{"id":7646,"date":"2022-03-08T06:38:10","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T11:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7646"},"modified":"2022-03-08T06:38:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T11:38:10","slug":"ancient-mexican-city-endured-for-centuries-without-extremes-in-wealth-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7646","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Mexican City Endured for Centuries Without Extremes in Wealth and Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Main Plaza at the center of Monte Alb\u00e1n.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Location, location, location\u2014it\u2019s the first rule of real estate. For a long time, it\u2019s been widely assumed that being close to resources drives settlement patterns, with cities generally founded near water and fertile land for growing crops. But a new paper by a husband-and-wife archaeological team questions that idea, using the example of an ancient city in what\u2019s now southern Mexico. The researchers argue that Monte Alb\u00e1n, the largest city in its region for more than a thousand years, wasn\u2019t situated near especially good farmland. But what it did have from the city\u2019s foundation was a defendable hilltop location and a more collective form of government that attracted people both to the settlement and its surrounding area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to understand why Monte Alb\u00e1n was founded where it was,\u201d says Linda Nicholas, the first author of the study<\/a> in Frontiers in Political Science<\/em> and an adjunct curator at the Field Museum.<\/p>\n

Monte Alb\u00e1n lies in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. It was founded in 500 BC, grew rapidly, and endured as the region\u2019s main metropolis for 1,300 years, longer than most, if not all, other prehispanic Mesoamerican cities. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working in the Oaxaca Valley for 40 years, and we and our colleagues have wondered what drew so many people to move to Monte Alb\u00e1n and its surrounding area, and what allowed the city to sustain itself for so long,\u201d says Gary Feinman, the Field Museum\u2019s MacArthur curator of anthropology and co-author of the study. \u201cOver the years, a few competing ideas have been advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hypothesis to explain the rapid growth at Monte Alb\u00e1n is coercion\u2014the idea that powerful rulers forced people move there. Another possible explanation was that people went there because the land was good for farming. To examine the validity of these possible explanations, Nicholas and Feinman went back over decades of research covering both Monte Alb\u00e1n and the surrounding Valley of Oaxaca.<\/p>\n

Gary Feinman and crew member surveying ridge in southern part of the Valley of Oaxaca in the 1980s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Monte Alb\u00e1n from the air; 100s of prehispanic residential terraces descend the slopes below the Main Plaza at the top of the hill.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To evaluate the argument that Monte Alb\u00e1n attracted people because of the quality of its farmland, the researchers drew on studies of modern land use in the valley to map out different land classes based on the availability and permanence of water, the most important factor for crop yields in the valley. Good, well-watered land was patchily distributed across the valley, so that some areas had much higher potential yields than others. While pre-Monte Alb\u00e1n settlements were more heavily concentrated in the most productive parts of the valley, Monte Alb\u00e1n was not. Land quality was less a factor in settlement decisions at the time of Monte Alb\u00e1n\u2019s foundation, both for the city and nearby settlements.<\/p>\n

\u201cLinda\u2019s analysis of land use shows very clearly that Monte Alb\u00e1n wasn\u2019t located near the richest land. Whether you just look at the land itself, or whether you figure in the labor to work it, agrarian productivity cannot explain the location of Monte Alb\u00e1n,\u201d says Feinman.<\/p>\n

So the hypothesis about fertile land doesn\u2019t hold up for Monte Alb\u00e1n. Feinman and Nicholas also investigated the possibility that people were forced to come to the region. This part of the project relied on decades of archaeological survey work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1960s, archaeologists started to ask different questions about ancient societies beyond just collecting and categorizing artifacts,\u201d says Nicholas. \u201cWhen you excavate a site, you only get a picture of a very small part, and also it\u2019s both destructive and expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re trying to answer questions about how early cities formed and how long they lasted, excavation with its limited portal into the past doesn\u2019t answer them,\u201d says Feinman. \u201cIf you want to learn about the city of Chicago, excavating one house, a block, or even one neighborhood wouldn\u2019t give you information about the growth of downtown in relationship to the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, or how it relates to a broader network of settlements in northern Illinois and beyond. It\u2019s the same way with ancient cities\u2014you need a more macro-level vantage to understand how their growth and decline compared to the areas around them.\u201d<\/p>\n

To get at this broader picture of where people lived and how their settlement patterns shifted over time, Feinman and Nicholas collaborated with Richard Blanton and Stephen Kowalewski in Oaxaca to survey one of the largest contiguous study regions in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our systematic survey, we used aerial photographs and maps to guide us as we walked across the entire valley. When we found archaeological sites, we made notes of what we found and where and took collections to determine the periods of occupation,\u201d says Nicholas. \u201cWe and our colleagues wound up covering thousands of square kilometers in the Oaxaca Valley and adjacent areas.\u201d This research over the years has been supplemented with more in-depth excavations by many scholars at key sites.<\/p>\n

Gary Feinman on survey in the 1980s, holding air photo under his arm as he takes notes on exposed architecture in a prehispanic mound.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This wider-ranging look at life in Monte Alb\u00e1n and its surrounding areas, drawn from both surveys and excavations, gave the researchers new insights over the years. \u201cWe learned that at Monte Alb\u00e1n and other settlements in prehispanic Oaxaca, the bulk of the residents lived on flattened terraces, which were constructed on the slopes of the hills. From the excavations that we and others conducted, we gained a perspective on terrace life, where people lived in individual houses with multiple rooms around a patio. Domestic units often shared a front retaining wall, and drains generally separated residences,\u201d says Feinman. \u201cPeople not only lived very close together, but they also must have been highly cooperative from one domestic unit to another, because if part of the retaining wall collapsed or the drain got clogged, they\u2019d have to work together to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The residents of Monte Alb\u00e1n also were economically interdependent, exchanging craft goods and food in the risky environment for agriculture where they lived. Although no large food storage facilities have been found, there are indications that the city\u2019s residents participated in marketplace exchanges, which may have buffered the region\u2019s unpredictable rainfall. Cooperative defense and economic opportunity drew people from afar to early Monte Alb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

The high degrees of cooperation between households at Monte Alb\u00e1n was echoed to some extent in the political organization of Monte Alb\u00e1n as a whole. \u201cCompared to more autocratic societies, like the Classic-period Maya, Monte Alb\u00e1n seems to have had a more collective form of governance,\u201d says Nicholas. Autocratic societies\u2014ones ruled by despots, where a small group of people wielded all the power\u2014tended to have architecture that reflected their form of rule, with big, fancy palaces and elaborate burial sites for the rich and powerful. Despotic rulers serve as the billboards for their regimes, often marked by aggrandizing and personalized monuments. Monte Alb\u00e1n, however, is characterized by non-residential public buildings, temples, and large, relatively open, shared plazas. Given the longevity of the site, the number of monuments that feature rulers is small.<\/p>\n

Although defense was a key factor in the foundation and location of Monte Alb\u00e1n, there is no indication that the early occupants were coerced to move to this dense hilltop location where their agricultural prospects were somewhat risky, interpersonal efforts were needed to sustain their residences, and residential settlement was densely packed. Nevertheless, health measures indicate that the inhabitants of Monte Alb\u00e1n were generally better off than the residents of other prehispanic cities, and the institutions established at Monte Alb\u00e1n contributed to their well-being, drawing people from afar despite these challenges.<\/p>\n

Since people probably weren\u2019t forced to come to Monte Alb\u00e1n, and they didn\u2019t come for the productive farmland, that leaves the question: why did <\/em>Monte Alb\u00e1n grow so quickly and stay large and important for so long?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we have a frame that draws more on cooperation,\u201d says Nicholas. Based on the work of other scholars like Margaret Levi and Richard Blanton, Feinman hypothesizes that \u201cit’s a kind of mutual relationship between people who have power and people that don’t. In this case, the powerful may have coordinated defense, helped organize marketplace exchange, and conducted ritual activities that enhanced community solidarity. On the other hand, the bulk of the city\u2019s populace produced food and other goods that sustained the settlement and, through taxes, supported governance. It was a collaborative process that relied on compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feinman notes that the architecture of the city might include clues about this cooperative relationship between the classes that led people to Monte Alb\u00e1n. \u201cFrom the very founding of the site, there was a big main plaza where people could get together and express their voice, at least sometimes. People may have been encouraged to move there for defense and economic opportunity,\u201d he says. \u201cBut on the other hand, in order to underpin and support these new institutions, farmers probably had to give over some of their surplus. So, it’s kind of a give and take.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Feinman and Nicholas note that this study is just one case, about one city, it does have some lessons for us today. \u201cMonte Alb\u00e1n was a city where a new social contract was written at its foundation. It was somewhat more equitable and less elite-centric than what had gone on before,\u201d says Feinman. \u201cAnd with its collective and relatively equitable government, it endured for more than a millennium. Yet when it collapsed, the city\u2019s population declined drastically and many of its institutions dissolved, ushering in a period of more autocratic rule.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Location, location, location\u2014it\u2019s the first rule of real estate. For a long time, it\u2019s been widely assumed that being close to resources drives settlement patterns, with cities generally founded near water and fertile land for growing crops. But a new paper by a husband-and-wife archaeological team questions that idea, using the example of an ancient…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/0eb2e4b7-f58a-401f-b236-92d22d404cc2\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"Ancient Mexican City Endured for Centuries Without Extremes in Wealth and Power","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7647,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions\/7647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}