American Antiquity 65: 449–470.

Firth, R. W. (1967). Tikopia Ritual and Belief , Beacon Press, Boston.

Firth, R. W. (1983). Magnitudes and values in kula exchange. In Leach, J., and Leach, E. (eds.), The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 89–102.

Flanagan, J. G. (1989). Hierarchy in ‘simple’ egalitarian societies. Annual Review of Anthropology 18:

245–266.

Flannery, K. V. (1972). Cultural evolution of civilizations. Annual Review of Systematics and Ecology 3:

399–426.

Flannery, K. V. (1968). The Olmec and the Valley of Oaxaca: A model for inter-regional interaction inFormative times. In Benson, E. P. (ed.), Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, Dumbarton Oaks,

Washington, DC, pp. 79–117.

Foias, A. E. (2002). At the crossroads: The economic basis of political power in the Petexbatun region. In

Masson, M. A., and Freidel, D. A. (eds.), Ancient Maya Political Economies, AltaMira, Walnut Creek,

CA, pp. 223–248.

Folan, W. J., Gunn, J. D., and Domınguez Carrasco, M. d. R. (2001). Triadic temples, central plazas, and

dynastic palaces: A diachronic analysis of the royal court complex, Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico. In

Inomata, T., and Houston, S. D. (eds.), Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, Volume 2: Data and Case

Studies, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 223–265.

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In Dreyfus, H., and Rainbow, P. (eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 208–226.

Fox, J. G. (1994). Putting the Heart Back in the Court: Ballcourts and Ritual Action in Mesoamerica, Ph.D.

dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Fox, J. G. (1996). Playing with power: Ballcourts and political ritual in southern Mesoamerica. Current Anthropology 37: 483–509.

Fox, J. W., and Cook, G. W. (1996). Constructing Maya communities: Ethnography for archaeology. Current Anthropology 37: 811–821.

Frank, A. G. (1966). The development of underdevelopment. Monthly Review 18: 17–31.

Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil, Monthly Review Press, New York.

Frank, R. H. (1988). Passions with Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions, Norton, New York.

Frankenstein, S., and Rowlands, M. J. (1978). The internal structure and regional context of early iron age

society in south-western Germany. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology of London 15: 73–112.Freidel, D. A. (1979). Culture areas and interaction spheres: Contrasting approaches to the emergence of

civilization in the Maya lowlands. American Antiquity 44: 36–54.

Freidel, D. A. (1981). The political economics of residential dispersion among the lowland Maya. In Ashmore,

W. (ed.), Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 371–382.

Freidel, D. A. (1983). Lowland Maya political economy: Historical and archaeological perspectives in light

of intensive agriculture. In MacLeod, M. J., and Wasserstrom, R. (eds.), Spaniards and Indians inSoutheastern Mesoamerica: Essays on the History of Ethnic Relations, University of Nebraska Press,

Lincoln, pp. 40–63.

Fried, M. H. (1967). The Evolution of Political Society, Random House, New York.

Friedberg, C. (1977). The development of traditional agricultural practices in western Timor. In Friedman,

J., and Rowlands, M. (eds.), The Evolution of Social Systems, Duckworth, London, pp. 137–171.

Freidel, D. A. (1992). Trees of life: Ahau as idea and artifact in Classic lowland Maya civilization. InDemarest, A. A., and Conrad, G. W. (eds.), Ideology and Pre-Columbian Civilizations, School of

American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 115–133.

Friedman, J. (1975). Religion as economy and economy as religion. Ethnos 40: 46–63.

Friedman, J., and Rowlands, M. J. (1977). Notes towards an epigenetic model of evolution of “civilization.” In

Friedman, J., and Rowlands, M. (eds.), The Evolution of Social Systems, Duckworth, London, pp.201–276.

Fry, R. E. (1979). The economics of pottery at Tikal, Guatemala: Models of exchange for serving vessels.


Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 295

Garraty, C. P. (2000). Ceramic indices of Aztec eliteness. Ancient Mesoamerica 11: 323–340.

Geertz, C. (1963). Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian

Towns, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Geertz, C. (1977). Centers, kings, and charisma: Reflections on the symbolics of power. In Ben-David, J.,

and Clark, T. (eds.), Culture and Its Creators, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 150–171.

Geertz, C. (1980). Negara: The Balinese Theater State in the Nineteenth Century, Princeton University Press,Princeton, NJ.

Gell, A. (1992). Inter-tribal commodity barter and reproductive gift exchange in old Melanesia. In Humphrey,

C., and Hugh-Jones, S. (eds.), Barter, Exchange, and Value: An Anthropological Approach, Cambridge


Giddens, A. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory, Macmillan, London.

Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, University of

California Press, Berkeley.

Gillespie, S. D. (1999). Olmec thrones as ancestral altars: The two sides of power. In Robb, J. E. (ed.), MaterialSymbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, Occasional Papers, No. 26, Center for Archaeological

Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, pp. 224–253.

Gillespie, S. D. (2001). Personhood, agency, and mortuary ritual: A case study from the ancient Maya.

Journal of Anthropological Anthropology 20: 73–112.Gillespie, S. D., and Joyce, R. A. (1994). Gendered goods: The symbolism of Maya hierarchical exchange

relations. In Claassen, C. P., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Case Studies in the Archaeology of Women: North America and Mesoamerica, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 189–210.

Godelier, M. (1999). The Enigma of the Gift, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Godelier, M. (2004). What Mauss did not say: Things you give, things you sell, and things that must be kept.

In Werner, C., and Bell, D. (eds.), Values and Valuables: From the Sacred to the Symbolic, AltaMira,

Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 3–20.

Godelier, M., and Strathern, M. (eds.) (1991). Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in

Melanesia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, IN.

Gosden, C. (1989). Debt, production, and prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8: 355–387.

Graham, E. (2002). Perspectives on economy and theory. In Masson, M. A., and Freidel, D. A. (eds.), Ancient Maya Political Economies, AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 398–418.

Hall, B. A. (1997). Spindle whorls and cotton production at Middle Classic Matacapan and in the gulf

lowlands. In Stark, B. L., and Arnold, P. J. (eds.), Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the AncientGulf Lowlands, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, pp. 115–135.

Halperin, R. (1994). Cultural Economies: Past and Present, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Halstead, P., and O’Shea, J. M. (1972). A friend in need is a friend indeed: Social storage and the origins

of social ranking. In Renfrew, C., and Shennan, S. (eds.), Ranking, Resource, and Exchange, Cambridge


Hamann, B. (1997). Weaving and the iconography of prestige: The royal gender symbolism of lord 5

flower’s/lady 4 rabbit’s family. In Claassen, C. P., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Women in Prehistory: North

America and Mesoamerica, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, pp. 153–172.Hammond, N. (1999). Ritual and economy of the Preclassic Maya: Recent evidence from Cuello, Belize.

In Bray, W., and Manzanilla, L. (eds.), The Archaeology of Mesoamerica: Mexican and European Perspectives, British Museum Press, London, pp. 83–96.

Harrison, P. D. (1977). The rise of the bajos and the fall of the Maya. In Hammond, N. (ed.), Social Process

in Maya Prehistory: Studies in Honour of Sir Eric Thompson, Academic Press, London, pp. 469–508.

Harrison, P. D., and Turner, B. L. (1978). Implications from agriculture for Maya prehistory. In Harrison, P. D.,

and Turner, B. L. (eds.), Prehistoric Maya Agriculture, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque,

pp. 337–374.

Harrison-Buck, E. (2004). Nourishing the animus of lived space through ritual caching. In McAnany, P. A.

(ed.), K’axob: Ritual, Work, and Family in an Ancient Maya Village , Cotsen Institute of Archaeology,

University of California, Los Angeles, pp. 65–86.

Hassig, R. (1985). Trade, Tribute and Transportation: The Sixteenth-century Political Economy of the Valleyof Mexico, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Hayden, B. (1990). Nimrods, piscators, pluckers, and planters: The emergence of food production. Journal

of Anthropological Archaeology 9: 31–69.

Hayden, B. (1995a). Pathways to power: Principles for creating socioeconomic inequalities. In Price, T. D.,

and Feinman, G. M. (eds.), Foundations of Social Inequality, Plenum, New York, pp. 15–86.

Hayden, B. (1995b). The emergence of prestige technologies and pottery. In Barnette, W., and Hoopes, J. W.

(eds.), The Emergence of Pottery, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 257–266.

Springer



296 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Hayden, B. (1998). Practical and prestige technologies: The evolution of material systems. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5: 1–55.

Hayden, B. (2001a). Fabulous feasts: A prolegomenon to the importance of feasting. In Dietler, M., and

Hayden, B. (eds.), Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power,

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 23–64.

Hayden, B. (2001b). Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief: The dynamics of social inequality. In Feinman,G. M., and Price, T. D. (eds.), Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook , Academic Press, New

York, pp. 231–272.

Hayden, B., and Gargett, R. (1990). Big man, big heart? A Mesoamerican view of the emergence of complex

society. Ancient Mesoamerica 1: 3–20.

Hefner, R. W. (1983). The problem of preference: Economic and ritual change in highlands java. Man 18:

669–689.

Helms, M. W. (1979). Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Helms, M. W. (1988). Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Helms, M. W. (1992). Long-distance contacts, elite aspirations, and the age of discovery in cosmological

context. In Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (eds.), Resources, Power and Interregional Interaction,

Plenum, New York, pp. 157–174.Helms, M. W. (1993). Craft and the Kingly Ideal: Art, Trade, and Power, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Helms, M. W. (1998). Access to Origins: Affines, Ancestors, and Aristocrats, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Helms, M. W. (2004). Tangible materiality and cosmological others in the development of sedentism. In

DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., and Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World , McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge,


Hendon, J. A. (1995). Hilado y tejido en las tierras bajas mayas en la epoca prehispanica: Tecnologıa y

relaciones sociales de la produccion textil. Yaxkin 13: 57–70.

Hendon, J. A. (1997). Women’s work, women’s space, and women’s status among the Classic-period Maya

elite of the Copan Valley, Honduras. In Claassen, C. P., and Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, pp. 33–46.

Hendon, J. A. (1999a). Multiple sources of prestige and the social evaluation of women in prehispanic

Mesoamerica. In Robb, J. E. (ed.), Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, Occasional

Papers, No. 26, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,

pp. 257–276.

Hendon, J. A. (1999b). The Pre-Classic Maya compound as the focus of social identity. In Grove, D. C., and

Joyce, R. A. (eds.), Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC,

pp. 97–125.

Hendon, J. A. (2000). Having and holding: Storage, memory, knowledge, and social relations. American Anthropologist 102: 42–53.

Hendon, J. A. (2003). Feasting at home: Community and house solidarity among the Maya of southeastern

Mesoamerica. In Bray, T. L. (ed.), The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States

and Empires, Kluwer Academic, New York, pp. 203–233.Henry, J. F. (2004). The social origins of money: The case of Egypt. In Wray, L. R. (ed.), Credit and State

Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes, Elgar, Northampton, MA, pp. 79–98.

Herskovitz, M. (1952). Economic Anthropology, Knopf, New York.

Hill, W. D., and Clark, J. E. (2001). Sports, gambling, and government: America’s first social compact?

American Anthropologist 103: 331–345.

Hirth, K. G. (1978). Interregional trade and the formation of prehistoric gateway communities. American Antiquity 43: 35–45.

Hirth, K. G. (1984a). The analysis of prehistoric economic systems: A look to the future. In Hirth, K. G. (ed.),

Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 281–

302.

Hirth, K. G. (ed.) (1984b). Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica, University of New Mexico Press,

Albuquerque.Hirth, K. G. (1996). Political economy and archaeology: Perspectives on exchange and production. Journal

of Archaeological Research 4: 203–239.

Hirth, K. G. (1998). The distributional approach: A new way to identify marketplace exchange in the

archaeological record. Current Anthropology 39: 451–476.

Hirth, K. G. (2000). Ancient Urbanism at Xochicalco: The Evolution and Organization of a PrehispanicSociety, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Hodge, M. G. (1992). The geographical structure of Aztec imperial-period market systems. National

Geographic Research & Exploration 8: 428–445.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 297

Hodge, M. G., and Smith, M. E. (eds.) (1994). Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm, Institute for

Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany.

Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Jr., Skinner, D., and Cain, C. (1998). Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds,

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Hosler, D. (1994). The Sounds and Colors of Power: The Sacred Metallurgical Technology of Ancient West

Mexico, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Hosler, D. (2003). Metal production. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican

World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 159–171.

Houston, S. D., and McAnany, P. A. (2003). Bodies and blood: Critiquing social constructionism in Maya

archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Anthropology 22: 26–41.

Inomata, T. (2001a). The power and ideology of artistic creation: Elite craft specialists in Classic Maya

society. Current Anthropology 42: 321–349.

Inomata, T. (2001b). King’s people: Classic Maya courtiers in a comparative perspective. In Inomata, T., and

Houston, S. D. (eds.), Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, Volume 1: Theory, Comparison, and Synthesis ,

Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 27–53.

Inomata, T., and Stiver, L. R. (1998). Floor assemblages from burned structures at Aguateca, Guatemala.

Journal of Field Archaeology 25: 431–452.

Inomata, T., and Triadan, D. (2000). Craft production by Classic Maya elites in domestic settings: Data fromrapidly abandoned structures at Aguateca, Guatemala. Mayab 13: 57–66.

Inomata, T., Triadan, D., Ponciano, E., Pinto, E., Terry, R. E., and Eberl, M. (2002). Domestic and political

lives of Classic Maya elites: The excavation of rapidly abandoned structures at Aguateca, Guatemala.

Latin American Antiquity 13: 305–330.

Isaac, B. L. (1996). Approaches to Classic Maya economies. Research in Economic Anthropology 17:

297–334.

Isaac, B. L. (ed.) (1986). Economic Aspects of Prehispanic Highland Mexico, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.

Isbell, B. J. (1978). To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village, Institute of Latin

American Studies, University of Texas, Austin.

Jacobs, D. P., Kalai, E., Kamien, M. I., and Schwartz, N. L. (eds.) (1998). Frontiers of Research in EconomicTheory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Johnson, G. A. (1982). Organizational structure and scalar stress. In Renfrew, C., Rowlands, M. J., and

Segraves, B. A. (eds.), Theory and Explanation in Archaeology, Academic Press, New York, pp. 389–421.

Joyce, A. A., and Winter, M. (1996). Ideology, power, and urban society in pre-Hispanic Oaxaca. Current Anthropology 37: 33–47.

Joyce, R. A. (1992). Dimensiones simbolicas del traje en monumentos clasicos mayas: La construccion del

genero a traves del vestido. In Asturias de Barrios, L., and Fernandez Garcıa, D. (eds.), Indumentaria y el tejido mayas a trav´ es del tiempo, Museo Ixchel de Traje Indıgena de Guatemala, Guatemala City,

pp. 29–38.

Joyce, R. A. (1993). Women’s work: Images of production and reproduction in pre-hispanic southern Central

America. Current Anthropology 34: 255–274.

Joyce, R. A. (1996). The construction of gender in Classic Maya monuments. In Wright, R. P. (ed.), Gender

and Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 167–195.Joyce, R. A. (2000). Heirlooms and houses: Materiality and social memory. In Joyce, R. A., and Gillespie,

S. D. (eds.), Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies, University of

Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 189–212.

Junker, L. L. (1999). Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms,

University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.

Kan, S. (1986). The nineteenth-century Tlingit potlatch: A new perspective. American Ethnologist 13:

191–212.

Keesing, R. M. (1991). Killers, big men, and priests on Malaita: Reflections on a Melanesian troika system.

In McGlynn, F., and Tuden, A. (eds.), Anthropological Approaches to Political Behavior, University of

Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 83–105.

Kelley, J. C. (1976). Alta Vista: Outpost of Mesoamerican empire on the tropic of cancer. In Las fronteras

de Mesoam´ erica: XIV mesa redonda, Sociedad Mexicana de Antropologıa, Mexico City, pp. 21–40.Kepecs, S. M. (2003). Salt sources and production. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic

Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 126–130.

Kepecs, S. M., and Kohl, P. (2003). Conceptualizing macroregional interaction: World-systems theory and

the archaeological record. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic MesoamericanWorld , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 14–20.

Kepecs, S., Feinman, G. M., and Boucher, S. (1994). Chichen Itza and its hinterland: A world-system

perspective. Ancient Mesoamerica 5: 141–158.

Springer



298 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Kertzer, D. I. (1988). Ritual, Politics, and Power, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Killion, T. W. (ed.) (1992). Gardens of Prehistory: The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture in Greater

Mesoamerica, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Kim, S.-O. (1994). Burials, pigs, and political prestige in Neolithic China. Current Anthropology 35: 119–141.

Kipp, R. S., and Schortman, E. M. (1989). The political impact of trade in chiefdoms. American Anthropologist

91: 370–385.Kirch, P. V. (2001). Polynesian feasting in ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archaeological contexts: A

comparison of three societies. In Dietler, M., and Hayden, B. (eds.), Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 168–184.

Knight, V. J. (2001). Feasting and the emergence of platform mound ceremonialism in eastern North

America. In Dietler, M., and Hayden, B. (eds.), Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives,

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 311–333.

Kockelman, P. (1999). Collection of copal among the Q’eqchi’ Maya: Shifting liaisons and lasting salience.

Research in Economic Anthropology 20: 163–194.

Kohl, P. L. (1989). The use and abuse of world systems theory: The case of the “pristine” west Asian state.

In Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. C. (ed.), Archaeological Thought in America, Cambridge University Press,


Kohler, T., and Van West, K. (1996). The calculus of self-interest and the development of cooperation:Sociopolitical development and risk among the northern Anasazi. In Taintor, J. A., and Taintor, B.

G. (ed.), Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwest, Addison-Wesley,

Reading, MA, pp. 169–196.

Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process. In Appadurai, A.

(ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge University Press,


Kovacevich, B., Bishop, R., Neff, H., and Pereira, K. (2003). Sistemas economicos y de produccion mayas:

Nuevos datos y retos en Cancuen. In Laporte, J. P., Arroyo, B. L., Escobedo, H. L., and Mejia, H.

(eds.), XVI simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Museo Nacional de Arqueologıa

y Etnologıa, Guatemala City, pp. 143–158.

Kovacevich, B., Cook, D., and Beach, T. (2004). Areas de actividad domestica en Cancuen: Perspectivas

basadas en datos lıticos y geoquımicos. In Laporte, J. P., Arroyo, B. L., Escobedo, H. L., and Mejia, H.

(eds.), XVII simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Museo Nacional de Arqueologıa

y Etnologıa, Guatemala City, pp. 897–912.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Laffont, J.-J. (ed.) (1995). Advances in Economic Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

LeCount, L. J. (1996). Pottery and Power: Feasting, Gifting, and Displaying Wealth among the Lateand Terminal Classic Lowland Maya, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of

California, Los Angeles.

LeCount, L. J. (1999). Polychrome pottery and political strategies in late and Terminal Classic lowland Maya

society. Latin American Antiquity 10: 239–259.

LeCount, L. J. (2001). Like water for chocolate: Feasting and political ritual among the Late Classic Maya

at Xunantunich, Belize. American Anthropologist 103: 935–953.Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Lesure, R. G. (1999a). Figurines as representations and products at Paso de la Amada, Mexico. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9: 209–220.

Lesure, R. G. (1999b). On the genesis of value in early hierarchical societies. In Robb, J. E. (ed.), Material

Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, Occasional Papers, No. 26, Center for Archaeological


Lesure, R. G. (1999c). Platform architecture and activity patterns in an Early Formative village in Chiapas,

Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 26: 391–406.

Lesure, R. G., and Blake, M. (2002). Interpretive challenges in the study of early complexity: Economy,

ritual, and architecture at Paso de la Amada, Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21: 1–

24.

Loewenstein, G. (2000). Emotions in economic theory and economic behavior. American Economic Review90: 426–432.

Lucero, L. J. (1999). Water control and Maya politics in the southern Maya lowlands. In Bacus, E. A.,

and Lucero, L. J. (eds.), Complex Polities in the Ancient Tropical World , Archeological Papers, No. 9,

American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 35–49.

Lucero, L. J. (2002). The collapse of the Classic Maya: A case for the role of water control. American Anthropologist 104: 814–826.

Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific, E. P. Dutton, New York.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 299

Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Marcus, G. (1983). A review of ethnographic research on elites in complex societies. In Marcus, G. (ed.),

Elites: Ethnographic Issues, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 29–39.

Marcus, J., and Flannery, K. V. (1996). Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s

Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson, London.Marx, K. (1964). Pre-capitalist Economic Foundations, Norton, New York.

Maschner, H. D. G. (1995). Review of “A complex culture of the British Columbia plateau: Traditional

stl’atl’imx resource use,” edited by B. Hayden. American Antiquity 60: 378–380.

Masson, M. A. (1999). Animal resource manipulation in ritual and domestic contexts at Postclassic Maya

communities. World Archaeology 31: 93–120.

Masson, M. A. (2003a). Laguna de On and Caye Coco: Economic differentiation at two Postclassic island

communities in northern Belize. In Iannone, G., and Connell, S. V. (eds.), Perspectives on Ancient Maya Rural Complexity, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, pp. 119–

130.

Masson, M. A. (2003b). Economic patterns in northern Belize. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The

Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 269–281.

Masson, M. A., and Freidel, D. A. (eds.) (2002). Ancient Maya Political Economies, AltaMira, Walnut Creek,CA.

Matheny, R. T. (1976). Maya lowland hydraulic systems. Science 193: 639–646.

Matheny, R. T. (1978). Northern Maya lowland water-control systems. In Harrison, P. D., and Turner, B. L.

(eds.), Prehispanic Maya Agriculture, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 185–210.

Matheny, R. T., Gurr, D. L., Forsyth, D. W., and Hauck, F. R. (1983). Investigations at Edzna, Campeche, Mexico, Vol. 1, Part 1: The Hydraulic System, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, No.

46, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

Mauss, M. (1990 [1925]). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, W. W. Norton,

New York.

McAnany, P. A. (1991). Structure and dynamics of intercommunity exchange. In Hester, T. R., and Shafer, H.

J. (eds.), Maya Stone Tools: Selected Papers from the Second Maya Lithic Conference, Prehistory Press,

Madison, WI, pp. 271–293.

McAnany, P. A. (1992). A theoretical perspective on the elites and the economic transformation of Classic

period Maya households. In Ortiz, S., and Lees, S. (eds.), Understanding Economic Process, University

Press of America, Lanham, MD, pp. 85–103.

McAnany, P. A. (1993). The economics of social power and wealth among eighth century Maya households.

In Sabloff, J. A., and Henderson, J. (eds.), Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century A.D.,Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 65–89.

McAnany, P. A. (1995). Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society, University

of Texas Press, Austin.

McAnany, P. A. (2004a). Appropriative economies: Labor obligations and luxury goods in ancient Maya

societies. In Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (eds.), Archaeological Perspectives on Political

Economies, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 145–165.McAnany, P. A. (ed.) (2004b). K’axob: Ritual, Work, and Family in an Ancient Maya Village, Cotsen Institute

of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.

McAnany, P. A., and Isaac, B. L. (eds.) (1989). Prehistoric Maya Economies of Belize, JAI Press, Greenwich,

CT.

McAnany, P. A., and Plank, S. (2001). Perspectives on actors, gender roles, and architecture at Classic Maya

courts and households. In Inomata, T., and Houston, S. D. (eds.), Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya,

Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 84–129.

McCafferty, S. D., and McCafferty, G. G. (1991). Spinning and weaving as female gender identity in

Post-classic Mexico. In Scheville, M., Berlo, J., and Dwyer, E. (eds.), Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica

and the Andes: An Anthology, Garland, New York, pp. 19–44.

McCafferty, S. D., and McCafferty, G. G. (2000). Textile production in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico. Ancient

Mesoamerica 11: 39–54.McCall, J. C. (1999). Structure, agency, and the locus of the social: Why poststructural theory is good for

archaeology. In Robb, J. E. (ed.), Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, Occasional Pa-

pers, No. 26, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, pp. 16–

20.

McGee, R. J. (1990). Life, Ritual, and Religion among the Lacandon Maya, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA.

McGuire, R. H. (1983). Breaking down cultural complexity: Inequality and heterogeneity. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 6: 91–142.

Springer



300 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

McGuire, R. H. (1986). Economics and modes of production in the prehistoric southwestern periphery.

In Mathien, F. J., and McGuire, R. H. (eds.), Ripples in the Chichimec Sea: New Considerations of

Southwestern-Mesoamerican Interaction, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp. 243–269.

McGuire, R. H. (1996). The limits of world-systems theory for the study of prehistory. In Peregrine, P.

N., and Feinman, G. M. (eds.), Pre-columbian World Systems, Prehistory Press, Madison, WI, pp. 51–

64.McIntosh, S. K. (1999). Pathways to complexity: An African perspective. In McIntosh, S. K. (ed.), Beyond

Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–30.

McKillop, H. I. (1996). Ancient Maya trading ports and the integration of long-distance and regional

economies: Wild Cane Cay in south-coastal Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 7: 49–62.

McKillop, H. I. (2002). Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Metcalf, P. (1981). Meaning and materialism: The ritual economy of death. Man 16: 563–578.

Middleton, W. D., Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (2002). Domestic faunal assemblages from the

Classic period Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico: A perspective on the subsistence and craft economies. Journalof Archaeological Science 29: 233–249.

Mills, B. J. (2004). The establishment and defeat of hierarchy: Inalienable possessions and the history of

collective prestige structures in the Pueblo southwest. American Anthropologist 106: 238–251.

Mitchell, W. P. (1988). The defeat of hierarchy: Gambling as exchange in a Sepik society. American Ethnologist 4: 638–657.

Minc, L. D. (1994). Political Economy and Market Economy under Aztec Rule: A Regional Perspective Based on Decorated Ceramic Production and Distribution Systems in the Valley of Mexico , Ph.D. dissertation,

Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Moholy-Nagy, H. (1997). Middens, construction fill, and offerings: Evidence for the organization of Classic

period craft production at Tikal, Guatemala. Journal of Field Archaeology 24: 293–313.

Monaghan, J. (1990a). Reciprocity, redistribution, and the structure of the Mesoamerican fiesta. American Ethnologist 17: 148–164.

Monaghan, J. (1990b). Sacrifice, death, and the origins of agriculture in the codex Vienna. American Antiquity55: 559–569.

Monaghan, J. (1996). Fiesta finance in Mesoamerica and the origins of a gift exchange system. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2: 499–515.

Myers, F. R. (2001). Introduction. In Myers, F. R. (ed.), The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material

Culture, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 3–61.

Nations, J. D., and Nigh, R. B. (1980). The evolutionary potential of Lacandon Maya sustained yield tropical

forest agriculture. Journal of Anthropological Research 36: 1–30.

Nelson, B. A. (1990). Observaciones acerca de la presencia tolteca en la quemada, Zacatecas. In Sodi

Miranda, F. (ed.), Mesoam´ erica y norte de M´ exico siglos IX-XI , Instituto Nacional de Antropologıa e

Historia, Mexico City, pp. 521–540.

Nelson, B. A. (1994). Outposts of Mesoamerican empire and architectural patterning at La Quemada,

Zacatecas. In Wooseley, A. I., and Ravesloot, J. C. (eds.), Culture and Contact: Charles C. Dipeso’sGran Chichimec, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 173–190.

Nelson, B. A. (1995). Complexity, hierarchy, and scale: A controlled comparison between Chaco Canyon,New Mexico, and La Quemada, Zacatecas. American Antiquity 60: 597–618.

Nelson, M. C. (2002). The impact of women on household economies: A Maya case study. In Nelson, S.,

and Rosen-Ayalon, M. (eds.), In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Approaches, AltaMira,


Nichols, D. L. (1982). A Middle Formative irrigation system near Santa Clara Coatitlan in the basin of

Mexico. American Antiquity 47: 133–144.

Nichols, D. L., and Frederick, C. D. (1993). Irrigation canals and chinampas: Recent research in the northern

basin of Mexico. In Scarborough, V. L., and Isaac, B. L. (eds.), Economic Aspects of Water Managementin the Prehispanic New World , JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 123–149.

Nichols, D. L., and Frederick, C. D. (2001). Political economy, agricultural change, and Formative period

irrigation in central Mexico. Paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American

Archaeology, New Orleans.Nichols, D. L., Spence, M. W., and Borland, M. D. (1991). Watering the fields of Teotihuacan: Early irrigation

at the ancient city. Ancient Mesoamerica 2: 119–129.

Nichols, D. L., Brumfiel, E. M., and Neff, H. (2002). Neutrons, markets, cities, and empires: A 1000-year

perspective on ceramic production and distribution in the basin of Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Anthropology 21: 25–82.

Ortner, S. B. (1984). Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Science and History

26: 126–166.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 301

Ortner, S. B., and Whitehead, H. (1981). Introduction: Accounting for sexual meanings. In Ortner, S. B., and

Whitehead, H. (eds.), Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge


Osteen, M. (ed.) (2002). The Question of the Gift: Essays across Disciplines, Routledge, London.

Otis Charlton, C. L. (1993). Obsidian as jewelry: Lapidary production in Aztec Otumba, Mexico. Ancient

Mesoamerica 4: 231–243.Pagden, A. (1986). Hern´ an Cort´ es: Letters from Mexico, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Pailes, R. A., and Whitecotton, J. W. (1979). The greater southwest and the Mesoamerican “world system”:

An exploratory model of frontier relationships. In Savage, J. W., and Thompson, S. I. (eds.), The Frontier:Comparative Studies, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, pp. 105–121.

Parsons, J. R. (1991). Political implications of prehispanic chinampa agriculture in the Valley of Mexico.

In Harvey, H. R. (ed.), Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico: A Two Thousand Year Perspective ,

University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 17–42.

Parsons, L. A., and Price, B. J. (1971). Mesoamerican trade and its role in the emergence of civilization.

Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility 11: 169–195.

Parsons, T. (1951). The Social System, Free Press, New York.

Parsons, T., and Smelser, N. J. (1956). Economy and Society: A Study in the Integration of Economic and

Social Theory, Free Press, Glencoe, IL.Peebles, C. S., and Kus, S. M. (1977). Some archaeological correlates of ranked societies. American Antiquity

42: 421–448.

Peregrine, P. (1991). Some political aspects of craft specialization. World Archaeology 23: 1–11.

Peregrine, P. (1992). Mississippian Evolution: A World-system Perspective, Prehistory Press, Madison, WI.

Phillips, D. A., and Rathje, W. L. (1977). Streets ahead: Exchange values and the rise of the Classic Maya.

In Hammond, N. (ed.), Social Process in Maya Prehistory: Studies in Honour of Sir Eric Thompson,

Academic Press, New York, pp. 103–112.

Piot, C. D. (1992). Wealth production, ritual consumption, and center/periphery relations in a west African

regional system. American Ethnologist 19: 34–52.

Pohl, J. M. D. (1994). Weaving and gift exchange in the Mixtec codices. In Johnson, G., and Sharon, D.

(eds.), Cloth and Curing: Continuity and Exchange in Oaxaca, Museum Papers, Vol. 32, San Diego

Museum of Man, San Diego, CA.

Pohl, J. M. D. (2003). Ritual ideology and commerce in the southern Mexican highlands. In Smith, M. E.,

and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican World . University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City,

pp. 172–177.

Polanyi, K. (1957). The economy as instituted process. In Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., and Pearson, H. (eds.),

Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press, New York, pp. 243–270.

Polanyi, K. (1968). Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, Doubleday, Garden

City, NY.

Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C., and Pearson, H. (eds.) (1957). Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press,

New York.

Pool, C. A. (ed.) (2003). Settlement Archaeology and Political Economy at Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, Mexico ,

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.Potter, D. R., and King, E. M. (1995). A heterarchical approach to lowland Maya socioeconomies. In

Ehrenreich, R. M., Crumley, C. L., and Levy, J. E. (eds.), Heterarchy and the Analysis of ComplexSocieties, American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 17–32.

Potter, J. M. (2000). Pots, parties, and politics: Communal feasting in the American southwest. American

Antiquity 65: 471–492.

Poyer, L. (1993). Egalitarianism in the face of hierarchy. Journal of Anthropological Research 49: 111–133.

Price, B. J. (1971). Prehispanic irrigation agriculture in nuclear America. Latin American Research Review

6: 3–60.

Puleston, D. E. (1976). Terracing, raised fields, and tree cropping in the Maya lowlands: A new perspective

on the geography of power. In Harrison, P. D., and Turner, B. L. (eds.), Pre-hispanic Maya Agriculture,

University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 225–245.

Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People, YaleUniversity Press, New Haven, CT.

Rappaport, R. A. (1999). Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge.

Rathje, W. L. (1971). The origin and development of Classic Maya civilization. American Antiquity 36:

275–285.

Rathje, W. L. (1972). Praise the gods and pass the metates: A hypothesis of the development of lowland

rainforest civilizations in Mesoamerica. In Leone, M. P. (ed.), Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to

Theory and Contributions, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp. 365–392.

Springer



302 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Rathje, W. L. (1973). Classic Maya development and denouement: A research design. In Culbert, T. P. (ed.),

The Classic Maya Collapse, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 405–454.

Rathje, W. L. (2002). The nouveau elite potlatch: One scenario for the monumental rise of early civilizations.

In Masson, M. A., and Freidel, D. A. (eds.), Ancient Maya Political Economies, AltaMira, Walnut Creek,

CA, pp. 31–40.

Rathje, W. L., and Gregory, D. A. (1978). Trade models and archaeological problems: Classic Maya examples.In Lee, T. A., and Navarrete, C. (eds.), Mesoamerican Communication Routes and Culture Contacts,

Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, No. 40, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT,

pp. 147–175.

Rathje, W. L., and McGuire, R. H. (1982). Rich men . . . Poor men. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 705–716.

Rathje, W. L., and Sabloff, J. A. (1973). Ancient Maya commercial systems: A research design for the island

of Cozumel, Mexico. World Archaeology 5: 221–231.

Rattray, E. C. (1988). Un taller de cer amica anaranjado San Martın en Teotihuacan. In Serra, M. C., and

Caceres, C. (eds.), Ensayos de alfarer´ ıa prehisp´ anica e hist ´ orica de Mesoam´ erica: Homenaje a Eduardo Noguera Auza, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, pp. 249–266.

Redfield, R., and Villa Rojas, A. (1934). Chan Kom: A Maya Village, Carnegie Institution, Washington, DC.

Reents-Budet, D., Bishop, R. L., and MacLeod, B. (1994). Painting styles, workshop locations, and pottery

production. In Reents-Budet, D. (ed.), Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period , Duke University Press, Durham, NC, pp. 164–233.

Reents-Budet, D., Bishop, R. L., Taschek, J. T., and Ball, J. W. (2000). Out of the palace dumps: Ceramic

production and use at Buenavista del Cayo. Ancient Mesoamerica 11: 99–121.

Renfrew, C. (1974). Beyond a subsistence economy: The evolution of social organization in prehistoric Europe.

In Moore, C. B. (ed.), Reconstructing Complex Societies: An Archaeological Colloquium, Supplement

to the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 20, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 69–95.

Renfrew, C. (1982). Socio-economic change in ranked societies. In Renfrew, C., and Shennan, S. (eds.),

Ranking, Resource and Exchange, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–9.

Renfrew, C. (2004). Towards a theory of material engagement. In DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., and Renfrew,

C. (eds.), Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World , McDonald Institute

for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, pp. 23–31.

Rice, P. M. (1981). Evolution of specialized pottery production: A trial model. Current Anthropology 22:

219–240.

Rice, P. M. (1987). Economic change in the lowland Maya Late Classic period. In Brumfiel, E. M., and Earle,

T. K. (eds.), Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

pp. 76–85.

Robb, J. E. (1998). The archaeology of symbols. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 329–346.

Robb, J. E. (1999). Secret agents: Culture, economy, and social reproduction. In Robb, J. E. (ed.), Material

Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, Occasional Papers, No. 26, Center for Archaeological


Robben, A. (1989). Sons of the Sea Goddess: Economic Practice and Discursive Conflict in Brazil, Columbia

University Press, New York.

Robin, C. (2003). New directions in Classic Maya household archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 11: 307–356.

Roseberry, W. (1988). Political economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 161–185.

Rosenbaum, B. (1993). With our Heads Bowed: The Dynamics of Gender in a Maya Community, University

of Texas Press, Austin.

Rosenswig, R. M. (2000). Some political processes of ranked societies. Journal of Anthropological Anthropology 19: 413–460.

Roys, R. L. (1957). The Political Geography of the Yucatan Maya, Publication No. 613, Carnegie Institution

of Washington, Washington, DC.

Sabloff, J. A., Rathje, W. L., Freidel, D. A., Connor, J. G., and Sabloff, P. W. (1974). Trade and power

in Postclassic Yucatan: Initial observations. In Hammond, N. (ed.), Mesoamerican Archaeology: New Perspectives, Duckworth, London, pp. 397–416.

Sahagun, F. B. d. (1950). Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain , School of AmericanResearch, Santa Fe, NM, and University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Sahlins, M. D. (1965). On the sociology of primitive exchange. In Banton, M. (ed.), The Relevance of Models

for Social Anthropology, Monographs of the Association of Social Anthropologists, No. 1, Tavistock,

London, pp. 139–236.

Sahlins, M. D. (1972). Stone Age Economics, Aldine-Atherton, Chicago.

Sahlins, M. D. (1981). Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of theSandwich Islands Kingdom, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 303

Saitta, D. J. (1994a). Class and community in the prehistoric southwest. In Wills, W. H., and Leonard, R. D.

(eds.), The Ancient Southwestern Community, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 25–

43.

Saitta, D. J. (1994b). Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

13: 1–27.

Sanders, W. T. (1968). Hydraulic agriculture, economic symbiosis, and the evolution of states in centralMexico. In Meggers, B. J. (ed.), Anthropological Archeology in the Americas, Anthropological Society

of Washington, Washington, DC, pp. 88–107.

Sanders, W. T. (1973). The cultural ecology of the lowland Maya: A reevaluation. In Culbert, T. P. (ed.), TheClassic Maya Collapse, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 325–365.

Sanders, W. T., and Price, B. (1968). Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization, Random House, New York.

Sanders, W. T., and Webster, D. L. (1978). Unilinealism, multilinealism, and the evolution of complex societies.

In Redman, C. L., Berman, M. J., Curtin, E. V., William, J., Longhorn, T., Versaggi, N. M., and Wanser, J.

C. (eds.), Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, Academic Press, New York, pp. 249–302.

Santley, R. S., and Alexander, R. T. (1996). Teotihuacan and Middle Classic Mesoamerica: A precolumbian

world system? In Mastache, F. A. G., Parsons, J. R., Santley, R. S., and Serra Puche, M. C. (eds.),

Arqueolog´ ıa mesoamericana: homenaje a William T. Sanders, Plenum, New York, pp. 173–194.

Santley, R. S., Berman, M. J., and Alexander, R. T. (1991). The politicization of the Mesoamericanballgame and its implications for the interpretation of the distribution of ballcourts in central Mexico. In

Scarborough, V. L., and Wilcox, D. R. (eds.), The Mesoamerican Ballgame, University of Arizona Press,

Tucson, pp. 3–24.

Scarborough, V. L. (1992). Flow of power: Water reservoirs controlled the rise and fall of the ancient Maya.

Sciences 32: 38–43.

Scarborough, V. L. (1993). Water management in the southern Maya lowlands: An accretive model for

the engineered landscape. In Scarborough, V. L., and Isaac, B. L. (eds.), Economic Aspects of Water Management in the Prehispanic New World , JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 17–69.

Scarborough, V. L. (1994). Maya water management. National Geographic Research and Exploration 10:

185–199.

Scarborough, V. L. (1996). Reservoirs and watersheds in the central Maya lowlands. In Fedick, S. L. (ed.),

Managed Mosaic: Ancient Maya Agriculture and Resource Use, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake

City, pp. 304–314.

Scarborough, V. L. (1998). The ecology of ritual: Water management and the Maya. Latin American Antiquity

9: 135–159.

Scarborough, V. L., and Gallopin, G. G. (1991). A water storage adaptation in the Maya lowlands. Science

251: 658–662.

Scarborough, V. L., Connolly, R. P., and Ross, S. P. (1994). The pre-hispanic Maya reservoir system at Kinal,

Peten, Guatemala. Ancient Mesoamerica 5: 97–106.

Scarborough, V. L., Valdez, F., and Dunning, N. P. (eds.) (2003). Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Schneider, J. (1977). Was there a pre-capitalist world system? Journal of Peasant Studies 6: 20–29.

Schneider, P., Schneider, J., and Hansen, E. (1972). Modernization and development: The role of regionalelites and noncorporate groups in the European Mediterranean. Comparative Studies in History and Society 14: 328–350.

Scholes, F. V., and Roys, R. L. (1968). The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel: A Contribution to the History and Ethnography of the Yucatan Peninsula, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Schortman, E. M. (1986). Interaction between the Maya and non-Maya along the Late Classic southeastern

Maya periphery: The view from the lower Motagua Valley, Guatemala. In Urban, P. A., and Schortman,

E. M. (eds.), The Southeast Maya Periphery, University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 114–137.

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (1987). Modeling interregional interaction in prehistory. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 11: 37–95.

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (1992). The place of interaction studies in archaeological thought. In

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (eds.), Resources, Power and Interregional Interaction, Plenum,

New York, pp. 3–15.Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (1994). Living on the edge: Core/periphery relations in ancient

southeastern Mesoamerica. Current Anthropology 35: 401–430.

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (1996). Actions at a distance, impacts at home: Prestige good theory

and a pre-columbian polity in southeastern Mesoamerica. In Peregrine, P. N., and Feinman, G. M. (eds.),

Pre-columbian World Systems, Prehistory Press, Madison, WI, pp. 97–114.

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (2004). Modeling the roles of craft production in ancient political

economies. Journal of Archaeological Research 12: 185–226.

Springer



304 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Schortman, E. M., Urban, P. A., and Ausec, M. T. (2001). Politics with style: Identity formation in prehispanic

southeastern Mesoamerica. American Anthropologist 103: 312–330.

Service, E. (1962). Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective, Random House, New York.

Service, E. (1975). Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution, Norton, New York.

Sharer, R. J., and Golden, C. W. (2003). Kingship and polity: Conceptualizing the Maya body politic. In

Golden, C. W., and Borgstede, G. (eds.), Continuities and Changes in Maya Archaeology: Perspectivesat the Millennium, Routledge, London, pp. 23–50.

Sheets, P. D. (2000). Provisioning the Ceren household: The vertical economy, village economy, and

household economy in the southeastern Maya periphery. Ancient Mesoamerica 11: 217–230.

Skocpol, T. (1977). Wallerstein’s world capitalist system: A theoretical and historical approach. American Journal of Sociology 82: 1075–1090.

Sluyter, A. (1993). Long-distance staple transport in western Mesoamerica: Insights through quantitative

modeling. Ancient Mesoamerica 4: 193–199.

Smith, C. A. (1984). Does a commodity economy enrich the few while ruining the masses: Differentiation

among petty commodity producers in Guatemala. Journal of Peasant Studies 11: 60–95.

Smith, M. E. (1979). The Aztec marketing system and settlement pattern in the Valley of Mexico: A central

place analysis. American Antiquity 44: 110–125.

Smith, M. E. (1987). Household possessions and wealth in agrarian states: Implications for archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 6: 297–335.

Smith, M. E. (1990). Long-distance trade under the Aztec empire: The archaeological evidence. Ancient Mesoamerica 1: 153–169.

Smith, M. E. (2003a). Economic change in Morelos households. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.),

The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 249–258.

Smith, M. E. (2003b). Key commodities. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 117–125.

Smith, M. E. (2004). The archaeology of ancient state economies. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 73–102.

Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (2000). The Postclassic Mesoamerican world system. Current Anthropology41: 283–286.

Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.) (2003a). The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah

Press, Salt Lake City.

Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (2003b). Postclassic Mesoamerica. In Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.),

The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 3–13.

Smith, M. E., and Berdan, F. F. (2003c). Spatial structure of the Mesoamerican world system. In Smith, M.

E., and Berdan, F. F. (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican World , University of Utah Press, Salt Lake

City, pp. 21–31.

Smith, M. E., and Heath-Smith, C. M. (1994). Rural economy in Late Postclassic Morelos: An archaeological

study. In Hodge, M. G., and Smith, M. E. (eds.), Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm, Institute for

Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany, pp. 349–376.

Smith, M. E., and Hodge, M. G. (1994). An introduction to Late Postclassic economies and polities. In Hodge,

M. G., and Smith, M. E. (eds.), Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm, Institute for Mesoamerican

Studies, State University of New York, Albany, pp. 1–42.Smith, M. E., and Schreiber, K. J. (2005). New world states and empires: Economic and social organization.

Journal of Archaeological Research 13: 189–229.

Smith, M. E., Heath-Smith, C. M., and Montiel, L. (1999). Excavations of Aztec urban houses at Yautepec,

Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 10: 133–150.

Smith, M. E., Wharton, J. B., and Olson, J. M. (2003). Aztec feasts, rituals, and markets: Political uses of

ceramic vessels in a commercial economy. In Bray, T. L. (ed.), The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, Kluwer, New York, pp. 235–270.

Smyth, M. P. (1996). Storage and the political economy: A view from Mesoamerica. Research in Economic Anthropology 17: 335–355.

Spence, M. W. (1982). The social context of production and exchange. In Ericson, J. E., and Earle, T. K.

(eds.), Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange, Academic Press, New York, pp. 173–197.

Spence, M. W. (1989). Excavaciones recientes en Tlailotlacan, el barrio Oaxaqueno de Teotihuacan. Arqueolog´ ıa 5: 81–104.

Spence, M. W. (1996). Commodity or gift: Teotihuacan obsidian in the Maya region. Latin American

Antiquity 7: 21–39.

Spielmann, K. A. (1998). Ritual craft specialists in middle range societies. In Costin, C. L., and Wright, R.

P. (eds.), Craft and Social Identity, American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 153–159.

Spielmann, K. A. (2002). Feasting, craft specialization, and the ritual mode of production in small-scale

societies. American Anthropologist 104: 195–207.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 305

Stanish, C. (2004). The evolution of chiefdoms: An economic anthropological model. In Feinman, G. M., and

Nicholas, L. M. (eds.), Archaeological Perspectives on Political Economies, University of Utah Press,


Stanish, C., and Haley, K. J. (2004). Power, fairness, and architecture: Modeling early chiefdom development

in the central Andes. In Vaugh, K. J., Ogburn, D., and Conlee, C. A. (eds.), Foundations of Power in the

Prehispanic Andes, Archeological Papers, No. 14, American Anthropological Association, Arlington,VA, pp. 53–70.

Stanton, T. W., and Negr on, T. G. (2001). Warfare, ceramic economy, and the Itza. Ancient Mesoamerica 12:

229–245.

Stark, B. L. (1999). Finely crafted ceramics and distant lands: Classic Mixtequilla. In Skibo, J. M., and

Feinman, G. M. (eds.), Pottery and People: A Dynamic Interaction, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake

City, pp. 137–156.

Stark, B. L., Heller, L., Glascock, M. D., Elam, J. M., and Neff, H. (1992). Obsidian artifact source analysis

for the Mixtequilla region, south-central Veracruz. Latin American Antiquity 3: 221–239.

Stark, B. L., Heller, L., and Ohnersorgen, M. A. (1998). People with cloth: Mesoamerican economic change

from the perspective of cotton in south-central Veracruz. Latin American Antiquity 9: 7–36.

Starrett, G. (1995). The political economy of religious commodities in Cairo. American Anthropologist 97:

51–68.Strathern, A. (1971). The Rope of Moka: Big-men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Strathern, A. J., and Stewart, P. (2000). Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New

Guinea Highlands History, Kent State University Press, Kent, OH.

Strong, W. D. (1935). Archaeological Investigations in the Bay Islands, Spanish Honduras, Smithsonian

Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 92, No. 14, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Stuart, D. (1998). “The fire enters his house”: Architecture and ritual in Classic Maya texts. In Houston, S.

D. (ed.), Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp.

373–425.

Tambiah, S. J. (1977). The galactic polity: The structure of traditional kingdoms in southeast Asia. Annalsof the New York Academy of Sciences 293: 69–97.

Taube, K. (1998). The jade hearth: Centrality, rulership, and the Classic Maya temple. In Houston, S. D. (ed.),

Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, pp. 427–478.

Teja, J. F. d. l. (2001). St. James at the fair: Religious ceremony, civic boosterism, and commercial

development on the colonial Mexican frontier. Americas 57: 395–416.

Temin, P. (2001). A market economy in the early Roman Empire. Journal of Roman Studies 91: 169–181.

Thomas, N. (1991). Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific , Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Tilley, C. (1984). Ideology and the legitimation of power in the middle Neolithic of southern Sweden.

In Miller, D., and Tilley, C. (eds.), Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press,


Tourtellot, G., and Sabloff, J. A. (1972). Exchange systems among the ancient Maya. American Antiquity 37:

126–135.Tozzer, A. M. (1941). Landa’s relaci ´ on de las cosas de Yucatan, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American

Archaeology and Ethnology, No. 18, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Turner, V. W. (1974). Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

Upham, S. (1992). Interaction and isolation: The empty spaces in panregional political and economic systems.

In Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (eds.), Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction, Plenum,

New York, pp. 139–152.

Urban, P. A., and Schortman, E. M. (1999). Thoughts on the periphery: The ideological consequences of

core/periphery relations. In Kardulias, P. N. (ed.), World-systems Theory in Practice, Rowman and

Littlefield, Lanham, MD, pp. 125–152.

Urquizu, M., Wells, E. C., Aguirre, I., Monterroso, N., Arredondo, E., and Roman, A. (1999). Unidades resi-

denciales en Piedras Negras: resultados de las investigaciones realizadas en las temporadas de campo de

1997 y 1998. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XII simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicasen Guatemala, Museo Nacional de Arqueologıa y Etnologıa, Guatemala City, pp. 255–273.

Vogt, E. Z. (1969). Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas, Harvard University Press,

Cambridge, MA.

Vogt, E. Z. (1976). Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals, University of

Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Voorhies, B. (1989). Economies of the Soconusco Region of Mesoamerica, University of Utah Press, Salt

Lake City.

Springer



306 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Voorhies, B., and Gasco, J. (2005). Postclassic Soconusco Society: The Late Prehistory of the Coast of Chiapas, Mexico, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Wallerstein, I. (1974a). The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the EuropeanWorld-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Academic Press, New York.

Wallerstein, I. (1974b). The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: Concepts for comparative

analysis. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16: 387–415.Wallerstein, I. (1979). The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Watanabe, J. M. (1992). Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World , University of Texas Press, Austin.

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Webster, D. L., Fash, B. W., Widmer, R., and Zeleznik, S. (1998). The skyband group: Investigations of a

Classic Maya elite residential complex at Copan, Honduras. Journal of Field Archaeology 25: 319–

343.

Weigand, P. C. (1982). Mining and mineral trade in prehispanic Zacatecas. In Weigand, P. C., and Gwynne,

G. (eds.), Mining and Mineral Trade in Prehispanic Zacatecas, Department of Anthropology, State

University of New York, Stony Brook, pp. 87–134.

Weigand, P. C. (1992). Central Mexico’s influences in Jalisco and Nayarit during the Classic period. In

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (eds.), Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction, Plenum,

New York, pp. 221–232.Weiner, A. B. (1992). Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-while-giving, University of California

Press, Berkeley.

Wells, E. C. (2003a). Artisans, Chiefs, and Feasts: Classic Period Social Dynamics at El Coyote, Honduras ,

Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Wells, E. C. (2003b). An introduction to Mesoamerican ritual economy. Paper presented at the 102nd Annual

Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago.

Werner, C., and Bell, D. (eds.) (2004). Values and Valuables: From the Sacred to the Symbolic, AltaMira,

Walnut Creek, CA.

West, G. (2002). Ceramic exchange in the Late Classic and Postclassic Maya lowlands: A diachronic

approach. In Masson, M. A., and Freidel, D. A. (eds.), Ancient Maya Political Economies, AltaMira,


Wiessner, P. (1996). Introduction: Food, status, culture, and nature. In Wiessner, P., and Schiefenhovel, W.

(eds.), Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Berghahn Books, Providence, RI,

pp. 1–18.

Wiessner, P. (2002). The vines of complexity: Egalitarian structures and the institutionalization of inequality

among the Enga. Current Anthropologist 43: 233–269.

Wiessner, P., and Tumu, A. (1998). Historical Vines: Enga Networks of Exchange, Ritual, and Warfare in Papua New Guinea, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Wilk, R. R. (1991). Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Williams, E. (ed.) (2004). Bienes estrat´ egicos del antiguo occidente de M ´ exico, Colegio de Michoacan,

Michoacan, Mexico.

Wisdom, C. (1940). The Chorti Indians of Guatemala, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Wittfogel, K. A. (1957). Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, Yale University Press,

New Haven, CT.

Wittfogel, K. A. (1972). The hydraulic approach to pre-Spanish Mesoamerica. In Johnson, F. (ed.), Chronologyand Irrigation: The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley, Vol. 4, University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 59–80.

Wolf, E. R. (1982). Europe and the People without History, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Wolf, E. R. (1990). Distinguished lecture: Facing power—old insights, new questions. American Anthropol-ogist 92: 586–596.

Yaeger, J. (2000). The social construction of communities in the Classic Maya countryside: Strategies of

affiliation in western Belize. In Canuto, M. A., and Yaeger, J. (eds.), The Archaeology of Communities:

A New World Perspective, Routledge, London, pp. 123–142.

Yoffee, N. (1977). The decline and rise of Mesopotamian civilization: An ethnoarchaeological perspective

on the evolution of social complexity. American Antiquity 44: 5–35.Yoffee, N. (1991). Maya elite interaction: Through a glass, sideways. In Culbert, T. P. (ed.), Classic Maya

Political History: Hieroglyphic and Archaeological Evidence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

pp. 285–310.

Zeitlin, R. N. (1982). Toward a more comprehensive model of interregional commodity distribution: Political

variables and prehistoric obsidian procurement in Mesoamerica. American Antiquity 47: 260–275.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 307

Bibliography of recent literature

Angel Perez, A. L. d. (1999). Relations between production systems and social organization among the

Totonacs. Yumtzilob 11: 281–299.

Aoyama, K. (1999). Ancient Maya State, Urbanism, Exchange, and Craft Specialization: Chipped Stone

Evidence from the Cop´ an Valley and the La Entrada Region, Honduras, Memoirs in Latin American

Archaeology, No. 12, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.

Aoyama, K. (1999). El intercambio y la formacion del antiguo estado en el sudeste de las tierras bajas

mayas: La evidencia de la lıtica menor. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XII simposio de

investigaciones arqueol´ ogicas en Guatemala, Museo Nacional de Arqueologıa y Etnologıa, Guatemala

City, pp. 911–942.

Aoyama, K. (2000). La subsistencia y produccion artesanal de la costa del pacifico del sur de mesoamerica:

El analisis de las microhuellas de uso sobre lıtica de obsidiana del sitio Albeno, Escuintla, Guatemala.

Utz’ib 2: 1–10.

Aoyama, K., Tashiro, T., and Glascock, M. D. (1999). A pre-Columbian obsidian source in San Luis, Honduras:

Implications for the relationship between Late Classic Maya political boundaries and the boundaries of

obsidian exchange networks. Ancient Mesoamerica 10: 237–249.Barba, L. A., and Cordova Frunz, J. L. (1999). Estudios energeticos de la produccion de cal en tiempos

teotihuacanos y sus implicaciones. Latin American Antiquity 10: 168–179.

Barber, M. (1999). El Tigre may provide clues to the extent of Maya trade routes. Institute of Maya Studies Newsletter 27: 1–2.

Barrett, T. P. (2003). Tuxtlas Obsidian: Organization and Change in a Regional Craft Industry (Mexico) ,

Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Bartlett, M. L., and McAnany, P. A. (2000). “Crafting” communities: The materialization of Formative Maya

identities. In Canuto, M. A., and Yaeger, J. (eds.), The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, Routledge, London, pp. 102–122.

Batten, D. C. (1999). Horse power: Wheat, oats, maize, and the supply of cities. Ancient Mesoamerica 10:

99–103.

Becker, M. J. (2003). A Classic period barrio producing fine polychrome ceramics at Tikal, Guatemala: Noteson ancient Maya firing technology. Ancient Mesoamerica 14: 95–112.

Berdan, F. F. (2002). Aztec society: Economy, tribute and warfare. In Aztecs, Royal Academy of Arts, London,

pp. 38–47.

Berdan, F. F., and Smith, M. E. (2004). El sistema mundial mesoamericano postclasico. Relaciones 25: 19–77.

Berres, T. E. (2000). Climatic change and lacustrine resources at the period of initial Aztec development.


Biskowski, M. (2000). Maize preparation and the Aztec subsistence economy. Ancient Mesoamerica 11:

293–306.

Braswell, G. E., and Amador, F. E. (1999). Intercambio y producci on durante el preclasico: La obsidiana

de Kaminaljuyu-Miraflores II y Ur ıas, Sacatepequez. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XII simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Museo Nacional de Arqueologıa y Etnologıa,

Guatemala City, pp. 905–910.Britt, G. M. (2003). A Re-examination of Ceramic Standardization and Household Production at Bezuapan,

Veracruz, Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis,

MO.

Cahue, L. (2001). The Effect of Environmental Change and Economic Power on the Diet of Tarascan Elites ,

Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

Callaghan, R. T. (2003). Prehistoric trade between Ecuador and west Mexico: A computer simulation of

coastal voyages. Antiquity 77: 796–815.

Carrasco, D. (ed.) (2001). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The Civilizations of Mexicoand Central America, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Castanzo, R. A. (2002). The Development of Socioeconomic Complexity in the Formative Period: Central

Puebla-Tlaxcala Basin, Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania StateUniversity, College Park.

Cobean, R. H. (2002). A World of Obsidian: The Mining and Trade of a Volcanic Glass in Ancient Mexico ,

Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.

Coggins, C. C. (2001). A soft economy: Perishable artifacts offered to the well of sacrifice, Chichen Itza. In

Purdy, B. A. (ed.), Enduring Records: The Environmental and Cultural Heritage of Wetlands, Oxbow

Books, Oxford, pp. 83–91.

Cuddy, T. W., Jr. (2000). Socioeconomic Integration of the Classic Maya State: Political and Domestic Economies in a Residential Neighborhood , Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Columbia

University, New York.Springer



308 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Dahlin, B. (2003). Chunchucmil: A complex economy in northwest Yucatan. Mexicon 25: 129–

138.

Davis-Salazar, K. L. (2001). Late Classic Maya Water Management at Copan, Honduras, Ph.D. dissertation,

Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Dominguez Carrasco, M. d. R., Espinosa Pesqueira, M. E., Rodriguez Lugo, V., Mendoza Anaya, D., Chung,

H., Folan, W. J., and Gunn, J. D. (2001). Estudios sobre la produccion cer amica en el estado regionalde Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico: Analisis microestructural y cultural. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo,

H. L. (eds.), XIV simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Instituto de Antropologia e

Historia, Guatemala City, pp. 789–805.

Douglass, J. G. (1999). Rural Agrarian Household Diversity in the Late Classic (600–950 A.D.) NacoValley, Northwest Honduras, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University or Pittsburgh,

Pittsburgh, PA.

Douglass, J. G. (2002). Hinterland Households: Rural Agrarian Household Diversity in Northwest Honduras,

University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

Drennan, R. D., Fitzgibbons, P. T., and Dehn, H. (2000). Imports and exports in Classic Mesoamerican political

economy: The Tehuacan Valley and the Teotihuacan obsidian industry. In Smith, M. E., and Masson, M.

A. (eds.), The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA.

Druc, I. C. (2000). Ceramic production in San Marcos Acteopan, Puebla, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 11:77–89.

Dunning, N. P., Scarborough, V., Valdez, F., Luzzadder-Beach, S., Beach, T., and Jones, J. G. (1999). Temple

mountains, sacred lakes, and fertile fields: Ancient Maya landscapes in northwestern Belize. Antiquity

73: 650–660.

Emery, K. F. (2003). Natural resource use and Classic Maya economics: Environmental archaeology at Motul

de San Jose, Guatemala. Mayab 16: 33–48.

Evans, S. T., and Webster, D. L. (eds.) (2001). Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, Garland, New York.

Fauman-Fichman, R. (1999). Postclassic Craft Production in Morelos, Mexico: The Cotton Thread Industryin the Provinces, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh,

PA.

Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (2000). High-intensity household-scale production in ancient Mesoamer-

ica: A perspective from Ejutla, Oaxaca. In Feinman, G. M., and Manzanilla, L. (eds.), Cultural Evolution,

Contemporary Viewpoints, Kluwer/Plenum, New York, pp. 119–142.

Fletcher, J. M. (2002). Stuccoed tripod vessels from Teotihuacan: An examination of material and manufacture.

Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 41: 139–154.

Foias, A. E. (2000). Entre polıtica y economıa: Cual era la naturaleza de la economıa Maya clasica? Losinvestigadores de la cultura Maya 8: 298–311.

Foias, A. E. (2000). Entre la polıtica y la economıa: Resultados preliminares de las primeras dos temporadas

del proyecto arqueologico Motul de San Jose. In Laporte, J. P., Escobedo, H. L., Sausnavar, A. C.

D., and Arroyo, B. L. (eds.), XIII simposio de investigaciones arqueol´ ogicas en Guatemala, Museo de

Antropologıa, Instituto de Antropologıa e Historia, Guatemala City, pp. 945–973.

Gaxiola Gonzalez, M. (1999). Huapalcalco y las tradiciones alfareras del epiclasico. Arqueolog´ ıa 21: 45–72.Guderjan, T. H., and Williams-Beck, L. A. (2001). Another dimension of trade and interaction on Ambergris

Cay, Belize. Mexicon 23: 123–125.

Haines, H. R., Feinman, G. M., and Nicholas, L. M. (2004). Household economic specialization and so-

cial differentiation: The stone-tool assemblage at El Palmillo, Oaxaca. Ancient Mesoamerica 15: 219–

266.

Hare, T. S. (2001). Political Economy, Spatial Analysis, and Postclassic States in the Yautepec Valley, Mexico,

Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Albany.

Heller, L. (2001). Sources, technology, production, use, and deposition of knapped obsidian. In Stark, B. L.

(ed.), Classic Period Mixtequilla, Veracruz, Mexico: Diachronic Inferences from Residential Investiga-

tions, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany, pp. 159–169.

Henderson, H. (2003). The organization of staple crop production at K’axob, Belize. Latin American Antiquity

14: 469–496.Hernandez, C., Cobean, R. H., Mastache, A. G., and Su arez, M. E. (1999). Un taller de alfareros en la antigua

ciudad de Tula. Arqueolog´ ıa 22: 69–88.

Herrera, R. S., Neff, H., Glascock, M. D., and Elam, J. M. (1999). Ceramic patterns, social interaction, and

the Olmec: Neutron activation analysis of Early Formative pottery in the Oaxaca highlands of Mexico.

Journal of Archaeological Science 26: 967–988.

Hill, W. D. (1999). Ballcourts, Competitive Games and the Emergence of Complex Society, Ph.D. dissertation,

Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 309

Hirshman, A. J. (2003). A Case Study in the Relationship between Social Complexity and the Organization of Ceramic Production from the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, Michoacan, Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department

of Anthropology, Michigan State University, East Lansing.

Hirth, K. G. (ed.) (2003). Mesoamerican Lithic Technology: Experimentation and Interpretation, University

of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Hirth, K. G., and Andrews, B. (eds.) (2002). Pathways to Prismatic Blades: A Study in Mesoamerican ObsidianCore-blade Technology, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Hohmann, B. M. (2002). Preclassic Maya Shell Ornament Production in the Belize Valley, Belize , Ph.D.

dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Hruby, Z. X. (2001). Aspectos economicos y sociales de la fabricacion de herramientas de piedra y la obtencion

de materiales en piedras negras, peten. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XIV simposio de

investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, Guatemala City, pp.

869–884.

Jones, C. (1999). El comercio y las rutas de intercambio de los mayas. In Popenoe de Hatch, M. (ed.),

Epoca precolombina, Fundacion para la Cultura y el Desarrollo Guatemala, Guatemala City, pp. 479–

486.

Kelley, J. C. (2000). Azatlan mercantile system: Mobile traders and the northwestward expansion of Mesoamer-

ican civilization. In Foster, M. S., and Gorenstein, S. (eds.), Greater Mesoamerica, University of UtahPress, Salt Lake City, pp. 137–154.

Kepecs, S. M. (1999). The Political Economy of Chikinchel, Yucatan, Mexico: A Diachronic Analysis fromthe Pre-hispanic Era through the Age of Spanish Administration, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

King, E. M. (2000). The Organization of Late Classic Lithic Production at the Prehistoric Maya Site of Colha, Belize: A Study in Complexity and Heterarchy, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology,

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Kosakowsky, L. J., Estrada Belli, F., and Neff, H. (1999). Late Preclassic ceramic industries of pacific

Guatemala and El Salvador: The pacific coast as core, not periphery. Journal of Field Archaeology 26:

377–390.

Kovacevich, B., Barrientos, T., Demarest, A., Callahan, M., Bill, C., Sears, E., and Moran, L. (2001). Pro-

duccion e intercambio en el reinado de Cancuen. In Laporte, J. P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XIV simposiode investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, Guatemala City,

pp. 589–609.

Kruszczynski, M. A. R. (2001). Prehistoric Basalt Exploitation and Core-periphery Relations Observed fromthe Cerro el Vigia Hinterland of Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.

Liendo Stuardo, R. (2000). Patr on de asentamiento en la region de palenque, Chiapas: Produccion agr ıcola y

control polıtico en un centro del maya clasico. Los Investigadores de la Cultura Maya 7: 208–219.

Liendo Stuardo, R. (2002). La organizaci´ on de la producci´ on agr´ ıcola en un centro maya del cl ´ asico, Latin

American Archaeology Report, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.

Liendo Stuardo, R. (2002). Organizacion social y produccion agr ıcola en palenque. In Blos, V. T., Cobos,

R., and Robertson, M. G. (eds.), La organizaci´ on social entre los mayas prehisp ´ anicos, coloniales ymodernos, Instituto Nacional de Antropologıa e Historia, Mexico, pp. 305–328.

Liot, C. (2002). Produccion y economıa de la sal. In Novella, R., Gonzalez, J. M., and Cos, M. M. (eds.),

La costa norte de Michoac´ an en la ´ epoca prehisp´ anica, British Archaeological Reports, Oxford, pp.

218–224.

Lopez Varela, S. L., van Gijn, A., and Jacobs, L. (2002). De-mystifying pottery production in the Maya

lowlands: Detection of traces of use-wear on pottery sherds through microscopic analysis and experimental

replication. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 1133–1147.

Lopiparo, J. L. (2003). Household Ceramic Production and the Crafting of Society in the Terminal Classic UluaValley, Honduras, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.

Love, M. (1999). Intercambio y consumo de obsidiana en la costa sur occidental durante el preclasico medio.

In Schieber de Lavarreda, C. (ed.), Taller Arqueol ´ ogica de la Regi ´ on de la Costa sur de Guatemala,

Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Guatemala, pp. 95–108.Lowe, L. S. (2001). Evidencias arqueologicas del ambar en el area maya: Usos y distribucion. In Laporte, J.

P., and Escobedo, H. L. (eds.), XIV simposio de investigaciones arqueol ´ ogicas en Guatemala, Instituto

de Antropologia e Historia, Guatemala City, pp. 899–913.

Manahan, K. (2002). Reevaluating the Classic Maya collapse at Copan: New data and new socioeconomic

implications. In Blos, V. T., Cobos, R., and Robertson, M. G. (eds.), La organizaci´ on social entre losmayas prehisp´ anicos, coloniales y modernos, Instituto Nacional de Antropologıa e Historia, Mexico City,

pp. 305–328.

Springer



310 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Markens, R. J. (2004). Ceramic Chronology in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico during the Late Classic and Postclassic Periods and the Organization of Ceramic Production, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Anthropology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.

Masson, M. A., and Chaya, H. (2000). Obsidian trade connections at the Postclassic Maya site of Laguna de

On, Belize. Lithic Technology 25: 135–144.

McCafferty, G. G., and McCafferty, S. D. (1999). The metamorphosis of xochiquetzal: A window on wom-anhood in pre- and post-conquest Mexico. In Sweely, T. L. (ed.), Manifesting Power: Gender and the

Interpretation of Power in Archaeology, Routledge, London, pp. 103–125.

McKillop, H. I. (2004). The Classic Maya trading port of Moho Cay. In Garber, J. F. (ed.), The Ancient Mayaof the Belize Valley: Half A Century of Archaeological Research, University Press of Florida, Gainesville,

pp. 257–272.

McKillop, H. I. (2005). In Search of Maya Sea Traders, Texas A&M University Press, College Station.

Meadows, R. K. (2001). Crafting K’awil: A Comparative Analysis of Maya Symbolic Flaked Stone Assem-blages from Three Sites in Northern Belize, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University

of Texas, Austin.

Millhauser, J. K. (2002). Malpaso Valley obsidian exchange. Archaeology Southwest 16: 9.

Neff, L. S. (2002). Gender divisions of labor and lowland terrace agriculture. In Ardren, T. (ed.), Ancient

Maya Women, AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 31–51.Nelson, Z. (2003). El papel de los machacadores en la economıa domestica maya. In Laporte, J. P., Arroyo, B.

L., Escobedo, H. L., and Mejia, H. (eds.), XVI simposio de investigaciones arqueol´ ogicas en Guatemala,

Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, Guatemala City, pp. 509–512.

Nichols, D. L., McLaughlin, M. J., and Benton, M. (2000). Production intensification and regional special-

ization: Maguey fibers and textiles in the Aztec city-state of Otumba. Ancient Mesoamerica 11: 267–

291.

Norris, S. M. (2001). Ethnohistory, archaeology, and the K’iche’ Maya: An interdisciplinary approach to

political economy. In Weeks, J. M. (ed.), In the Past and Present Maya: Essays in Honor of Robert M.

Carmack , Labyrinthos, Lancaster, PA, pp. 29–45.

Norris, S. M. (2002). Political Economy of the Aztec Empire: A Regional Analysis of Obsidian Craft Productionin the Provinces of Huaxtepec and Cuauhnahuac, Morelos, Mexico , Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Ochoa Saenz, L., and Arellano, A. (2002). Interaccion polıtico economica entre Xicalango y las tierras bajas

centrales vista a traves de sus ofrendas mortuarios. In Ochoa, L., and Martel, P. (eds.), Lengua y culturamayas, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

City, pp. 13–38.

Ohnersorgen, M. A. (2001). Social and Economic Organization of Cotaxtla in the Postclassic Gulf Lowlands(Mexico), Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Olson, J. M. (2001). Unequal Consumption: A Study of Domestic Wealth Differentials in Three Late Postclassic Mexican Communities, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York,

Albany.

Parry, W. J. (2001). Production and exchange of obsidian tools in late Aztec city-states. Ancient Mesoamerica

12: 101–111.Pohl, J. M. D. (2001). Chichimecatlalli: Strategies for cultural and commercial exchange between Mexico

and the American Southwest, 1100–1521. In Fields, V. M., and Zamudio-Taylor, V. (eds.), The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland , Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, pp.

86–101.

Pollard, H. P. (2004). El imperio tarasco en el mundo mesoamericano. Relaciones 25: 117–142.

Powis, T. G., Stanchly, N., White, C. D., Healy, P. F., Awe, J. J., and Longstaffe, F. (1999). A recon-

struction of middle Preclassic Maya subsistence economy at Cahal Pech, Belize. Antiquity 73: 364–

376.

Robin, C. (2002). Gender and Maya farming: Chan Noohol, Belize. In Ardren, T. (ed.), Ancient Maya Women,

AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 12–30.

Rodr ıguez-Alegr ıa, E. R. (2002). Food, Eating and Objects of Power: Class Stratification and Ceramic

Production and Consumption in Colonial Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology,University of Chicago, Chicago.

Santley, R. S., Barrett, T. P., Glascock, M. D., and Neff, H. (2001). Pre-hispanic obsidian procurement in the

Tuxtla mountains, southern Veracruz, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 12: 49–63.

Scarborough, V. L., Valdez, F., and Dunning, N. (eds.) (2003). Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Schortman, E. M., and Urban, P. A. (2004). Marching out of step: Early Classic Copan and its Honduran

neighbors. In Bell, E. E., Canuto, M. A., and Sharer, R. J. (eds.), Understanding Early Classic Copan,

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, pp. 319–335.

Springer



J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312 311

Shafer, H. J., and Hester, T. R. (2000). Lithic craft specialization and product distribution at the Maya site of

Colha, Belize. In Smith, M. E., and Masson, M. A. (eds.), The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A

Reader, Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 144–157.

Sierra Sosa, T. N. (1999). Xcambo: Codiciado enclave economico del clasico Maya. Arqueolog´ ıa Mexicana

7: 40–47.

Smith, M. E. (2001a). The Aztec empire and the Mesoamerican world system. In Alcock, S. E., D’Altroy, T.N., Morrison, K. D., and Sinopoli, C. M. (eds.), Empires: Comparative Perspectives from Archaeology

and History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 128–154.

Smith, M. E. (2003). Comercio postclasico en la cer amica decorada: Malinalco, Toluca, Guerrero y Morelos.

Arqueolog´ ıa 29: 63–84.

Smith, M. E. (2004). Los hogares de Morelos en el sistema mundial mesoamericano postclasico. Relaciones

25: 81–113.

Smyth, M. P., and Rogart, D. (2004). A Teotihuacan presence at Chac II, Yucatan, Mexico: Implications for

early political economy of the Puuc region. Ancient Mesoamerica 15: 17–14.

Speaker, J. S. (2001). Settlement and Agricultural Land Use in Ancient Mixtequilla, Veracruz, Mexico , Ph.D.

dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans.

Stanton, T. W., and Negr on, T. G. (2001). Warfare, ceramic economy, and the Itza. Ancient Mesoamerica 12:

229–245.Stark, B. L. (1999). Formal architectural complexes in south-central Veracruz, Mexico: A capital zone?

Journal of Field Archaeology 26: 197–226.

Stark, B. L., and Garraty, C. P. (2004). Evaluation of systematic surface evidence for pottery production in

Veracruz, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 15: 123–243.

Stemp, W. J. (2000). An Analysis of Stone Tool Use in the Maya Coastal Economies of Marco Gonzalez and San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University,

Montreal.

Stemp, W. J. (2004). Maya coastal subsistence and craft-production at San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize:

The lithic use-wear evidence. Lithic Technology 29: 33–73.

Stuart, G. (2003). Pre-hispanic Sociopolitical Development and Wetland Agriculture in the Tequila Valleys of West Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Sunahara, K. S. (2003). Ancient Maya Ceramic Economy in the Belize River Valley Region: Petrographic Analyses, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

Tate, C. E. (1999). Writing on the face of the moon: Women’s products, archetypes, and power in ancient

Maya civilization. In Sweely, T. L. (ed.), Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology, Routledge, London, pp. 81–102.

Turkon, P. D. (2004). Food and status in the prehispanic Malpaso Valley, Zacatecas, Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 225–251.

Urban, P. A., and E. M. Schortman (2004). Opportunities for advancement: Intra-community power contests

in the midst of political decentralization in Terminal Classic Southeastern Mesoamerica. Latin American Antiquity 15: 251–272.

VandenBosch, J. C. (1999). Lithic Economy and Household Interdependence among the Late Classic Maya

of Belize, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.VanDerwarker, A. M. (2003). Agricultural Intensification and the Emergence of Political Complexity in

the Formative Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Southern Veracruz, Mexico, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Weigand, P. C., and Garcıa de Weigand, A. (2000). Dinamica socioeconomica de la frontera pre-

hispanica de mesoamerica. In Hers, M.-A., Mirafuentes, J. L., Soto, M. D. L. D., and Valle-

bueno, M. (eds.), N omadas y sedentarios en el norte de M ´ exico: Homenaje a Beatriz Braniff , In-

stituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City,

pp. 113–126.

Wells, E. C. (2000). Pottery production and microcosmic organization: The residential structure of La Que-

mada, Zacatecas. Latin American Antiquity 11: 21–42.

Wells, E. C. (2004). Investigating activity patterns in prehispanic plazas: Weak acid-extraction ICP/AES

analysis of anthrosols at Classic period El Coyote, northwest Honduras. Archaeometry 46: 67–84.Wells, E. C., and Nelson, B. A. (2001). Manufactura de cer amica e innovacion tecnologica en el

valle de Malpaso, Zacatecas. In Williams, E., and Weigand, P. C. (eds.), Estudios cer´ amicos

en el occidente y norte de M´ exico, El Colegio de Michoacan, Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico,

pp. 253–287.

Wells, E. C., and Nelson, B. A. (2002). Chemical, technological, and social aspects of pottery man-

ufacture in the La Quemada region of northwest Mexico. In Jakes, K. A. (ed.), Archaeologi-cal Chemistry: Materials, Methods, and Meaning, American Chemical Society, Washington, DC,

pp. 185–198.

Springer



312 J Archaeol Res (2006) 14:265–312

Wells, E. C., and Nelson, B. A. (2002). La cer amica y la concha del per ıodo epiclasico en el valle de Malpaso,

Zacatecas. In Williams, E. (ed.), Bienes estrat´ egicos del antiguo occidente de M´ exico: producci´ on e

intercambio, El Colegio de Michoacan, Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico, pp. 283–309.

Williams, E. (2002). Salt production in the coastal area of Michoacan, Mexico: An ethnoarchaeological study.


Williams, E. (2003). La sal de la tierra: Etnoarqueolog´ ıa de la producci´ on salinera en el occidente de M´ exico.El Colegio de Michoacan, Michoacan, Mexico.

Williams, E. (2004). Nuevas perspectivas sobre el sistema mundial mesoamericano. Relaciones 25: 145–173.

Woodward, M. R. (2003). Maize Productivity, Subsistence Strategies, and Decision Making at the AncientVillage of Ceren, El Salvador (A.D. 650), Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of

Colorado, Boulder.

recent trends in theorizing pre his panic me so american economies [wells, christian]

Documents