Alternative Pathways to Complexity: A Collection of Essays on Architecture, Economics, Power, and Cross-Cultural Analysis - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607325322 ISBN 13: 9781607325321

Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Alternative Pathways to Complexity focuses on the themes of architecture, economics, and power in the evolution of complex societies. Case studies from Mesoamerica, Asia, Africa, and Europe examine the relationship between political structures and economic configurations of ancient chiefdoms and states through a framework of comparative archaeology.

A group of highly distinguished scholars takes up important issues, theories, and methods stemming from the nascent body of research on comparative archaeology to showcase and apply important theories of households, power, and how the development of complex societies can be extended and refined. Drawing on the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic records, the chapters in this volume contain critical investigations on the role of collective action, economics, and corporate cognitive codes in structuring complex societies.

Alternative Pathways to Complexity is an important addition to theoretical development and empirical research on Mesoamerica, the Old World, and cross-cultural studies. The theoretical implications addressed in the chapters will have broad appeal for scholars grappling with alternative pathways to complexity in other regions as well as those addressing diverse cross-cultural research.

Contributors: Sarah B. Barber, Cynthia L. Bedell, Christopher S. Beekman, Frances F. Berdan, Tim Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman, Arthur A. Joyce, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Lisa J. LeCount, Linda M. Nicholas, Peter N. Peregrine, Peter Robertshaw, Barbara L. Stark, T. L. Thurston, Deborah Winslow, Rita Wright

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lane F. Fargher is investigator in the Department of Human Ecology, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN--Unidad Mérida, Yucatán, México, and codirector of the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project (in Tlaxcala, Mexico). A Mesoamerican archaeologist and cross-cultural researcher, he is interested in the role of cooperation and collective action in markets, ancient cities, landscapes, and households.

Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza is investigator in the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos of El Colegio de Michoacán, A.C. and codirector of the Regional Survey and the Trajectory of Complexity in the Magdalena Lake Basin (in Jalisco, Mexico) and the Tlaxcallan Archaeological Project (in Tlaxcala, Mexico). Her research interests are alternative pathways to complexity, political economy, settlement patterns, regional analysis, and cross-cultural research.

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Alternative Pathways to Complexity

A Collection of Essays on Architecture, Economics, Power, and Cross-Cultural Analysis in Honor of Richard E. Blanton

By Lane F. Fargher, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2016 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-532-1

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
Introduction Lane F. Fargher, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, And Cynthia L. Bedell, 
Section 1: Mesoamerican Cases, 
Chapter 1 It Was the Economy, Stupid Stephen A. Kowalewski, 
Chapter 2 Alternative Pathways to Power in Formative Oaxaca Arthur A. Joyce And Sarah B. Barber, 
Chapter 3 Built Space as Political Fields: Community versus Lineage Strategies in the Tequila Valleys Christopher S. Beekman, 
Chapter 4 Complexity without Centralization: Corporate Power in Postclassic Jalisco Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, 
Chapter 5 Central Precinct Plaza Replication and Corporate Groups in Mesoamerica Barbara L. Stark, 
Chapter 6 Featherwork as a Commodity Complex in the Late Postclassic Mesoamerican World System Frances F. Berdan, 
Chapter 7 Classic Maya Marketplaces and Exchanges: Examining Market Competition as a Factor for Understanding Commodity Distributions Lisa J. Lecount, 
Section 2: Old World Cases, 
Chapter 8 Enduring Nations and Emergent States: Rulership, Subjecthood, and Power in Early Scandinavia T. L. Thurston, 
Chapter 9 The Bakitara (Banyoro) of Uganda and Collective Action Theory Peter Robertshaw, 
Chapter 10 Cognitive Codes and Collective Action at Mari and the Indus Rita Wright, 
Chapter 11 "We Shape Our Buildings and Afterwards Our Buildings Shape Us": Interpreting Architectural Evolution in a Sinhalese Village Deborah Winslow, 
Section 3: Cross-Cultural Studies, 
Chapter 12 Network Strategy and War Peter N. Peregrine And Carol R. Ember, 
Chapter 13 Framing the Rise and Variability of Past Complex Societies Gary M. Feinman And Linda M. Nicholas, 
Chapter 14 Pathways to Power: Corporate and Network Strategies, Staple and Wealth Finance, and Primary and Secondary States Tim Earle, 
Chapter 15 Corporate Power Strategies, Collective Action, and Control of Principals: A Cross-Cultural Perspective Lane F. Fargher, 
References, 
List of Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

It Was the Economy, Stupid

Stephen A. Kowalewski

Were the major cycles of growth and decline in Mesoamerican civilization (and other urban societies) caused by uncommon (in alphabetical order) aliens, droughts, eruptions, exhaustions, invaders, or raptures? This chapter reviews a theory of the ancient Mesoamerican economy, tests some of its expectations, and proposes that common economic forces would be a reasonable and sufficient cause for episodes of growth and decline. Despite problems of archaeological specification, there is sufficient reason to develop this line of research, in which preindustrial urban societies are treated as subject not to exotic forces but to things familiar to our own experience. Our field is weak in general theory concerning the long-term dynamics of urban societies. Explanations tend to be ad hoc, particularistic, long-since discredited, or reliant on exogenous causes; social science needs to identify regularities and processes in its domain, society itself — and central to social life is economics. Hence the title of this chapter: in 1992 the political advisor James Carville kept admonishing the Bill Clinton campaign to stick to the main issue, insisting it's "the economy, stupid" (Kelly 1992).

In a recent essay (Kowalewski 2012), I explored in conceptual or theoretical terms how the ancient Mesoamerican economy worked. Here I develop observable implications of the theory, using data from five decades of regional archaeological survey in highland Oaxaca.

THEORETICAL BASE

What follows is a general model of the ancient Mesoamerican economy. As a model it is not an empirical description. To distinguish the two, I use present tense for the model and past tense for the past observable world. The theoretical model is general, not designed for one place or time in Mesoamerican history. It is formal in the sense of using general concepts or principles not tied to specific cultural contexts. And in its economic anthropology style it is formalist rather than substantivist, as explained by Cook (1966).

Formal models such as what follows are not made from sensory data, but from principles; they are not data but they tell you what data are. The purpose of models is to run them up against real situations so one can see whether something was acting as if it were doing so according to one model's principles or those of another. The model is an ideal type designed for comparison — data against model, and by means of data, model against model (e.g., Apostel 1961; Braudel 1970; Clarke 1972; Weber 1947).

As I present parts of the theory here, I include a few key references to the relevant Mesoamerican archaeology and history. In themselves these sources do not "prove" the principle or premise, but only show that applying the premise here is reasonable and that it can have connection to Mesoamerica.

The following paragraphs describe this theoretical model of the ancient Mesoamerican economy. This economy works by market principles of supply and demand. Many scholars would deny that it is a market economy. Perhaps calling it a commercial economy (commerce means goods exchange) would be more agreeable. The real task is to explain how the economy functions and how economy and society shape each other.

I begin with the actors, which are households, mostly but not entirely smallholders. Households do not produce all the goods and services they consume. They desire to consume and they produce for exchange. Goods and services (including labor) circulate. The household is the firm, the marketer, and the consumer all in one. These premises are realistic given the abundant archaeological studies showing that in Mesoamerica the household or house was the unit of production and consumption (e.g., Hendon 1996; Hirth 2009, 2013; Robin 2003a; Santley and Hirth 1993). (That the household is the firm and the locus of specialization, and that there are so many household-firms, suggests that the ancient economy is a better case of the economist's "perfect competition" than is oligopoly capitalism.)

Products in ancient Mesoamerica are elaborated, specialized, differentiated, subject to fashion, and consumed in great quantities. Notice that the properties just listed are not exclusive to industrial manufacturing. This blurs the distinction in Western economics between agricultural and industrial sectors and in anthropology between industrial and preindustrial economies. Again, these premises about products are realistic (see Berdan, chapter 6, this volume), and for examples from the large literature on Mesoamerican technologies, Sahagún (1950–1982) for sixteenth-century historical descriptions, Feinman and Nicholas (2000) on shell, Healan (2011) on obsidian, and Tarkanian and Hosler (2011)on rubber.

Households produce for the market and consume from the market. Urban concentration increases exchange and market dependence. Given Mesoamerica's large urban and rural populations, the demand for goods and services requires widespread and daily participation in exchange. There is a high volume of transactions. In fact, urbanization rates in Mesoamerica were comparable in many respects to those in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607325322
• ISBN 13: 9781607325321
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 422
• Herausgeber: Fargher Lane F., Heredia Espinoza Verenice Y.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland