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

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