Craft economies in the north American Southwest

Debates concerning sociopolitical organization in the North American Southwest are clarified and confounded by the conclusion that craft specialization was not always a sufficient condition of complexity in the region. Understanding the relationship between varying dimensions of craft specialization (e.g., context, scale, and intensity) and sociopolitical organization in the region requires us to examine a variety of social institutions (e.g., leadership, gender, and ethnicity) that potentially generated differentiated economies. New research on middle-range societies in the North American Southwest and elsewhere in the world should focus on identifying and interpreting the archaeological signatures of specific social institutions and their linkages to craft economies.     

Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast

This article argues that the agency of commoners has not been adequately theorized in archaeological studies of the political dynamics of complex societies. Recent developments in social theory emphasize that political relations are produced through social negotiations involving commoners as well as elites. This paper considers the role of commoners in the Classic period collapse in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. Regional survey and excavation data demonstrate that the Classic-to-Postclassic transition was marked by dramatic changes in settlement patterns and sociopolitical organization, including the decline of the Late Classic regional center of Río Viejo. The research indicates that rather than passively reacting to the sociopolitical developments of the Classic-to-Postclassic transition, commoners actively rejected many of the ruling institutions and symbols that were central to the dominant ideology of the Late Classic state. Early Postclassic people reused and reinterpreted the sacred spaces and objects of the Río Viejo state such as carved stone monuments and public buildings. The evidence from the lower Verde is examined in the context of an emerging theoretical perspective in archaeology that considers commoner power. We argue that commoners contribute to the social negotiation of dominant discourses through three overlapping forms of social interaction: engagement, avoidance, and resistance.     

The Archaeology of Food and Social Inequality in the Andes

A comparative examination of food practices is useful for assessing the nature of diverse forms of social inequality. This article examines three key contexts in which to evaluate the relationship between social differentiation and food practices in the Andes: early complex societies, pre-Columbian states and nonstate complex societies, and colonial societies. A review of these distinct contexts suggests that social and subsistence change may follow different rhythms and that food-related differentiation, just like other forms of social differentiation, is neither consistently augmented in a scalar fashion in relation to “degrees” of social complexity, nor is it in all cases a direct indicator of economic inequality.     

Complex Hunter–Gatherers in Evolution and History: A North American Perspective

A review of recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America suggests that age-old tensions between evolutionary and historical epistemologies continue to cultivate progress in anthropological understanding of sociocultural variation. Coupled with criticism of the evolutionary status of ethnographic foragers, archaeological documentation of variation among hunter–gatherer societies of the ancient past makes it difficult to generalize about causal relationships among environment, subsistence economy, and sociopolitical organization. Explanations for emergent complexity on the Pacific Coast that privilege environmental triggers for economic change have been challenged by new paleoenvironmental findings, while hypotheses suggesting that economic changes were preceded by, indeed caused by, transformations of existing structures of social inequality have gained empirical support. In its emergent data on mound construction apart from significant subsistence change, the southeastern United States gives pause to materialist explanations for complexity, turning the focus on symbolic and structural dimensions of practice that cannot be understood apart from particular histories of group interaction and tradition. Taken together, recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America has not only expanded the empirical record of sociocultural formations once deemed anomalous and/or derivative of European contact but also has contributed to the ongoing process of clarifying concepts of cultural complexity and how this process ultimately restructures anthropological theory.     

Interaction inferences in archaeology and learning frameworks of the maya

Stylistic variation has traditionally been assumed to reflect differential interaction. Although some researchers have questioned this premise, it seems valid as long as interaction is of a cooperative, nonhierarchical type. Other sources of stylistic variation may also exist. This paper examines cooperative learning of crafts within communities to determine what effect various learning contexts might have on the distribution of stylistic elements within communities. Six learning modes are identified: Family-Centered; Corporate; Kin-Extensive; Minimally Structured; Formal-Schooling; and Specialist. Each mode results in a distinctive distribution of stylistic elements. The Kin-Extensive mode is examined in detail using ethnoarchaeological data from the Maya Highlands. We conclude that by focusing on interaction rather than residence, archaeologists can deal with more meaningful problems for the evolution and functioning of past social systems, and these problems can be dealt with more successfully given the nature of archaeological data.     

Current Research on Late Precontact Societies of the Midcontinental United States

Research during the past decade on Late Precontact societies (ca. A.D. 1000–1600/1700) in the Midcontinent, particularly Mississippian, Oneota, Fort Ancient, and Late Woodland, is strongly rooted in empirical approaches. While some of this work is pursued within a broadly evolutionary interpretive framework, other scholars emphasize agency and practice theory, symbolism, the historically contingent nature of human action, and cultural heterogeneity in sociopolitical organization, political economy, and subsistence. Dynamic models of the settlement systems and demography of complex societies have developed out of the recent growth in site inventories and refinements in ceramic chronologies and have come to be closely linked with theoretical treatments of sociopolitical organization. Various physical and chemical analytical techniques are commonly applied to the analysis of archaeological materials in this region, contributing to our understanding of direct and indirect exchange relationships and other forms of interaction, especially those between hierarchical and nonhierarchically organized societies, and enhancing our understanding of the kinds of foods prepared and eaten by people in the past.     

Recent Research on Chaco: Changing Views on Economy, Ritual, and Society

Current research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding outlier communities is at an important juncture. Rather than trying to argue for the presence or absence of complexity, archaeologists working in the area are asking different questions, especially how Chacoan political, economic, ritual, and social organization were structured. These lines of inquiry do not attempt to pigeonhole Chaco into traditional neoevolutionary types, but instead seek to understand the historical trajectory that led to the construction of monumental architecture in Chaco Canyon and a large part of the northern Southwest in the 10th through 12th centuries. This review discusses the conclusions of current research at Chaco including definitions of the Chaco region, recent fieldwork, histories of Chaco archaeology, chronology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, demography, political organization, outlier communities, economic organization, social organization, ritual, violence, and the post-Chacoan reorganization. Although many issues are hotly debated, there is a growing concensus that power was not based in a centralized political organization and that ritual organization was a key factor in the replication of Chacoan architecture across a vast regional landscape. Exactly how ritual, social, and political organization intersected is a central question for Chaco scholars. The resolution of this problem will prove to be of interest to all archaeologists working with intermediate societies across the globe.     

Transformations in an early agricultural society: Feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Feasting is a powerful and transformative phenomenon. Societies are both integrated and differentiated through feasting; identities are both enacted and altered; and ideologies are inculcated. This paper uses ethnographic data to establish criteria for the archaeological recognition of prehistoric feasting. These criteria are then used to assess the changing evidence for feasting across the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 10,200–7500 BP/9700–6250 cal BC), with the aim of shedding light on changes in social organization across the transition to agriculture.During most of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the extent and scale of feasting expanded as sociopolitical complexity increased. Towards the end of the period, however, populations dispersed and feasting probably declined. Feasts were simultaneously integrative and competitive, ameliorating scalar stress even as they offered opportunities for individual or household competition. Feasts may also have played a key role in conferring ideological prominence on Neolithic cattle, and perhaps even contributed to their adoption as domesticates.     

Entrenched Disbelief: Complex Hunter-Gatherers and the Case for Inclusive Cultural Evolutionary Thinking

Advocates of traditional, agriculture-based models of sociopolitical evolution argue that the adoption of domesticates is requisite for developments such as sedentism, village life, ascribed status, hereditary leadership, and other features that underpin institutionalized political complexity. We counter in this essay with a well-documented suite of politically complex hunter-gatherer (CHG) societies that exhibit these same features, thereby demonstrating that reliance on agriculture per se—or any other specific food regime such as fishing—should be excised from explanations of emergent political complexity. Despite the failure of the agricentric model to account for a significant number of cases of institutionalized complexity, some of its architects remain entrenched in their disbelief and rigidly ignore the implications of CHG studies. By continuing to situate farming as foundational to everything complex, they perpetuate not only a story of human cultural evolution over the last 10,000 years that is incomplete but also a narrative that is incorrect. We reject subsistence (domesticates) as the central organizing principle and introduce here a new forum for thinking about how societies operate and evolve. We propose a model consisting of integrated platforms of societal dynamics that are inclusive (encourage discourse of all societies), nonprogressive, and serve as an organizational structure to discuss cultural evolution in any comparative or singular ethnographic context. The platforms are nonhierarchical and not fixed in order or importance. They are (1) agency and authority, (2) social differentiation, (3) participation in communal events, (4) organization of production, (5) labor obligations, (6) articulation of ecology and subsistence, and (7) territoriality and ownership. All sociopolitical cases and all topics can be productively discussed on these platforms, from bands to the largest empires, comparatively or diachronically. In the present article, we use the platforms to examine political evolution. We assemble considerable evidence that a variety of dietary regimes are associated with the emergence of institutionalized political complexity. Rather than diet, it is the ways people integrate and use labor that demands our attention.     

New Pathways of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa

Much is known about the economy and spatial organization of Zimbabwe culture entities of Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Khami but less in terms of their origins and relationship with each other. Based on little tangible evidence, it is believed and widely accepted that the societies based at Mapungubwe (ad 1220–1290), Great Zimbabwe (ad 1300–1450) and Khami (ad 1450–1820) rose, developed and eclipsed in tandem. A recent reexamination of the relationship between these settlements and related ones using local ceramics, imported artefacts, stone architecture and Bayesian modelling suggests this may not have been the case. The synthesis proffered revelations which temper the widely accepted assumption that sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa began in the Shashi-Limpopo Valley before anywhere else in the region. Firstly, there are numerous Zhizo and Leopard’s Kopje sites that predate Mapungubwe but contain prestige goods and stone structures dating from the late first millennium ad. Secondly, material culture studies and modelled radiocarbon dates indicate that Great Zimbabwe evolved out of Gumanye while Khami, like Mapungubwe, may have developed out of the Leopard’s Kopje. In fact, Great Zimbabwe was already a place of importance when Mapungubwe collapsed. Thirdly, Khami and Great Zimbabwe overlapped for over a century, before the latter buckled. Therefore, the evolution of sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa may have followed trajectories that are different from what the current understanding implies.     

Sociopolitical network interactions: A case study of the Classic Maya

The organization of Classic Maya society emerged from diverse and overlapping social interactions which shaped a dynamic political landscape. Vying for power, elites legitimized their status by claiming ancestry from various supernaturals and engaged in conspicuous displays of competition, warfare, and ritual practice which were often recorded on stone monuments. By examining the inscribed relationships between Maya centers, we chart organizational changes in sociopolitical networks throughout the Classic period. Methods derived from social network analysis are used to examine temporal changes in the distribution and centralization of political power through different network interactions. We examine the intersection of antagonistic, diplomatic, subordinate, and kinship relationships and discuss how these overlapping networks contributed to dynamic changes in the Classic period. This case study demonstrates how current network analysis techniques can contribute to archaeological studies of the scalar dynamics and organizational changes of past social and political systems.     

Hereditary emblems: Material culture in the context of social change

Emblematic artifacts, which signify personal or social identity, are potentially valuable sources of information about social organization. To date, however, there has been little comparative study of the social contexts that give rise to use of different kinds of emblems, nor of the ways in which the social significance of emblematic artifacts may change over time. This paper is specifically concerned with the emergence and changing use of hereditary emblems in stratified societies. The histories of lineage devices in western Europe and Japan exhibit a number of similarities which suggest that, in complex societies, hereditary emblems are likely to appear in the presence of unstable systems of social rank. Once introduced, such emblems may acquire additional, nonhereditary, significance without undergoing noticeable iconographic change. The cases examined here suggest a series of general propositions about evolutionary relationships between hereditary emblem use and socioeconomic factors. Although we currently lack a well-developed methodology for identifying hereditary emblems archaeologically, it is clear that the key to their identification lies not in stylistic analysis, but rather in their contexts of use and patterns of association with other items of material culture. Hypotheses derived from consideration of the evolution of lineage emblems in western Europe and Japan are applied to the interpretation of shield decorations of the Archaic and Classical periods in Attic Greece.     

RECALCULATING MOUND VOLUME AT MOUNDVILLE

Abstract

Volume is a critical measure in quantifying differences among earthen mounds. Previous methods for measuring mound volume are prone to error by oversimplifying the symmetry of earthworks. However, the wide availability of contouring software has made it simpler to calculate volume. The results obtained using a computerized technique referred to as the gridding method are compared with previous mound volume estimates at Moundville. The outcome shows that volumes calculated using the gridding method are much smaller than the original estimates. Inflation of the volume of earthen mounds may lead to misrepresentations regarding the degree of sociopolitical organization that existed at Moundville and at other prehistoric mound-building societies in the southeastern United States.     

Continuity and change in the evolution of religion and political organization on pre-Columbian Puerto Rico

Trajectories of cultural evolution are diverse, depending on unique blends of social, economic, and ideological factors. Assessing case-specific historical circumstances is crucial when identifying underlying processes of change. In this paper, I detail a model of cultural evolution based on the historical circumstances of the island cultures in the pre-Columbian Caribbean. We see continuity in key elements of cosmology and structural organization within a framework of evolving social complexity, leadership roles, and inequality. In the case of Puerto Rico, cosmology and ideology were intertwined over approximately 2000 years, spanning tribal to chiefdom sociopolitical formations.     

Recent Research in Western Mexican Archaeology

Western Mexico is vast and geographically diverse and has received far less attention compared to other areas of Mesoamerica. Research over the past decade allows the definition of four major subregions characterized by cultural factors and distinct historical trajectories. A large proportion of the research in western Mexico is still culture-historical in nature, oriented toward establishing chronologies and relationships between regions. But along with a number of recent efforts toward synthesis and consolidation, current theoretical research contributes to the study of mortuary patterns and social organization, alternative forms of social complexity, agricultural intensification, empire formation, state involvement in the economy, human-land relationships, and the interlocking relationship between migration and sociopolitical reorganization.     

Animals and inequality in Chalcolithic central Anatolia

This paper explores the changing social and economic roles of livestock within three increasingly complex societies in Chalcolithic central Anatolia. By specifically addressing practices associated with the production, distribution and consumption of livestock, particularly sheep and goats, I show how changes in the use of animals were dynamically linked to the emergence of new sociopolitical environments. These changes, including the development of intensive caprine pastoralism and complex provisioning systems as well as an increased focus on the production of secondary products, strongly suggest that control over animals, particularly sheep, and their products played a central role in the development of increasingly complex and hierarchical social systems in MC Anatolia.     

An evolutionary model of social change in the Middle Ohio Valley: Was social complexity impossible during the late woodland but mandatory during the late prehistoric?

We present an evolutionary model of social change in the Middle Ohio Valley during the Fort Ancient period (AD 1000–1650), primarily relying on an application of Winterhalder’s (1986) and Kelly’s (1995) evolutionary ecology model of cultural responses to environmental variability. We predict changes in social organization, political complexity, and patterns of stylistic similarity. As the environmental background for our model we employ recently published moisture data. By iteratively applying the synchronic Winterhalder–Kelly model we are able to predict a sequence of general trends that agree with much current interpretation of Fort Ancient development. Specifically, the model leads us to expect increasing village size, the development of regional traditions, and the development of leadership roles and a region-wide style Horizon around AD 1400. However, our model provides the ability to make testable predictions that deviate from the accepted cultural history and predicts that the Middle Ohio Valley and the groups referred to as Fort Ancient were far from homogenous.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

Politywide Analysis and Imperial Political Economy: The Relationship between Valley Political Complexity and Administrative Centers in the Wari Empire of the Central Andes

This article tests a model for the political economy of the Wari Empire (AD 600–1000) of Peru. This model divides the empire into core and periphery zones. In the core, Wari political economy was organized to extract surplus agricultural production to feed the capital. In the periphery, the Wari strove to extract prestige goods. We suggest that there is a strong relationship between where the empire chose to locate its centers in the periphery and the political complexity of the local population in which the center was placed. We argue that in areas of low political organization sites should be located near the geographic center of a population. These sites will tend to function as local administrative centers geared toward the organization and exploitation of the area's wealth potential. In areas with more complex political organization sites should be located on the margins of a population. These sites should have functioned as gateway centers controlling, or at least profiting from, interregional exchange. Our model was systematically tested through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results suggest that much of the variability found in Wari site placement in the periphery can be explained by differences in local sociopolitical complexity.