Reconsiderando la “invasión mixteca” del valle de Oaxaca en el Posclásico

Carballo²,

Nicholas³

et al. 2023

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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During the last millennium BCE, central places were founded across many regions of western (non-Maya) Mesoamerica. These early central places differed in environmental location, size, layout, and the nature of their public spaces and monumental architecture. We compare a subset of these regional centers and find marked differences in their sustainability--defined as the duration of time that they remained central places in their respective regions. Early infrastructural investments, high degrees of economic interdependence and collaboration between domestic units, and collective forms of governance are found to be key factors in such sustainability.

Section: Historical Institutionalism and Key Emergent Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and duration of early central places in prehispanic Mesoamerica

Carballo²,

Nicholas³

et al. 2023

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…This shift was reversed circa 300 CE during a subsequent episode of agrarian intensification, marked by distributed power and relatively muted degrees of economic inequality (Feinman et al, 2018b;Feinman and Nicholas, 2020b). Nevertheless, after 700-800 CE, political fragmentation and shifting external relations culminated in the partial abandonment of Monte Albán, which ushered in an episode of more autocratic, transactional political relations (Feinman and Nicholas, 2013, 2016b,c, 2019.…”

Section: Joint Production Coactive Processes and New Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Foundation of Monte Albán, Intensification, and Growth: Coactive Processes and Joint Production

Nicholas

2022

Front. Polit. Sci.

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Most early sedentary villages (c. 1500–500 BCE) in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, were situated on or near well-watered land. Around 500 BCE, a new hilltop center, Monte Albán, was established at the nexus of the valley's three arms, where agriculture was far riskier due to unreliable rainfall and a dearth of permanent water sources. During the era of its establishment, not only was Monte Albán larger than any earlier community in the region, but many other settlers moved into the rural area around Monte Albán. This marked shift in settlement patterns in the Valley of Oaxaca and the underlying processes associated with the foundation of Monte Albán have long been debated. How can we account for the immigration of people, some likely from beyond the region itself, to an area where they faced greater risks of crop failure? One perspective, reliant on uniform models of premodern states as despotic, viewed the process from a basically top-down lens; leaders coerced subalterns to move near the capital to provide sustenance for the new center. Yet more recent research has found that governance at Monte Albán was generally more collective than autocratic, and productive activities were centered in domestic units and not managed from above. Based on these new empirical foundations, we reassess earlier settlement and land use studies for the Valley of Oaxaca and view this critical transition as initiated through coactive processes in which new institutions were formed and new relations forged. Shifts in defense, ritual, domestic organization, craft production, and exchange all coincided with this episode of growth fostered by joint production, which intensified agrarian yields through increased domestic labor investments.

“…Following the fall of many of the core Maya centers by the tenth century CE, and the dispersal of populations from the Petén and adjacent regions, key elements of Classic Maya communication were transported to the highlands as pan-Mesoamerican networks of interaction were reconfigured [62] . These elements included mapas [46] , polychrome mural art [65] , and specific aspects of calendrical knowledge [134] . Initially, mapas were employed in the highlands to record individualized narratives as at Cacaxtla [65] .…”

Section: Prehispanic Mesoamerican Temporal Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication, Computation, and Governance: A Multiscalar Vantage on the Prehispanic Mesoamerican World

Carballo

2022

J. Soc. Comput.

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Writing has often been put forth as one indicator of civilization. This correspondence dovetails with the even broader cross-species expectation that the degrees of social complexity and levels of computational communication should closely correlate. Although in a general sense across human cooperative arrangements, a basic relationship between these variables undoubtedly exists, more detailed and fine-grained analyses indicate important axes of variability. Here, our focus is on prehispanic Mesoamerica and the means of computation and communication employed over more than three millennia (ca. 1500 BCE-1520 CE). We take a multiscalar and diachronic analytical frame, in which we look at 30 central places, six macroregions, and Mesoamerica as whole. By unraveling elements of "social complexity", and decoupling computation from communication, we illustrate that institutional differences in governance had a marked effect on the specific modes and technologies through which prehispanic Mesoamerican peoples communicated across time and space. Demographic and spatial scale, though relevant, do not alone determine time/space diversity in media of computational communication. This article is part of the theme issue "Evolution of Collective Computational Abilities of (Pre)Historic Societies".