INTRODUCTION
The development of complex societies in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica “presents an example of profound transformations in the scale of societies associated with changes in labor relations and cooperative networks rather than with technology” (Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016:292–293). This transformation is perhaps most dramatic in the first century a.d. with the explosive growth of Teotihuacan, which has become the archetype for Mesoamerican corporate organization. The process of increasing social complexity had begun, however, more than a millennium prior during a time when long-distance interaction networks thrust together much of Mesoamerica. Our research at the Early and Middle Formative site of Altica reveals that the Teotihuacan Valley became part of this far-flung interaction network long before the valley bottom was settled and provides a fresh understanding about the foundation of later complex societies (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Basin of Mexico. Map by Stoner.
Changes during the Formative period formed the foundation of the Mesoamerican world and the lifeways of its people (Serra Puche Reference Puche and Carmen1993:15). Until we began the Altica project in 2014, for over 30 years there had been little research focused on understanding the Formative period and the emergence of complex societies in the Basin of Mexico, which was the heartland for the largest and most influential pre-Hispanic cities and states in Mesoamerica. The rapid growth and building expansion of Mexico City and surrounding towns and cities has destroyed or obscured most Formative-period sites in the Basin. Through our recent archaeological investigations at the Early to Middle Formative site of Altica, a 6-ha site in the upper piedmont of the Teotihuacan Valley, we examine the initial establishment of agricultural villages, early social and economic differentiation, and the development of intra- and interregional exchange networks and interactions to test comparative models of political economy (all dates presented in this article are calibrated.)
BACKGROUND
Vaillant (Reference Vaillant1930, Reference Vaillant1931, Reference Vaillant1935a, Reference Vaillant1935b, Reference Vaillant1938) from his early excavations defined major phases of the Formative period, along with pottery and figurine typologies within a culture history framework that continues to be modified and refined (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). The Altica project undertook an attribute-based analysis of Altica ceramics and we note some cross ties to other assemblages in discussing our composition analysis (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a). Tlatilco, in the southern Basin, became a key site in debates about “the Olmec problem.” Diffusionism through migrations, missionaries, colonization, and trade was posited early as underlying interregional interactions and the spread of styles, wealth objects, and religious symbolism of Mesoamerica's first horizon.
At the 1967 Dumbarton Oaks conference, Flannery (Reference Flannery and Elizabeth1968:79) drew on ethnographic analogy to offer a processual model for Formative interaction. He began with the disclaimer that his paper “[would] perhaps come as a disappointment: I cannot even propose a migration from the Olmec area to the Valley of Oaxaca, a distance of only a hundred miles of so. Nor will I offer (as a consolation) even so much as a small invasion, or a proselytizing expedition of Olmec ‘missionaries.’” The 1960s and 1970s saw significant research activity focused on the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico (McBride Reference McBride1974; Nichols Reference Nichols1982; Niederberger Reference Niederberger1976, Reference Niederberger1979; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, West, Fletcher and Marino1975, Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979; Santley Reference Santley and Hirth1984, Reference Santley, Santley and Hirth1993; Serre Puche Reference Puche and Carmen1988, Reference Puche and Carmen1993; Tolstoy and Paradis Reference Tolstoy and Paradis1970; Tolstoy et al. Reference Tolstoy, Fish, Boksenbaum, Vaughn and Earle Smith1977). Cultural ecology and neo-evolution framed the regional settlement pattern surveys initiated by Sanders (Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, West, Fletcher and Marino1975, Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979) in the Teotihuacan Valley that discovered Altica and other Formative sites (Figure 2).
Figure 2. View of Altica site surroundings. Photograph by Stoner.
In the 1970s, Tolstoy (Reference Tolstoy1984, Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989; Tolstoy and Paradis Reference Tolstoy and Paradis1970; Tolstoy et al. Reference Tolstoy, Fish, Boksenbaum, Vaughn and Earle Smith1977) revisited Altica to take surface collections as part of his regional study of Early and Middle Formative sites in the Basin. He revised and refined the Formative ceramic chronology and placed the occupation of Altica in the Manantial phase, earlier than Sanders's dating of the Altica phase. Tolstoy and Boksenbaum (Boksenbaum et al. Reference Boksenbaum, Tolstoy, Harbottle and Nivens1987) also pioneered with Brookhaven National Lab the first regional sourcing study of Formative ceramics and obsidian from the Basin of Mexico using neutron activation analysis, although the ceramic study was never published. Blucher (Reference Blucher1971) excavated several Terminal Formative structures at Teotihuacan and found abundant Cuanalan (Late Formative) ceramics.
Tolstoy's (Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989) reanalysis of Tlatilco grave goods provided clear evidence of the Basin of Mexico as an east-west crossroads (Paradis Reference Paradis, Blomster and Cheetham2017:121–129). This east-west connection perhaps enabled Chalcatzingo's later rise as a “gateway center”—a concept first applied by Hirth (Reference Hirth1978) and further supported by Grove's (Reference Grove1987) important investigations at the site. Johnson and Hirth (Reference Johnson and Hirth2019) update the discussion of a gateway community situated on a natural transportation route for the movement of valuable goods and resources. Except for salvage projects, field research on the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico greatly diminished beginning in the 1980s as rapid urban development obscured and destroyed many sites (but see Serra Puche et al. Reference Puche, Carmen, Ramírez, Gámez and González2000). Manzanilla (Reference Manzanilla, Monjarás-Ruiz, Pérez Rocha and Brambila1985, Reference Manzanilla, Politis and Alberti1999) conducted further excavations at the Late Formative village site of Cuanalan in the Teotihuacan Valley where Sanders had excavated during the Teotihuacan Valley Project. Reforestation programs and chisel plowing with tractors further disturbed already eroded hillside sites like Altica. Regions adjoining the Basin of Mexico, however, saw long-term research programs addressing the Formative period (Carballo Reference Carballo and Ochoa2012; Gamboa Reference Cabezas and Manuel2010; Lesure Reference Lesure, Borejsza, Carballo, Frederick, Popper and Wake2006, Reference Lesure2014; Plunket and Uruñuela Reference Plunket and Uruñuela1998, Reference Plunket and Uruñuela2012; Rosenswig Reference Rosenswig2010; Serra Puche Reference Puche and Carmen1993, Reference Puche and Carmen1998, Reference Puche and Carmen2004; Sugiura Reference Sugiura, Evans and Webster2001, Reference Sugiura2009).
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The growth in theoretical frameworks employed by archaeologists since the 1980s to understand the beginnings of complex societies was not matched by research on the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico. Competing explanations about the origins and spread of farming villages, one of the most important historical transformations in human societies, have not been adequately tested in the Teotihuacan Valley, nor have newer theories about the emergence of early complex societies (Blake Reference Blake2015; Blanton et al. Reference Blanton, Feinman, Kowalewski and Peregrine1996; Blomster and Cheetham Reference Blomster and Cheetham2017; Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016; Clarke and Blake Reference Clark, Blake, Brumfiel and Fox1994; Fargher Reference Fargher, Fargher and Heredia Espinoza2016; Feinman and Nicholas Reference Feinman, Nicholas, Fargher and Heredia Espinoza2016; Flannery and Marcus Reference Flannery and Marcus2014; Hirth Reference Hirth1996, Reference Hirth and Hirth2009; Joyce Reference Marcus and Flannery2001; Joyce and Barber Reference Joyce, Barber, Fargher and Heredia Espinoza2016; Lesure and Blake Reference Lesure and Blake2002; Pool Reference Pool, Nichols and Pool2012; Rosenswig Reference Rosenswig2000, Reference Rosenswig2010).
Archaeological theories about the origins of complex societies draw on diverse trends (Nichols and Pool Reference Nichols, Pool, Nichols and Pool2012; Pool Reference Pool, Nichols and Pool2012). Prime mover models and multilinear evolution dominated discussions during 1960s and 1970s when the development of early complex societies was a research focus in the Basin of Mexico. Ecology, intensive agriculture, population growth, exchange, craft specialization, and ritual and ideology were key processes and the subject of debate (Brumfiel Reference Brumfiel and Flannery1976; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979). The late twentieth century saw a theoretical shift from system perspectives to people as agents of change that prompted Clark and Blake's (Reference Clark, Blake, Brumfiel and Fox1994) influential model of prestige competition in the development of leadership, stratification, exchange, and craft specialization (Flannery and Marcus Reference Flannery and Marcus2014; Lesure and Blake Reference Lesure and Blake2002; Marcus and Flannery Reference Marcus and Flannery1996; Pool Reference Pool2007; Rosenswig Reference Rosenswig2007, Reference Rosenswig2010). Feminist theory highlighted the importance of gender (Joyce Reference Joyce, Grove and Joyce1999, Reference Marcus and Flannery2001). Political economy continues to be important including Blanton et al.’s (Reference Blanton, Feinman, Kowalewski and Peregrine1996) influential dual process theory that marked a theoretical turning point (Hirth Reference Hirth1996, Reference Hirth and Hirth2009; Rosenswig Reference Rosenswig2010).
Collective action theory has introduced a new framework for thinking about origins of complex society (Blanton and Fargher Reference Blanton and Fargher2008, Reference Blanton and Fargher2016; Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016; Feinman Reference Feinman2015). At the same time, advances in applications of scientific techniques and methods from remote sensing, multi-technique composition, and isotope analysis to ancient DNA provide new details about the Formative period not available to archaeologists in the 1960s and 1970s. Our work at Altica employs such techniques, along with excavation and survey to offer new data on the dating of the earliest villages in the Teotihuacan Valley, regional and interregional exchange, and status differentiation (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a, Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). These data bear especially on two theoretical threads in the recent literature: economic bottlenecks and collective action.
Interaction and Bottlenecks
Craft specialization and long-distance exchange of a variety of materials and goods were important in the construction and development of political inequalities in Mesoamerica, figuring prominently in recent, sometime contentious, debates (Pool Reference Pool2007). Exchange and craft specialization provided an important nexus of interaction that has been a long-standing focus of research. A recent article by Earle and Spriggs (Reference Earle and Spriggs2015) takes up this phenomenon in the Pacific to argue that stratification grew out of conditions that created economic and environmental bottlenecks, constrictions in commodity chains that facilitate control of materials, goods or their exchange. Bottlenecks may involve prestige goods and access to raw materials and/or highly skilled crafters or artisans, as well as control over the means of primary production (e.g., agricultural land and water). Constrictions, nodes, and corridors facilitate the capability of emerging elite to exclude others in society from possession of wealth or prestige, leading to a more autocratic or individualized form of governance.
Manipulating exchanges of materials and goods that can range from indirect to direct control in the Early and Middle Formative is perhaps Mesoamerica's first bottleneck leading to the formation of an elite class. Starting around 1400–1300 cal b.c., if not before, vast areas of Mesoamerica became joined by a system of prestige exchange. Mesoamerica is an environmentally diverse area of the world where different geological and climactic terranes are sandwiched together between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Different natural resources used by groups of this age were separated far enough apart that travel to the source was burdensome but close enough together to foster an intensive network of exchanges. The geographic restriction of valued resources such as jade, serpentine, obsidian, rubber, iron ore, marine shell, and foreign-produced ceramics created the first kind of bottleneck, in which groups directly located near these resources and/or key transportation corridors could benefit from their extraction and trade. Exotic goods excludable from the common populace allowed early leaders to stand out in terms of ostentatious displays, demonstrated external connections, ability to create social debt through gifting rare goods, and control over esoteric knowledge (Blomster et al. Reference Blomster, Neff and Glascock2005; Clark and Blake Reference Clark, Blake, Brumfiel and Fox1994; Flannery Reference Flannery and Elizabeth1968; Niederberger Reference Niederberger, Benson and la Fuente1996, Reference Niederberger, Clark and Pye2000; Pool Reference Pool2007; Rosenswig Reference Rosenswig2000; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015).
The excludable nature of these early exchanges is apparent through a shift in the goods that conferred prestige around 1000 cal b.c. Among the earliest durable commodities exchanged were pottery and obsidian. Neff (Reference Neff and Martinón-Torres2014) argues that pottery itself is not an excludable resource, but it can be prestigious if it is either very costly to produce or procure. Long-distance exchange of pottery is very costly, but it is only prestigious if it is visibly foreign and desired by emerging elites. The early pottery exchanged among regions was highly decorated with motifs associated with the Gulf Olmec (Blomster and Cheetham Reference Blomster and Cheetham2017; Blomster et al. Reference Blomster, Neff and Glascock2005; Cheetham Reference Cheetham2011; Marcus and Flannery Reference Marcus and Flannery2000; Stoltman Reference Stoltman2005). Pottery can be copied, however, which makes it more difficult to exclude from the general population at early villages. By about 1000–900 cal b.c., exchange of decorated pottery of Olmec style decreased greatly and was ultimately no longer traded over long distances, but the motifs were. Olmec-style elements continued to be transported across Mesoamerica engraved on exotic materials such as greenstone, iron ore, and other rocks. While the motifs were not controllable, the materials were, which is precisely why Stark (Reference Stark, Pool and Bey2007) suggests the focus of stylistic interaction shifted to different materials from the Early to Middle Formative. This later manifestation of exchange lasted through at least the first half of the Middle Formative in central Mexico.
Stark (Reference Stark, Blomster and Cheetham2017) recently proposed that the spread of Olmec-style motifs across Mesoamerica united the region through a communal cult with shared ideology and symbols that functioned as non-verbal communication among interacting parties who did not necessarily understand each other's language. This perspective is not exclusive of the prestige interaction models. In the Basin of Mexico, it was the fine-paste Xochiltepec White and Atoyac Fine Gray ceramics that were imported. These ceramics could not be produced in the Basin and were thus visibly non-local and excludable resources. The coarse-paste pottery bearing Olmec symbols were overwhelmingly of local production (see discussion in Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). Tolstoy (Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989) notes that Olmec-style pottery does not correspond to social status at the Tlatilco cemetery, which raises the possibility that it represents membership in a social group perhaps united by a common religion. In short, both the prestige and communal cults models appear to operate simultaneously.
New data from Altica and other central Mexican sites adds a nuanced perspective of this shift, showing that exchanges of pottery continued into the Middle Formative, but with more generalized incised designs on white-slipped bowls traded over a more restricted geographic range (Paradis Reference Paradis, Blomster and Cheetham2017). Imported Manantial-phase (with some possibly extending into the subsequent early Zacatenco phase) white ware and some fine-gray bowls that date between 1150–850 cal. b.c. in central Mexico are all of a similar paste recipe featuring non-local metamorphic rocks, suggesting they come from a single region. In a preceding paper in this Special Section (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a), we discuss how this pottery has now been identified at Altica, other places in the Basin of Mexico (Niederberger Reference Niederberger1976; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015), Morelos (Cyphers Reference Cyphers and Grove1987) and, through our current study, in Tlaxcala and Puebla (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a). While we are still trying to pin down the precise location of production, the mineral assemblage displayed by these imports in thin section can be found along the Sierra Madre Oriental that separates Oaxaca and Veracruz, the metamorphic region of southwestern Puebla, or to a lesser degree the metamorphic region of Guerrero. The current evidence points to southwestern Puebla, a region that includes the site of Las Bocas as the most likely source of the imported white-ware pottery. This shift to exchange of more simply decorated (relative to earlier periods) serving-ware pottery over a more restricted region may indicate the emergence of a more regionally focused economy that ultimately undermines the pan-Mesoamerican style horizons that connected Mesoamerica through the Early and Middle Formative periods. By 600–500 cal. b.c., these far-flung interactions had mostly ceased and contributed to a regionalization of economy and cultural identity in the Late Formative.
A second type of bottleneck involves trade. It is clear that certain transportation routes/corridors created conduits connecting influential sites through the exchange of goods. Writing about the Basin of Mexico, 30 years ago Charlton (Reference Charlton and Hirth1984) emphasized the importance of geographic restrictions that channeled the movement of goods and people and gave rise to trading nodes in prominent positions linking regions. The Teotihuacan Valley offers the only low pass eastward from the Basin of Mexico and Altica lies on one of the routes out of the Basin (Charlton Reference Charlton and Hirth1984:Figure 2.2; Parsons Reference Parsons1977). During the Early Formative, central Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Oaxaca, the Gulf Coast, and Coastal Chiapas were connected through exchanges of pottery, obsidian, and other goods (Blomster et al. Reference Blomster, Neff and Glascock2005; Cheetham Reference Cheetham2011; Jaime-Riverón Reference Jaime-Riverón2010; Pires-Ferreira Reference Pires-Ferreira1975; Pires-Ferreira and Flannery Reference Pires-Ferreira, Flannery and Flannery1976; Santley Reference Santley and Hirth1984; Stoltman et al. Reference Stoltman2005). By the early Middle Formative, Chalcatzingo in Morelos gained regional prominence (Grove Reference Grove and Sabloff1981, Reference Grove1987; Hirth Reference Hirth1978). Chalcatzingo was geographically situated along a corridor connecting regions that contained the most influential early settlements in Mesoamerica, which allowed elites there to establish some control over those trade routes. Elites there did not create the exchange networks, but they certainly took advantage as an intermediary. We exemplify this through obsidian exchange.
By the Early Formative, obsidian circulated widely in Mesoamerica and Otumba obsidian from the Teotihuacan Valley was especially important (Cobean Reference Cobean2002:57; Hirth Reference Hirth, Manzanilla and Hirth2011:177; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015). The Otumba source area lies only 10 km from Altica as the crow flies. Blanton and Fargher (Reference Blanton, Fargher, Babones and Chase-Dunn2012:14) consider obsidian to have been a “bulk luxury good,” and by 1000 cal. b.c. in the Teotihuacan Valley it was readily accessible to households across the social spectrum. At that point, obsidian was not a “luxury” good. We think, however, that the very first trade of obsidian into regions where it does not naturally occur might have functioned as prestige exchange among elites, much like Clark (Reference Clark, Johnson and Morrow1987) describes, and thus during this time period might have been considered a bulk luxury good. As long-distance exchange systems became more efficient in the Middle Formative and prismatic core-blade technology was more widely practiced, obsidian became more of a common household utilitarian item thanks to sites like Chalcatzingo. Hirth and colleagues (Reference Hirth, Cyphers, Cobean, DeLeón and Glascock2013) demonstrate this through household excavations at Nacaste-phase (1000–800 cal. b.c.) San Lorenzo, where commoner households still procured obsidian from distant sources after the elite class lost power. The domestic provisioning mechanism likely extends back in time at least a couple of centuries into the San Lorenzo B phase.
Radiocarbon dates indicate that Altica was established around 1250 cal. b.c. We think access to Otumba obsidian played a role as sedentary villages expanded into the northeastern Basin of Mexico. Altica is notable as the only known Formative site in the Basin of Mexico with more obsidian than ceramics on the surface (Boksenbaum et al. Reference Boksenbaum, Tolstoy, Harbottle and Nivens1987; Robert Cobean, personal communication 2014) and no other known Early or early Middle Formative site sits within at least 50 km (walking) of the source. Neither Altica nor any other Formative village could have controlled access to the Otumba obsidian source area that consists of flows and concentrations of cobbles over a 40-km2 area on the eastern slopes of the Teotihuacan Valley (Cobean Reference Cobean2002:57), but it was the only known site that could reach the source within a day's walk. Johnson and Hirth's (Reference Johnson and Hirth2019) sourcing of a large sample of obsidian from Altica collected by Tolstoy confirmed previous analysis that Otumba obsidian dominates (87 percent), but Altica also obtained obsidian from two other sources in the northeast Basin—Pachuca and Paredón (Figure 3). The large quantities of Otumba obsidian found on site, and the great popularity of that obsidian source throughout Mesoamerica, initially led us and others to think that Altica was an early link in the commodity chain for the exchange of Otumba obsidian (Boksenbaum Reference Boksenbaum, Tolstoy, Harbottle and Nivens1987; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015).
Figure 3. Cache of obsidian nodules found at Altica. Photograph by Stoner.
Contrary to previous interpretations, Healan's (Reference Healan2019) analysis shows that the concentration of obsidian at Altica is mostly from expedient flake tool production, not prismatic blade or blade-core manufacturing and that such flakes were for local consumption, not export. In fact, many of the prismatic blades found at Altica were manufactured elsewhere during the Early and Middle Formative. Altica mostly acquired not raw obsidian but rather percussion blades and other finished items and manufacturing byproducts, presumably obtained from production sites located elsewhere in the region, much of which was recycled as secondary expedient flake cores.
Initial processing was probably done near the source. Prismatic blades, while present, were not manufactured at Altica. This is consistent with Boksenbaum et al.’s (Reference Boksenbaum, Tolstoy, Harbottle and Nivens1987:73) proposed early system of specialized production of prismatic blades in the region (Johnson and Hirth Reference Johnson and Hirth2019). Altica also imported some percussion blades and bifaces mostly made of Otumba obsidian, although the latter included specimens from Paredón and Cerro Varal, a source in Michoacán (Glascock Reference Glascock2016). Thus, the reduction of raw obsidian did not occur at Altica but elsewhere, presumably at sites located near the source. Sites from this time period have not been recorded within the Otumba source area, but the 40-km2 source area has not been intensively surveyed. The finished items and production waste that Altica imported might have been obtained from secondary workshops located elsewhere in the Teotihuacan Valley. We argue that this represents a differentiated lithic production system that is not evidenced in the earlier Ayotla phase, suggesting the development of more specialized extraction and processing networks.
Two caches of macronodules found at Altica, however, also suggests Altica perhaps played some role in the exchange of obsidian raw material (Healan Reference Healan2019). In addition to prismatic blades, some percussion blades, and bifaces, including some of non-local obsidian, Altica imported other types of goods from elsewhere in the Basin of Mexico and beyond. If not obsidian, then what would Altica villagers have exchanged in return for foreign goods? The high density of small flakes at Altica could be from processing plant or animal materials; a usewear study of Altica obsidian is underway that might provide additional information. Analyses of Altica obsidian clearly show that the commodity chain for obsidian was becoming more complex, with sites specializing in resource extraction, exchange of raw materials, and production of tools (Johnson and Hirth Reference Johnson and Hirth2019). A third type of bottleneck can therefore be discussed in the Basin of Mexico: control over the production of specialized crafts.
The degree to which early elites controlled or administered craft specialists in the Basin of Mexico remains an important open question (Carballo et al. Reference Carballo, Carballo and Neff2007:29–40). Writing about the obsidian commodity chain in the Basin of Mexico, Charlton (Reference Charlton and Hirth1984) suggested that Early Formative exchange involved a decentralized web of trading partners and workshops. Middle Formative obsidian exchange networks became more formalized and regionalized and an increase in blade and blade-core manufacturing and exporting of Otumba and Paredón obsidian indicates greater specialization. We know Chalcatzingo was pooling obsidian resources by the Middle Formative (Pires Ferreira Reference Pires-Ferreira, Flannery and Flannery1976), though the obsidian from the Otumba source sent down the commodity chain likely first ended up at one of the villages in the central or southern Basin of Mexico (e.g., Tlatilco, Tlapacoya/Zohapilco, Zacatenco, or El Arbolillio).
Collective Action
In a counter to Earle and Sprigg's (Reference Earle and Spriggs2015) bottleneck model, Fargher (Reference Fargher2015), who champions a collective action approach, argues that individuals may also work collectively to circumvent such bottlenecks. He does not so much disagree about the importance of bottlenecks, but points to the need to specify how such can become the basis for systems of inequality. Some societies may deliberately choose mediums that, in Fargher's (Reference Fargher2015:530) words “could not be monopolized as part of collective political economy strategies that emphasized inclusive group membership (lineages, sibs, phratries, etc.).” The large size of obsidian source areas in Mesoamerica, for example, makes exclusive access unfeasible (Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016).
Collective action approaches focus on how the fiscal basis of leadership and governance derives from “reciprocal social and economic relations between commoners and leaders” (Feinman Reference Feinman2015:531; Blanton and Fargher Reference Blanton and Fargher2008). The more early leaders depended on their sustaining populations/followers for support from communal resources, the greater the agency of their followers/subjects to promote more collective forms of governance. Dependence on external resources facilitates more autocratic leadership. In other words, the nature of the dyadic relations between followers and leaders, whose positionality during the Early to Middle Formative period likely was not fixed, would have been influenced by sources of revenue/finance.
There is little evidence in pre-Hispanic highland Mexico that direct centralized control of the means of primary production, especially land and related investments, was a source of power (Feinman Reference Feinman2015). In the Basin of Mexico, hydraulic features such as canals and dikes were one of the most important landesque investments. Irrigation began on a small scale in some parts of the northern Basin by no later than the late Middle Formative and probably became more widespread during the Late Formative when villages began to move to the valley floor in the Teotihuacan Valley and elsewhere (Nichols Reference Nichols2015). These early, small irrigation systems encouraged cooperation and collective organization (Carballo Reference Carballo and Carballo2013; Hunt et al. Reference Hunt, Guillet, Abbott, Bayman, Fish, Fish, Kintigh and Neely2005; Nichols Reference Nichols1987, Reference Nichols2015). Brookfield (Reference Brookfield1972) argued that leaders favor agricultural innovations to secure social surpluses. In the case of irrigation in the Basin of Mexico, this depended on the collective labor of households for whom irrigation also reduced economic or environmental risks (Nichols Reference Nichols2015).
Moreover, in highland Mexico, with some exceptions, households from the Formative through Aztec times organized most craft production. Hirth (Reference Hirth and Hirth2009) makes a convincing case that craft specialization in Mesoamerica developed in the household/domestic economy and initially was not driven by elites. Pre-Hispanic craft production of both everyday goods and wealth objects was often intermittent and involved multi-crafting and/or combining crafting with farming. Clay for making ceramics is relatively widespread and, although obsidian sources are localized, the source areas in the northeast Basin are so large that establishing exclusive access would be very difficult. Hirth sees specialization beginning in household contexts as a strategy to buffer or moderate risks. Early and Middle Formative maize was not as high yielding as later varieties (Sanders Reference Sanders and Wolf1976; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979:382–383). In addition to the risk of fall frosts in the Basin of Mexico, early farmers in the drier northeast Basin, including the Teotihuacan Valley, faced fluctuations in the amount and timing of rainfall (Nichols Reference Nichols1987). Maguey cultivation was, and continues to be, an important complement to maize farming at Altica (McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019). In addition to food, maguey also provided an important source of fibers because it is too cold in the Basin of Mexico to grow cotton. Maguey fiber processing, however, requires labor cooperation between households (Parsons and Parsons Reference Parsons and Parsons1990).
As Sanders (Reference Sanders and Wolf1976:237–239; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979:383), predicted, Altica villages practiced extensive cultivation of maize, maguey, and wild weedy plants that even today grow in maize fields (Borejsa Reference Borejsa, López, Frederick and Bateman2008; McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019). Although maize farming increased resource predictability and potential surplus production relative to hunting-gathering in the Teotihuacan Valley, early villages were not self-contained (Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979). Households were embedded in larger social and economic networks. They diversified their economy by engaging in different production activities, but also through exchanges that facilitated forming and sustaining relationships with others (Braun and Plog Reference Braun and Plog1982). Formative-period villagers engaged in rituals to build and maintain social networks and to propitiate the forces of rain and sun, on which they, plants, and animals depended. Rituals and feasting have been historically important in motivating collective labor in highland Mexico (Carballo Reference Carballo and Carballo2013:250). In the central highlands of Mexico, and other semiarid environments such as the Andean highlands and Chaco Canyon of the Southwestern United States, irrigation supplements rainfall (Williams Reference Williams, Marcus and Stanish2006; Wills and Dorshow Reference Wills and Dorshow2012). Terracing, small-scale irrigation, and maguey processing in central Mexico were mostly managed by households and local corporate groups that facilitated household cooperation especially during labor bottlenecks (Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016:291). Craft specialization, although undertaken by individual households, also encouraged cooperation among producers, traders, and consumers.
ALTICA: SOCIAL AND EXCHANGE RELATIONS
Altica offers data to test models of the origins of complex society in the Teotihuacan Valley. Studies of Formative-period exchange typically draw on data from the largest and socially most complex sites. To what degree did people in smaller village sites participate in these exchanges? We have determined that Altica villagers participated in exchange networks that moved goods within the Teotihuacan Valley, other parts of the Basin of Mexico, and interregionally. The Teotihuacan Valley is an important natural corridor eastward from the Basin of Mexico. Excavations at the site and analyses show that Altica's involvement in prestige goods exchanges was more extensive than previously realized (Alex et al. Reference Alex, Nichols and Glascock2012; Healan Reference Healan2019; Johnson and Hirth Reference Johnson and Hirth2019; McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019; Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a, Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015).
During the Early and Middle Formative, the majority of the Basin's population lived in the southern Basin of Mexico. The environment around Tlatilco and Tlapacoya in the southern Basin was a little warmer, received more rainfall, and the lakes offered a concentration of rich resources; villages in the Guadalupe Range (e.g., Zacatenco and El Arbolillo) also had access to Lake Texcoco (McClung de Tapia Reference McClung de Tapia and Lenz2000; McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Serra Puche and Limón de Dyer1986). The upper Teotihuacan Valley, with a few exceptions, by contrast was colder, drier, and subsistence resources were scarcer than the southern Basin. Nopal and maguey might have been more plentiful near Altica than at the larger sites near the lakeshore in the southern Basin. Why settle Altica if it were a riskier environment for early agriculturalists than the southern Basin? The latter was by no means over crowded (Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979:380, Table 9.3). As sedentary villages expanded north from the southern Basin, the Teotihuacan corridor, emerging exchange networks, and access to the Otumba obsidian source drew the first villagers to the Teotihuacan Valley. Rosenswig et al. (Reference Rosenswig, Vanderwarker, Cullerton and Kennett2015:101) conclude that the expansion of villages into the northern Basin of Mexico and other marginal, drier uplands of central Mexico represents “a classic measure of Boserupian intensification” (Boserup Reference Boserup1965) and reflects a significant change in human use of the environment (also Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979).
We began the Altica project to survey, map, and excavate the site (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). The second component of our project applies a multi-method approach to sourcing obsidian and ceramics from Altica and other Early and Middle Formative sites in the central Mexico (Tula, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Toluca) to establish regional compositional databases for this time period (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a). We have expanded the sourcing study to include samples from the Pacific (Soconusco) and Gulf (Pánuco) coasts and the southern highlands (Tehuacán Valley).
Altica was founded during or just before the Manantial phase in the broader Basin of Mexico sequence (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). Radiocarbon dates from intact soil deposits in pits support that Altica possesses a single occupation between about 1050–750 b.c. (1250–850 cal. b.c.). For the first time, these dates provide a chronometric anchor for the Teotihuacan Valley ceramic sequence, the beginnings of maize agriculture, and village life (McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019). An Aztec village site (TA-199) lies just below Altica, but there is only limited spatial overlap; the Aztec and Formative settlements are distinct. Minor traces of late Middle Formative and Late Formative pottery are present, as well as a tiny concentration of Teotihuacan period ceramics—perhaps representing a seasonal camp. These are the earliest dates from a village site in the northern Basin of Mexico and allow us to date the spread of villages more precisely.
Hillsides in the Teotihuacan Valley including the Altica site are severely eroded. Massive sheet and gully erosion occurred after forced Spanish resettlement of Aztec hillside villages, compounded by population decline, colonialism, and the introduction of sheep and goats. Further disturbances occurred in the 1970s when the Mexican government introduced chisel plows designed to break up the tepetate, a sedimentary layer of consolidated and semi-welded tephra, to encourage soil development. This was followed by the widespread use of mechanical tractors for plowing and a program of reforestation. One edge of the Altica also falls in a reforestation zone.
The deflated shallow soils at Altica are generally less than 20 centimeters above the tepetate bedrock. The thin soils and plowing facilitate surface collections. Today the site is divided into 10-m-wide terraces separated by rows of cultivated magueys. After we resurveyed and sampled the site surface for artifacts, we used the surface density of artifacts and results of a magnetometer survey to identify areas for excavation (Mejía Ramón et al. Reference Mejía Ramón, Barba, Ortiz and Blancas2019). The magnetometer survey directed by Luis Barba identified anomalies indicative of subsurface features, many of which were cultural, though some appear to have been natural anomalies (Mejía Ramón et al. Reference Mejía Ramón, Barba, Ortiz and Blancas2019). We anticipated that only artifacts and subterranean features would remain at the site. Most Formative village sites in the uplands of central Mexico have been devastatingly eroded, though deep bell-shaped or truncated-cone (profile) pits are a common occurrence that are filled with trash deposits and/or burials (Tolstoy Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989).
Burials found during excavation provide the primary glimpse into social relations at Altica (Storey et al. Reference Storey, Buckley and Kennett2019). Erosion and plowing have destroyed Formative house remains, leaving behind domestic artifacts in the site's simple stratigraphy consisting of the current plow zone and a second stratum of very dark, clay soil intermixed with larger artifacts (Nichols and Stoner Reference Stoner and Nichols2019b). We found an array of subterranean pits of varying shape dug into the tepetate, but few were the classic truncated-cone pits commonly found at Formative village sites. Many pits were circular, and in some cases interconnected with “drains.” The most striking were deep cylindrical pits. Much less common than trunco-conical storage pits, cylindrical pits have been found at other Formative sites the Basin of Mexico and in Oaxaca (Joyce Marcus, personal communication 2018; Tolstoy et al. Reference Tolstoy, Fish, Boksenbaum, Vaughn and Earle Smith1977:93). Whatever their original function, three the deep cylindrical pits at Altica contained burials (Figure 4). Deposits inside the cylindrical pits were not stratified, nor did they contain lenses of garbage disposal (Carballo et al. Reference Carballo, Carballo and Neff2007), indicating that they were intentionally filled in a single episode that marked the interment of the individual. We are not sure how all the pits were originally used. The two most immediately obvious functions for digging the pits are as tombs to honor the dead, not that different from simple west-Mexican shaft tombs, and storage and water catchment, a function that is more difficult to prove. Based on inspection of the Red Hidrografica 2.0 (1:50,000), a detailed hydrological map published by the Instituto National de Estadística y Geografía (2010), today, all the water within 10 km of Altica is intermittent. Today, running water is virtually absent from this landscape during the dry winter months. McClung de Tapia et al. (Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019), however, found botanical remains associated with freshwater swamps, perhaps indicating moister conditions than present-day near the site or introduction of the plants with reeds used for making baskets and mats.
Figure 4. Photograph of Burial 1 in cylindrical pit. Photograph by Stoner.
The burials excavated at Altica provide the best information on status differentiation at the site; each is individually unique both within the site and compared to the Formative Basin of Mexico. It was common for Formative villagers to place burials in used bell-shaped storage pits near their residences and underneath floors of houses and patios (Carballo Reference Carballo2009, Reference Carballo and Ochoa2012; Flannery and Marcus Reference Flannery and Marcus2005; Santley Reference Santley, Santley and Hirth1993; Tolstoy Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989). We found much domestic refuse at Altica, but no identifiable house remains due to the site's eroded condition. Any burials that had been placed in shallow pits below house or patio floors have been destroyed by erosion, plowing, and modern agricultural terracing.
All four burials we encountered were placed in deep pits dug into tepetate but probably had not been used for crop storage. The pits were immediately filled after interment of the individual. If they had been left open for use as general garbage disposal we would have found lenses of refuse deposits. The burials that we recovered may all represent individuals of a higher status than those who would have been buried below house floors or in abandoned storage pits, but we cannot be certain on this point. Two of the burials in the cylindrical pits were women and both might have been placed in seated positions or as secondary burials (Storey et al. Reference Storey, Buckley and Kennett2019). One contained a middle-aged female (Burial 4) and Storey et al.’s (Reference Storey, Buckley and Kennett2019) analysis indicates that the other woman was elderly. The elderly woman (Burial 1) was interred with a large grinding slab that was smoothed on one side but had an unfinished “ribbed” appearance on the underside with no supports. The stone itself is a pink porphyry likely of an andesitic composition with large phenocrysts of quartz and feldspar. This type of stone occurs elsewhere in the Teotihuacan Valley (Tatsuyu Murakami, personal communication 2018) but has not been observed close to Altica and it differs greatly from the material used to make other grinding stones on site.
A third burial (Burial 2), also found in a cylindrical pit, dates toward the end of Altica's occupation. This burial was a young adult male with evidence of violent trauma, including cut marks on a forearm and the lower right leg, which was found disarticulated from the rest of his body. There also is possible yellow and red pigment on one tibia (Storey et al. Reference Storey, Buckley and Kennett2019). This individual had been tossed in the pit face down with hundreds of pounds of basalt rocks pushed on top of him. The basalt rocks were perched atop the burial and fill in the southern half of the pit, as if those who interred him piled the rocks at the southern edge, so they could be pushed in after the man was “discarded.” Both the burial placement and evidence of trauma prompted Storey and Nichols to speculate he might have been a suspected witch (Walker Reference Walker1998, Reference Walker, Nichols and Crown2008), or perhaps an outsider, an enemy, or someone disrespected and seen as a danger to the community. Social violence was part of early village social relations, although not much discussed for the Early and Middle Formative Basin of Mexico. Buckley's isotopic analysis (Storey et al. Reference Storey, Buckley and Kennett2019) indicates that he did not grow up locally and falls within the Sr-isotope range of the Tepexi de Rodríguez region of southwestern Puebla, the same region we propose as the source of imported white-ware ceramics at Altica.
The treatment of Burial 3 was equally distinct and unexpected for different reasons. The burial pit is the sole rectangular feature, and the burial of this middle-aged male was carefully prepared (Figure 5). He was interred within two nested rectangular pits dug into the tepetate bedrock with one cylindrical vase (probably polished brown or black, but it was too eroded to be sure), one a small tlacauche (possum) effigy bottle, and a large jadeite bead that had likely been placed in his mouth. The rectangular burial pit itself was most definitely excavated specifically to inter this man. The tepetate is relatively soft compared to other rocks, but not easily excavated using simple stone tools. The burial was also covered with a unique soil type not found elsewhere on the site that was likely a deliberate mixture of the black, sticky clay subsoil and the weathered tepetate that was broken up to excavate the pit. A lot of care was devoted to the preparation of this burial. We had not anticipated finding this degree of status differentiation so early in the Teotihuacan Valley at such a small village site. Vaillant (Reference Vaillant1930) and a recent salvage project had also found jade with some burials at Zacatenco, but it was a larger village that mostly dates to the later part of the Middle Formative (National Geographic España 2016). The careful preparation of the burial, jade bead, and effigy jar links the man at Altica with the prestige economy.
Figure 5. Photograph of Burial 3 pit. Photograph by Nichols.
Exchange
Altica actively participated in regional and interregional exchange networks. Altica imported an incised white-ware pottery made of clays and metamorphic temper (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a). This same foreign white-ware pottery was quite widely traded, as it appears at Early and Middle Formative sites elsewhere in the Basin of Mexico (Niederberger Reference Niederberger1976), Morelos (Cyphers Reference Cyphers and Grove1987), Puebla, and Tlaxcala. Cyphers (Reference Cyphers and Grove1987) suggests that pottery with metamorphic temper at Chalcatzingo, which she named Del Prado Pink, likely comes from the site of Las Bocas in the southwestern portion of Puebla in its metamorphic region. Niederberger (Reference Niederberger1976) also entertains this as the source of metamorphic-tempered ceramics found at Zohapilco/Tlapacoya in the southern Basin of Mexico. Compositional analysis, both petrography and neutron activation analysis (NAA) show that metamorphic-tempered white ware was not the only pottery imported from outside the Basin. Altica also imported ceramics from the southern Basin of Mexico (Stoner and Nichols Reference Stoner and Nichols2019a).
To put the Altica compositional data in a larger context, the NAA sample of Late Postclassic Aztec pottery from the palace at Chiconautla, an important lakeshore trading center and city-state capital in the lower Teotihuacan Valley, identified only two examples in a sample of 104 analyzed ceramics made outside the Basin of Mexico (Nichols et al. Reference Nichols, Elson, de Estrado, Glascock and Mikkelson2009:455). The Late Postclassic NAA sample from Otumba, a 220-ha town that was an important commercial and manufacturing center, identified only one sherd out of 212 analyzed ceramics as made outside the Basin of Mexico despite the large amounts of pottery that circulated through market networks within the Basin of Mexico (Nichols Reference Nichols, Hirth and Pillsbury2013:Table 3.5). By way of contrast, the Altica NAA sample of 113 specimens includes 58 ceramics made outside the Basin of Mexico. Even recognizing that different sampling strategies were employed at each site, the total number of foreign ceramics in the Altica NAA sample is striking evidence of the importance of prestige goods exchanges in the Early and Middle Formative and of the role of foreign pottery.
Obsidian from the nearby Otumba source was widely distributed in Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Formative (Ebert Reference Ebert2013; Grove Reference Grove1987; Hirth et al. Reference Hirth, Cyphers, Cobean, DeLeón and Glascock2013; Pires-Ferrieria Reference Pires-Ferreira, Flannery and Flannery1975; Stoner et al. Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015). Altica villagers got most of their obsidian second hand, as it had been reduced elsewhere, probably near the source. Perhaps they exported some obsidian as raw nodules, as we found evidence of caching raw cobbles in one cylindrical pit (Healan Reference Healan2019; Johnson and Hirth Reference Johnson and Hirth2019). Altica residents also imported finished prismatic blades made of the local Otumba obsidian manufactured by specialists located elsewhere and some obsidian from Pachuca and Paredón. The data reported here differ from the earlier sourcing study of Boksenbaum et al. (Reference Boksenbaum, Tolstoy, Harbottle and Nivens1987) because the database and methods have advanced and more obsidian sources can be differentiated today. These data also differ from Stoner et al. (Reference Stoner, Nichols, Alex and Crider2015) because Paul Tolstoy (personal communication 2015) provided a later complete concordance of the artifact codes and site identifiers and some obsidian we reported in the article came from other Formative sites in the Basin.
The presence of the jade bead with the highest status burial at Altica further signifies the geographic scale of interregional interaction and exchange networks involving this early village in the Teotihuacan Valley. The source of “Olmec blue” jade is likely the Motagua Valley of Guatemala (Bishop Reference Bishop, Evans and Webster2001; Seitz et al. Reference Seitz, Harlow, Sisson and Taube2001). Lastly, prestige goods exchange likely involved food, as well as durable goods. Starch grain analysis suggests Altica villagers also imported sweet potato, yam, and perhaps also manioc, which does not grow in the cold northern Basin of Mexico but can be transported as flour (McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019).
DISCUSSION
We have found no evidence of an in-situ shift from foraging to maize cultivation at Altica. The Altica findings thus support the idea that farming villages spread into the northern Basin of Mexico (Blake Reference Blake2015; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979). No diagnostic Archaic-period lithics were found at the site. The only known Archaic sites in the Teotihuacan Valley consist of small scatters of stone tools (Parry Reference Parry2001, Reference Parry, Hirth and Andrews2002). Sanders et al. (Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979) hypothesized that farming villages expanded into the northern Basin of Mexico from the south.
The northeast Basin of Mexico is much drier and lacks the lacustrine resources and higher biomass than sustained a sedentary foraging economy along the lakeshore in the southern Basin (Niederberger Reference Niederberger1976, Reference Niederberger1979; Sanders Reference Sanders and Wolf1976, Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979:289–290; Serra Puche Reference Puche and Carmen1988, Reference Puche and Carmen1993). Both the botanical and isotopic analyses indicate that these earliest villagers in the Teotihuacan Valley grew maize and complemented it with maguey for food and fibers and also wild plants (McClung de Tapia et al. Reference McClung de Tapia, Acosta-Ochoa, Martínez-Yrizar, Adriano-Morán, Cruz-Palma and Chaparro-Rueda2019). The establishment of maize farming in the Teotihuacan Valley reflects a broader trend at 1000 cal. b.c. that “marks a threshold when maize assumed the importance it held for later Mesoamerican people” (Rosenswig et al. Reference Rosenswig, Vanderwarker, Cullerton and Kennett2015:90). Rosenswig and colleagues (Reference Rosenswig, Vanderwarker, Cullerton and Kennett2015:90) attribute increased maize production to the “political economy and political ambitions of local leaders” and the long-term increase in the size of maize ears and a wetter and more stable environment. This is not inconsistent with Hirth's (Reference Hirth and Hirth2009) argument that early craft specialization grew out of household economies. Given the risks of farming in the northeast Basin, involvement in exchanges and the prestige economy diversified Altica household economies and expanded their social networks.
Status differentiation on a limited scale was either present among the first villagers at Altica or developed quickly. Hereditary status differences already had developed during the Early Formative at the largest settlements in the southern Basin of Mexico (Tolstoy Reference Tolstoy, Sharer and Grove1989). The small burial sample from Altica shows differences by gender, with women in seated positions or secondary internments and great contrast between the two male burials. One male, the outsider, had been tossed into a cylindrical pit, while the other was carefully buried in a rectangular cut grave with a jade bead and fancy jars. Both the female and male burials likely represent a status level above the more typical Formative household-associated burials. Altica shows that it is a mistake to think of these small villages as undifferentiated, as it was not socially homogeneous. We cannot determine if the status of the adults was hereditary, but access to foreign trade items, such as the jade bead and ceramics and the graves themselves suggests such social distinctions. It also demonstrates that Altica participated in the early prestige good exchanges that drove status differentiation at many contemporaneous settlements.
On the one hand, the presence of a higher-status burial at Altica with prestige goods would seem to favor an elite-driven political economy and the bottleneck theory. On the other hand, there is little evidence of direct elite and/or centralized control of exchange, craft production, or agricultural land, or investments during the Formative period in central Mexico. Exclusive control of the Otumba obsidian source area by village-based societies would not have been feasible. In the context of developing intraregional economies, interregional exchange, and increasing social differentiation, however, proximity to the source, as well as to the trade/transportation corridor running through the Teotihuacan Valley that linked the Basin of Mexico with areas to the east, would have been highly advantageous.
Collective action theory helps explain why corporate groups and political economic strategies became so important later at Teotihuacan. Early villages like Altica practiced extensive (probably swidden) farming of hillsides where rainfall is greater and the risk of frost is lower than on the valley floor (Boresja et al. 2008; Heine Reference Heine2003; Lesure Reference Lesure, Borejsza, Carballo, Frederick, Popper and Wake2006; Lesure et al. Reference Lesure, Wake, Borejsza, Carballo, Carballo, López and de Ángeles Guzmán2013; McAuliffe et al. Reference McAuliffe, Sundt, Banuet, Casa and Luis2001; Nichols Reference Nichols2015; Plunket and Uruñuela Reference Plunket and Uruñuela2012). This has been shown to have caused significant erosion and degradation elsewhere in the Basin of Mexico, Tlaxcala, and Puebla because tepetate is prone to landslides when deforested. This likely accounts for the relatively short occupations of early villages in the drier uplands of central Mexico, and also would have encouraged households to diversify their production activities through craft production and exchange. With abundant land, villages could relocate fields, and land likely was also a common-pool resource of the village and/or corporate kin groups. Carballo and Feinman (Reference Carballo and Feinman2016:293) argue that the size of obsidian sources areas and the work of quarrying that favored cooperation made them a common-pool resource.
Altica and other Early and Middle Formative villages in the Basin of Mexico participated in prestige goods exchanges. There is, however, no evidence from the Basin of Mexico of the ostentatious displays of power, including funerary cults such as the basalt tomb at La Venta or large earthworks (Stirling and Stirling Reference Stirling and Stirling1942). Chalcatzingo stands out during the Middle Formative in central Mexico for its size, famous reliefs, and portrait figurines (Blanton et al. Reference Blanton, Feinman, Kowalewski and Peregrine1996; Grove Reference Grove1987). In addition, the highest status individuals were buried in crypts with jade ornaments atop the platform mound (Merry de Morales Reference Merry de Morales and Grove1987). Exclusionary political strategies in the Basin of Mexico never intensified to that degree—a point Sanders and Webster (Reference Sanders, Webster, Redman, Berman, Curtin, Langhorne, Versaggi and Warers1978) made some years ago. Some leveling mechanism must have operated within these early villages.
There are many indications that interactions gradually intensified and regionalized halfway through the Middle Formative. Vertical organization of the obsidian industry is evident by the Middle Formative. Communities become more specialized and organically interconnected in Durkheim's (Reference Durkheim1933) sense. Import of ceramics that began in the Early Formative continued into the Middle Formative, but with simpler designs and from a more restricted market. Eventually, the pan-Mesoamerican prestige exchange systems collapsed, with the Basin of Mexico dropping out sometime around 600 cal. b.c. We argue that this began a period of intensified intraregional interactions within the Basin that led elites to curtail their quest for excludable resources in the Late Formative.
The Late Formative ushered in a time of more cooperative interactions and investment in public goods that directly led to the establishment of the region's first largest cities. As collective action theorists predict, the shift from prestige goods exchange, an external source of wealth for early leaders, to more communal resources with the growing importance of irrigation and household craft production encouraged more collective and corporate governance as the scale of societies expanded. The expansion of regional goods economies to include both commoners and elites represents a major transformation and one fundamental to the growth of Teotihuacan into such a large city (Cowgill Reference Cowgill and Stone2007, Reference Cowgill2015; Nichols Reference Nichols2016). Increased regional specialization, agricultural intensification, and greater specialization in manufacturing household goods point to the development of markets during the Late Formative in the Basin of Mexico that facilitated exchange among non-related people (Blanton and Fargher Reference Blanton, Fargher, Babones and Chase-Dunn2012:12; Nichols Reference Nichols, Hirth, Carballo and Arroyo2019).
The settlement pattern shift to the Teotihuacan Valley floor began during the Late Formative period (Blucher Reference Blucher1971; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, West, Fletcher and Marino1975; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Parsons and Santley1979). The largest Late Formative settlement in the Teotihuacan Valley is near the springs on the edge of the ancient city that even today supplies water to a large permanent irrigation system. Floodwater irrigation was important and managed by local corporate groups (Nichols Reference Nichols2015). The growing importance of irrigation and associated collective labor and organization of corporate kin or house groups was reinforced with rituals, food, and drink (Manzanilla Reference Manzanilla, Monjarás-Ruiz, Pérez Rocha and Brambila1985, Reference Manzanilla, Politis and Alberti1999; Plunket et al. Reference Plunket, Uruñuela, Glascock, Neff and Powis2005).
Cowgill (Reference Cowgill2015) sees the shift to collective governance in the Teotihuacan Valley as taking place after the founding and initial growth of the city and state of Teotihuacan. Carballo and Feinman (Reference Carballo and Feinman2016:293) point out that early urbanism in Mexico “followed more collective lines.” Like Carballo (Reference Carballo and Carballo2013), we also think Teotihuacan's collective organization had earlier roots that likely began by the Late Formative. Teotihuacan apartment compounds incorporated architectural elements of Formative-period village organization centered on corporate lineage or house groups (Nichols Reference Nichols2016; Plunket and Uruñuela Reference Plunket and Uruñuela2012; Smith Reference Smith2014). As Schachner (Reference Schachner2010:491–492) has argued for the northern Southwest, the corporate groups of the Formative period would have been the social structure out of which urban centers formed.
FUTURE STEPS
Location along an important trade corridor and proximity of a major obsidian source area contributed to the development of Altica as a small node in interregional interactions involving the exchange of prestige goods and esoteric knowledge during the Early and Middle Formative. Prestige competition among village societies can create complex interregional exchange networks, as in New Guinea and Oceania, but these do not invariably lead to cities and states (Earle and Spriggs Reference Earle and Spriggs2015; Friedman Reference Friedman, Colin, Michael and Barbara1982; Welsch and Terrell Reference Welsch and Terrell1998). Common-pool resources that included agricultural land-use methods of irrigation and terracing in the semiarid Teotihuacan Valley, mining of obsidian, household craft production, group rituals, and the development of markets encouraged collective action and shaped the subsequent development of Teotihuacan as a major urban center where corporate strategies were important. Intensification of the regional economy and changes in social relations, not exclusive access, made proximity to the Otumba obsidian source, a trade corridor, and land and water on the valley floor advantageous for Teotihuacan's urban transformation. There are parallels elsewhere in Mesoamerica (Carballo and Feinman Reference Carballo and Feinman2016) and in other parts of the Americas such as Chaco Canyon (Schachner Reference Schachner2010), the Hohokam (Fish Reference Fish, Fish and Jefferson Reid1996), and the Andean highlands (Williams Reference Williams, Marcus and Stanish2006), and other world regions including the Indus Valley (Wright Reference Wright2010).
For the Basin of Mexico, having renewed research on the Formative period in the Teotihuacan Valley with the Altica project, the Middle to Late Formative transition is critical, including investigations of the Late Formative site at Teotihuacan to the extent that is still possible. Intensive survey, mapping, and testing of the Otumba obsidian source area modeled on Pastrana's (Pastrana and Domínguez Reference Pastrana and Domínguez2009) long-term investigations of the Pachuca source area should be a priority for future research. The Altica project also points to the value of reanalyzing older collections and survey and excavation data with new methods and techniques; if not for a surface collection of small, eroded sherds, and maps, even marked with “incorrect” location, we would never have undertaken the Altica project and learned about the earliest villages of the Teotihuacan Valley.
RESUMEN
En más de 30 años, y hasta que iniciamos el proyecto Altica en 2014, había habido muy pocas investigaciones enfocadas en el entendimiento del periodo formativo y a la emergencia de las sociedades complejas de la Cuenca de México que más tarde se convirtieron en el corazón de las ciudades y estados prehispánicos más grandes y más influyentes en Mesoamérica. El rápido crecimiento y expansión constructiva de la Ciudad de México y sus pueblos y ciudades circundantes en el siglo veinte, destruyeron u obscurecieron la mayor parte de los sitios del periodo formativo en la Cuenca. Por medio de nuestras investigaciones arqueológicas recientes en el sitio de Altica del formativo temprano y medio, ubicado en el piamonte del valle de Teotihuacan, examinamos el establecimiento inicial de los pueblos agricultores, la diferenciación social y económica temprana, y el desarrollo de las redes de intercambio e interacciones intra y extra regionales para examinar modelos de economía política comparativos. Estos datos se apoyan especialmente en dos líneas teóricas en la literatura reciente: los “embotellamientos económicos” (economic bottlenecks) y la acción colectiva.
Altica se fundó durante o justo antes de la fase Manantial de la secuencia más amplia de la Cuenca de México. Las fechas de radiocarbono indican que Altica tiene una sola ocupación entre aproximadamente 1050–750 A.C. (1250–850 cal. A.C.). Estas fechas proporcionan por primera vez un ancla cronométrica para la secuencia cerámica del valle de Teotihuacan, el inicio de la agricultura del maíz y la vida en aldeas. La erosión y el arado moderno han destruido los restos de arquitectura residencial de Altica dejando detrás materiales domésticos en la estratigrafía simple del sitio consistiendo en la actual zona de cultivo y solo la aparición limitada de un segundo estrato de suelo arcilloso muy obscuro entremezclado con materiales arqueológicos más grandes. Encontramos un conjunto de pozos subterráneos de varias formas cortados en el tepetate, pero mayormente no se trataba de los típicos pozos tronco-cónicos comúnmente encontrados en los sitios de aldeas del formativo. La mayor parte de los pozos fueron fosas de plantas circulares y en algunos casos estaban interconectados por “drenajes,” pero los más notables fueron los pozos cilíndricos profundos. Los pozos cilíndricos aparecen en otros sitios del formativo, pero son mucho menos comunes que los pozos de almacenaje tronco-cónicos. Cualquiera que haya sido su función original, tres de los pozos cilíndricos contuvieron entierros. Los depósitos dentro de los pozos cilíndricos no estuvieron estratificados ni contuvieron lentículas de deposición de basura, indicando que fueron intencionalmente llenados en un solo episodio que marcó el enterramiento de un individuo. Se encontró un cuarto entierro en una fosa rectangular cortada dentro de la roca madre de tepetate. Los entierros proporcionan el primer vistazo dentro de las relaciones sociales de Altica.
Altica muestra que es un error pensar que estas pequeñas aldeas son socialmente indiferenciadas. La pequeña muestra de entierros de Altica muestra diferencias de género donde las mujeres estaban sentadas en posición sedente o eran enterramientos secundarios, en tanto que los dos entierros masculinos contrastaron grandemente uno con el otro. Uno de los entierros masculinos había sido tirado bocabajo dentro de un pozo cilíndrico, en tanto que el otro fue enterrado cuidadosamente en una fosa cortada de forma rectangular con una cuenta de jade y vasijas lujosas. Los dos entierros femeninos así como uno de los masculinos probablemente representan un nivel de estatus por encima de los entierros que se asocian más típicamente a las unidades domésticas del formativo. No podemos determinar si el estatus de los adultos era hereditario, pero el acceso a objetos de comercio foráneo, tales como la cuenta de jade y las fosas mismas sugieren tales distinciones sociales. Los estudios de composición multitécnica de la cerámica y lítica muestran que Altica participó en los intercambios de bienes de prestigio y conocimiento esotérico durante el formativo temprano y medio que llevaron a la diferenciación de estatus en muchos asentamientos contemporáneos.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the people of the ejido of San Francisco Tlaltica for granting us permission to conduct the research. Particular thanks go to the individual landowners that permitted us to work on their lands. Permission for the research was given by the Consejo de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Centro del Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) Estado de México. We also thank the Municipio de Tepetlaoxtoc along with the Ejido of Tlatica for permission to excavate and survey at Altica. We appreciate the assistance of Alejandro Sarabia (INAH-Teotihuacan) and the Arizona State University (ASU) Teotihuacan Research Laboratory. We thank Jennifer Carballo, Robert Cobean, Luis Gamboa, Richard Lesure, James Neely, Patricia Plunket, Mari Carmen Serra Puche, Yoko Sugiura, Paul Tolstoy, and Gabriela Uruñuela for permission to analyze samples of ceramics they collected. We thank the American Museum of Natural History for permission to analyze artifacts from the Tolstoy and MacNeish collections. Funding was provided by the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation (NSF) No. 1424132-Nichols (Dartmouth), Stoner NSF No. 1424184 (Arkansas), the Claire Garber Goodman Fund-Dartmouth, Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences Urban Studies Grant-Dartmouth, Dickey Center for International Understanding-Dartmouth, Neukom Center for Computational Sciences-Dartmouth, and the William J. Bryant 1925 Professor of Anthropology-Dartmouth. Artifacts from the Altica excavations and survey are curated at the ASU-Teotihuacan Research Laboratory in San Juan Teotihuacán, Mexico.
