Chapter 1

The Prehispanic Mesoamerican World

Framing Interaction

Gary M. Feinman

Scholarly interpretations of prehispanic Mesoamerican civilization are characterized by a paradox. On the one hand, as Wright’s description highlights, the combination of a rugged topographic landscape and the absence of beasts of burden would seem to peg the Mesoamerican macroregion as the heartland of early civilization most apt to be characterized by intensively local patterns of interaction and limited broad-scale communication—a geographical realm where economic production was geared largely for immediate, proximate consumption, as John Clark (1986) proposed for obsidian blades at Teotihuacan. On the other hand, for the last century grand narratives regarding the prehispanic Mesoamerican past are ripe with inferences and debates over cross-continent, long-distance interconnections, including, but not limited to, the Olmec Horizon (e.g., Grove 1993), the relations between Tula and Chichén Itzá (e.g., Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007), the question of Mesoamerican links with the indigenous peoples of the southwestern United States (e.g., Mathien and McGuire 1986), the possible role of Teotihuacan in the rise of Classic Maya polities (Braswell [ed.] 2003), and the long-distance introduction of metalworking technology into Mesoamerica (e.g., Hosler 2003).

Many of the aforementioned episodes of proposed long-distance ancient Mesoamerican interaction are reexamined in this volume, and new perspectives and data are brought to the fore in the chapters. My aim in this chapter is not to critique nor to review the component essays. Rather, I endeavor to frame and contextualize the examination of interaction in deep historical settings in which we rely heavily on the archaeological record (e.g., Shryock and Lord Smail 2011), with a principal focus on prehispanic Mesoamerica. Although I do not have concrete answers, my intent is to raise why, whither, and how questions. More precisely, why is the study of interaction important for understanding the ancient Mesoamerican world? Why is it necessary to investigate such processes? How significant a process was interaction, especially long-distance networks of interpersonal interconnection, over time and space? And how can we most productively position ourselves to examine patterns and modes of prehispanic interaction? Although long-distance networks of movement and communication seem to have been an important feature of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican world, they have never been easy to document or convincingly interpret. Thus, as illustrated and debated across this collection, careful reconsideration and reframing of how we think about interaction are in order.

Why Investigate Interaction?

As Joyce Marcus (chapter 12 in this volume) argues, long-distance interaction probably rarely can solely account (or be the prime mover) for the emergence of new local institutions, such as the rise of a state level of governance. Yet this recognition does not render the documentation and elucidation of different modes and intensities of interaction moot. For as Marcus outlines, “interaction comes in many forms: long-distance versus local, peaceful versus hostile, direct versus indirect, long-term versus short-term, multidirectional versus unidirectional, and transformative versus nontransformative,” and it is the variation in these networks of communication, interpersonal relations, and economic transfers over time and space that yields a much fuller perspective on the nature of human histories and how they varied and changed. Human worlds “constitute a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality” (Wolf 1982:3).

Over the last decades—since Eric Wolf’s (1982:6) metaphorical billiard ball analogy questioned the applicability of the primordial bounded cultural (ethnic) units typified by the construction of time-space grids of shared norms presumed by the culture historical approach (Flannery 1967; Trigger 1989:186–195)—archaeologists increasingly have recognized the importance of the relative openness of human social networks and macroregional-scale interactions for understanding ancient worlds (e.g., Blanton and Feinman 1984; Green and Perlman 1985; Hall et al. 2011; Sherratt 1993; M. L. Smith 2005, 2007). The recent advent and broad application of bioarchaeological and compositional analysis technologies, along with the implementation of social network approaches to archaeological data (Knappett 2013; Kristiansen 2014:19), have only strengthened the empirical foundation for the significance of ancient interaction. As we move forward, divergent and shifting patterns of interaction may yield important clues both for key changes in the balances of power across ancient worlds over time and for understanding major historical differences between global macroregions (e.g., Frankema 2015; Golitko and Feinman 2015; Turchin et al. 2006). Furthermore, the volume and modes of long-distance flows of people, materials, and information may have significant implications for regional-scale, and even more local, structures and relations (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993; Willey 1999).

The investigation of the spatial correlates of past social and economic relations has the potentially useful effect of raising important research problems (e.g., Mills et al. 2013; Renfrew 1981). The definition of relevant networks over broad spatial ranges is significant, as a broadening body of research indicates that the position of people and institutions in established network structures affects the outcomes of interactions (e.g., Schortman 2014). That is, where and how a particular person or place is situated in a larger network of connections often is a key factor in the influence and subsequent history of that nodal individual, population, or location (e.g., Borgatti et al. 1998; Brughmans 2013).

Long-Distance Interaction: Prehispanic Mesoamerica

A long-standing perspective on prehispanic Mesoamerica consistently framed this ancient world as one in which people tended to “stay at home” stymied by limited transport options and rugged landscapes (e.g., Sanders and Webster 1988:542–543; Webster 1985). From this vantage, local economic production was premised as basically the sole foundation of political power with longer-distance relations having only minimal importance, especially for the sizable nonelite segment of these populations. Of course, no one would argue the converse. Clearly, in ancient Mesoamerica, as in most preindustrial contexts, local production and social networks undoubtedly were primary in the great majority of historical cases. Yet, for prehispanic Mesoamerica, increasing bodies of evidence now can be marshaled to support the view that long-distance interactions could also be highly significant, and their relative importance varied over time and space (e.g., Blanton et al. 1996; Golitko and Feinman 2015).

Interactions over distance and cultural mobility were unquestionably a key aspect of the Late Postclassic (ca. AD 1250–1520) Mesoamerican world (Smith and Berdan eds. 2003). Significant migrations (Beekman and Christensen 2003) have been evidenced, as well as the transmission of biological (Ragsdale and Edgar 2015), symbolic (Boone and Smith 2003; Pohl 2003; M. E. Smith 2003; Smith and Heath-Smith 1980), and material (Berdan 2003; Berdan et al. 2003; Braswell 2003) information across the macroregion. In Mesoamerica, the Late Postclassic has long been seen as a time of increasing commercialization (Blanton and Fargher 2012; Blanton et al. 2005; Blanton and Feinman 1984; Kepecs 2003; Smith and Berdan 2000) and expanding market connections (Blanton 1996; Blanton and Fargher 2012), an interpretation that has been supported by a recent analysis of a large sample of sourced obsidian (Golitko and Feinman 2015), in which that era was judged to have greater connectivity than during any prior period in the prehispanic sequence.

Nevertheless, long-distance interactions, shared symbol and communication systems (Joshua D. Englehardt and Michael D. Carrasco, chapter 3 in this volume; Kerry M. Hull, chapter 4 in this volume), ritual practices, and even economic transfers through diverse modes of exchange (Guy David Hepp, chapter 2 in this volume; Charles L. F. Knight, chapter 8 in this volume; see also Blanton et al. 2005; Ebert et al. 2015; Hirth 2013), including marketplace exchange networks (Feinman and Nicholas 2010; Masson and Freidel 2013; Stark and Ossa 2010), began in the Mesoamerican world long before the Late Postclassic period. The long-distance movement of obsidian (Golitko and Feinman 2015) serves to document these interactive practices and processes, though the specific modes of transfer are more difficult to discern. At the same time, and perhaps unexpectedly, the findings of this analysis allow us (Golitko and Feinman 2015:227–232) to illustrate how variable these networks of interaction were over time.

For example, the principal routes between the Maya region (southeastern Mesoamerica) and the rest of the macroregion (western Mesoamerica) shifted several times from one coast to the other during the prehispanic period. Likewise, in a more recent study of sourced obsidian from Mesoamerica, my colleagues and I (Feinman et al. 2019) noted that whereas most of the obsidian that crossed between these two segments of Mesoamerica prior to the Early Classic period were moved from east (the Maya region) to west, the directionality of obsidian transfers shifted by the Classic period so that it was mainly obsidian from the Gulf, central Mexico, and Michoacán that moved to the east after that time (cf. Charles L. F. Knight, chapter 8 in this volume). These changes illustrate not only that ancient communities and their economies were neither entirely local nor static but that, given the utility and abundance of obsidian at most prehispanic Mesoamerican sites, shifts in long-distance networks and relations likely had important local political and demographic implications (e.g., Golitko et al. 2012). For example, given the importance of Aztec-era marketplaces in Mesoamerica (e.g., Blanton 1996), a key question is just how important and variable was this institution and the associated modes of transfer across time and space (e.g., Feinman and Garraty 2010; Garraty and Stark ed. 2010; King ed. 2015).

Examining Interaction: Toward More Systematic Approaches

With mounting evidence that human socioeconomic networks in the past generally were neither static nor tightly bounded (e.g., Golitko and Feinman 2015; M. L. Smith 2005), the examination and refinement of the nature, modes, and directionality of interactions that interconnected households, settlements, market systems, and polities across space become key analytical parameters for studying and explaining history and the diverse paths that it has taken. As Wolf (1982:ix) eloquently stated: “it was clear to me from the start that . . . an analytic history could not be developed out of the study of a single culture or nation, a single culture area, or even a single continent at one period in time.” Human populations construct their cultural practices through connectivity with others, and not in isolation.

Yet, for the distant past, empirically systematic and convincing elucidations of interaction have not always been easy to achieve. For one, almost by definition, examinations of interaction require the analysis of multiscalar sets of data, which often require lengthy, even multigenerational, episodes of study to amass. Another challenge is conceptual, as the archaeological study of interaction has been a key focus for researchers, who have approached the topic from a diversity of theoretical frames that often bring alternative interpretive logics to the relevant empirical/evidential records (Bauer and Agbe-Davies 2010:30–36; Emberling 2016; Schortman and Urban 1987). Given the broad array of cultural practices and behaviors that are encompassed by the term “interaction”; the consequent necessity to specify and refine the nature, timing, and directionality of these interconnections; and the broad suites of evidence that can be productively brought to bear to the study of these processes, I devote the remainder of this chapter to a discussion of four tenets intended to strengthen and synthesize how we document, specify, and interpret past patterns of interaction.

Moving beyond Classification, Diffusion, and Traits

Archaeological frames for the examination of interaction have their roots in a cultural historical paradigm focused principally on the classification of cultural traditions across geographic landscapes (e.g., Bauer and Agbe-Davies 2010:30–36; Jones 2008; Trigger 1984). Cultures were defined as relatively closed, spatially static, and largely homogeneous entities defined by a roster of traits. Although the potential for change was envisioned as potentially sparked by the introduction of new traits through migration or diffusion, the prime focus of the archaeological enterprise was the tracking of aggregated traits or other cultural styles or symbols over time and space. Subsequent archaeological perspectives have downplayed the classificatory aims of the earlier cultural historical approach toward the examination of internal processes of change; nevertheless they have continued to be grounded in the equation of sets of material traits and features with ethnic and cultural units that largely were presumed to be bounded, uniform, and mostly autonomous of other similar units. Wolf’s (1982:6) “billiard balls” remained critical units of analysis despite shifts in problem focus.

Yet the presumption that in the past cultural or ethnic units were clearly bounded, largely homogeneous, and basically continuous in time, and so easily identifiable in the past is now in a practical sense untenable (e.g., Barth 1969; Green and Perlman 1985; Jones 1997, 2008:328–329; M. E. Smith 2007:591–601; M. L. Smith 2005). Such notions are poorly aligned with the historical record of human affiliation, while increasingly rich archaeological, architectural, and other relevant sets of information reveal far greater diversity (often rather continuous patterns of variation) and nuance in material assemblages over time and space, so that the definition of discrete, homogeneous units becomes harder to justify (e.g., Blanton 2015). Add to these challenges the wide array of practices subsumed under the rubric of interaction and the lack of explicit agreed-upon ways to discriminate these modes of interaction, and it becomes evident to me that we must analytically move beyond bottom-up recognitions of shared styles, symbols, and forms if we want to construct credible scenarios for past patterns of historical interaction. To do this requires the repositioning and examination of interaction and networks in a broader context, one that expands beyond conceptual foci on classification, isolated artifacts, traits, and diffusion. As Kristiansen (2014:19) asserts, “the theoretical and historical implications of this knowledge revolution will be profound, as it lifts the forces of historical change away from the local context onto a much larger geographical scale of multiple local interactions, creating a constant flux of connectivity and productivity without fixed boundaries.”

Relying on Multiple Evidentiary Sources with Focus on the More Definitive

When we study the past, we can discern patterns of interaction using a wide array of empirical evidence. As archaeology tends to lack clear-cut interpretive formulae for deriving consensual sense of these data, reliance on a diversity of evidential sources to underpin inferred patterns of interaction (e.g., Lightfoot 1995:199) seems like a prudent, if not essential, step (as applied by many of the authors in this volume). Nevertheless, at least for the unraveling of economic networks, I see the most direct lines of argument through global advances that have been made in the sourcing of obsidian, metal, gemstones (such as turquoise and jade), building stone, and pottery. Such investigations yield relatively firm, even potentially quantifiable, measures of long-distance patterns of interaction. Archaeological compositional research—when taken in conjunction with targeted residue analyses (e.g., Crown and Hurst 2009), quantitative linguistic studies, and biodistance and ancient DNA approaches—provides investigators with analytical paths toward more convincing models of ancient interaction and networks that are now on the immediate horizon (e.g., Kristiansen 2014).

Analyses of stylistic parallels between sites and how they changed over time certainly can and should have a role in such investigations of interaction. Yet convincing use of such stylistic data requires consensually acknowledged means for their interpretation. At present, the inferential steps between the notation of stylistic parallels and specific modes of interaction are sketchy, perhaps even speculative, in many cases. A shift from bottom-up discussions of similar styles to the greater use of explicit top-down models that evaluate material similarities and dissimilarities in relation to alternative patterns of interaction (exchange, demographic mobility, military conquest) would seem to be a more explicit way to proceed, which also could easily integrate multiple lines of evidence (M. E. Smith 2007:595–596) as a basis to evaluate alternative working hypotheses (Chamberlin 1965).

Framing Questions, Assessing Models

Bottom-up comparisons of stylistic attributes are difficult to evaluate because the relationship to different modes of interaction are not straightforward to assess. But, in addition, as noted above, the relationship between material cultural style and cultural affiliation or identity is not transparent either (e.g., Jones 1997). As Michael Smith (2007:593) argues, “at our current state of knowledge, it is simply impossible to determine, a priori, the conditions that determine whether past ethnicity was expressed in material culture or not.” Patterned variation in material culture can reflect ethnicity, but it also may signal other kinds of identity (status, gender, profession) or other kinds of sociopolitical factors that are not tied to identity at all. Furthermore, when we look at stylistic attributes, even judgments regarding what degree of similarity is meaningful are far from clear cut. Only through the crafting of explicit objective criteria for the comparison of material culture will scholars free our investigations from the morass of unverifiable, subjective interpretations.

The repertoire of available theoretical models for the examination of long-distance patterns of interaction is not entirely unflawed. Yet current conceptual approaches have far surpassed initial, albeit seminal, archaeological efforts at modeling interaction (e.g., Renfrew 1975). Current applications tend to be more sensitive to scale and, through multiple working hypotheses, better able to eclipse the problem of equifinality. Recent approaches have helped define and distinguish different patterns of conquest and imperialism (e.g., Costin 2011; Earle and Smith 2012; Nash and Williams 2004; Smith and Montiel 2001; Stark and Chance 2012) as well as other kinds of macroscale politicoeconomic interdependencies (e.g., Blanton and Fargher 2012; Blanton et al. 2005; Kepecs and Kohl 2003; M. E. Smith 2007; Smith and Berdan 2000). Such models, when applied in appropriate contexts with explicitly defined terms, become a basis for outlining sets of test implications, which give analytical structure to the diverse arrays of data that archaeologists traditionally apply to assess and evaluate patterns and modes of interaction. As conceptual frames, these macroscale models represent a means to define and distinguish a suite of interactive social mechanisms (sensu Hedström and Swedberg 1996:283) that link polities through political conquest, economic transactions, and information exchange.

More specifically, it is important to emphasize that World Systems models (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993) have been somewhat mischaracterized in archaeology as unidirectional, denying influence and agency to the people in outlying regions (e.g., Stein 2002, 2007), and/or as typological, a direct derivative of Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1974) earlier model for the rise of capitalism in Europe. In fact, such misconceptions have been explicitly and repeatedly addressed and refuted (e.g., Blanton and Feinman 1984; Galaty 2011; Hall et al. 2011; Kepecs and Kohl 2003), so that current macroregional approaches account for a range of different relations between the populations of interacting regions. Basically, the crux of World Systems approaches is that the linkages between regions, based on divisions of labor and patterns of interaction, are indeed important for domestic economies, labor mobilization, and potentially the funding of power. Renewed applications of social network analyses provide tools to assess and illuminate the nature of these relations as well as shifts in them over time (e.g., Mills et al. 2013). Applications of social network analyses (e.g., Brughmans 2013) to goods-based approaches undertaken at the macroscale (e.g., Blanton et al. 2005) should be especially informative. In regard to the movement of materials, the types of merchant diaspora models advanced by Gil Stein (2002) for ancient Mesopotamia actually can easily be subsumed into the aforementioned macroregional frames, rather than viewing them as strict alternatives. Merchants from one area could establish residence in another area, thereby facilitating economic interaction between the two regions.

Examinations of the prehispanic Mesoamerican world have been the foundation for the building and expansion of World Systems theory more generally. For example, Wallerstein’s (1974:41–42) rather stark dichotomy between luxury and staple goods does not serve well in Mesoamerica (see also Schneider 1977:21) where “bulk luxuries” (Kepecs 2003:130), highly valued exotic goods that were not restricted to a small elite segment of the population (such as cotton cloth, obsidian, cacao), were a key part of macroregional interactions during the Late Postclassic period and, for some goods, even before (Blanton et al. 2005:274–275; Golitko and Feinman 2015).

Considering Interaction in Context

Regardless of the specific bodies of evidence used to probe the existence and kinds of interactions, it is important to consider those data in the broader societal context that includes the nature of the relevant sites, where they fit in the surrounding hinterlands, and how the specific populations involved were organized. In particular, stylistic comparisons considered independently of those broader spheres of evidence can lead to imaginative interpretive propositions with little basis in historical reality.

For example, decades ago, researchers advanced the notion that the Olmec Horizon could be accounted for by proselytizing missionaries or military expeditions (e.g., Coe 1965) sent out from the Gulf Coast across Mesoamerica, spreading stylistic traditions across the macroregion (see Flannery 1968:79–80; Marcus 2007 for critiques of these views). Yet proselytizing religions were never part of the prehispanic Mesoamerican world, even much later in time, and the supply chains necessary to support such wide-ranging war parties (needed to conquer distant lands) would have been near impossible to sustain at Preclassic levels of population (e.g., Hassig 1995). Although a uniformly accepted explanation for Preclassic patterns of interaction across Mesoamerica remains out of reach (e.g., Pool 2009), consideration of this period in a broader cultural context and with an enhanced archaeological record over the last decades has enabled the great majority of the research community to rule out proselytizing missionaries and widespread military conquest as credible explanations for this time.

Synthetic Thoughts

In advancing a new paradigmatic lens for archaeology, Kristiansen (2014:21) places networks and interaction at the center of how we frame and integrate the study of the past. Such a radical reconceptualization has merit and makes a certain degree of sense given the long-standing biases toward localism that have dominated how we traditionally think about early sedentary peoples, especially in diverse and rugged settings such as Mesoamerica. In the face of empirical investigations along many analytical dimensions (including the contributions to this volume), it is an appropriate time to reject these long-standing presumptions and recognize that the prehispanic Mesoamerican world was generally not characterized by impermeable boundaries nor closed systems but rather by extensive socioeconomic networks. For the prehispanic Mesoamerican world, intercommunity, and even extraregional, connectivities were significant from the area’s colonization through the commercialized world of the Postclassic.

Nevertheless, across Mesoamerica, patterns of interconnection shifted over time. Generally, the volume of material exchanges increased over time (Drennan 1984a, 1984b), as did the spatial extent of the networks, but shifts did not necessarily occur in a uniform, unidirectional manner (e.g., Golitko and Feinman 2015). The kinds of goods transferred across long distances also changed over time with precious, exotic goods more prevalent in the Preclassic transfers, while staples and “bulk luxuries” basically increased in volumetric significance beginning in the later Preclassic and continuing into the Late Postclassic (Blanton et al. 2005).

Demographic mobility also was a key aspect of prehispanic Mesoamerican interaction. The rapid population growth rates documented early in the histories of key Mesoamerican cities, such as Monte Albán (Feinman et al. 1985), Teotihuacan (Cowgill 1997, 2015:61), and Tenochtitlán, as well as others, cannot be explained through natural increases alone, so that in-migration to these centers must have bolstered the observed growth. Repeatedly, across the Mesoamerican macroregion, regional capitals drew in people from near hinterlands and sometimes farther afield. Most important, such movements evidence that political territories and borders were not fixed and that successful centers and rulers drew people to expanding heartlands. Likewise, the significant ebbs and flows of urban centers across Mesoamerica during the Classic-Postclassic transition also are in accord with models that link demographic fluidity with transitions in political and economic power. It is significant that these cycles across the macroregion often were timed with different patterns of shared information exchange and networks (Blanton et al. 1996; Boone and Smith 2003; Willey 1999). Clearly, further model building is needed to understand different modes of information sharing and their relation to political and ideological interaction (e.g., M. E. Smith 2007:599).

Finally, as we begin to understand the complexities of the prehispanic Mesoamerican world, it will become increasingly important to understand how it is similar and different to other preindustrial worlds (e.g., Kohl and Chernykh 2003). Were there widespread cycles of growth and decline, and if so, how similar were they to such synchronous episodes (e.g., Turchin and Hall 2003) in other regions? Only through such investigations can we come to delineate the roots of more contemporary eras of globalization, and whether the understanding of early World Systems holds useful clues for explicating and adapting to the interconnected world of the present.

References