Toward a More Comprehensive Model of Interregional Commodity Distribution: Political Variables and Prehistoric Obsidian Procurement in Mesoamerica

The distance-decay model of commodity distribution is examined for its potential utility in accounting for the interregional patterning of nonlocal goods during prehistoric times. Data obtained through a spectrochemical trace element analysis of Mesoamerican obsidian artifacts serve to expose some of the model's explanatory deficiencies and, when viewed in the context of what we know about the events of Mesoamerican prehistory, suggest that variables of a sociopolitical nature must enter into any comprehensive attempt to understand the processes by which long-distance networks of commodity distribution evolved and were maintained.