After Monte Albán: Transformation and Negotiation in Oaxaca, Mexico

7. Domination, Negotiation, and Collapse: A History of Centralized Authority on the Oaxaca Coast before the Late Postclassic

219 The nature of sociopolitical change during the Classic to Postclassic transition in Mesoamerica has been a source of great research interest and debate. Throughout most of Mesoamerica this period, lasting from about 600 to 1000 CE, was characterized by the fragmentation or collapse of the complex polities that dominated the Classic period (250–800 CE) political landscape. Archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic research suggests that this period was characterized by dramatic changes in political institutions and ruling ideologies as well as depopulation in some regions (Cowgill 1979; Culbert 1973; Demarest et al. 2004; Diehl and Berlo 1989; Sabloff and Andrews 1986; Webster et al. 2000). Factors that have been implicated in the collapse include warfare, internal revolt, anthropogenic landscape degradation, and climate change. Despite the dramatic sociopolitical changes documented for this period, many questions remain as to their timing, nature, and causes. Perhaps nowhere in Mesoamerica has the Classic period collapse been as hotly debated as in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where scholars disagree on the nature and timing of demographic and sociopolitical changes (Marcus and Flannery 1990; Winter 1989, 1994). In highland Oaxaca, problems with clearly Arthur A. Joyce Domination, Negotiation, and Collapse A History of Centralized Authority on the Oaxaca Coast before the Late Postclassic 7 Arthur A. Joyce 220 defining a suite of diagnostic ceramic styles for the Early Postclassic, coupled with relatively few radiocarbon dates, have made it difficult for archaeologists to identify sites from this period (Kowalewski et al. 1989:251–254; Lind 1991–1992; Winter 1994), although research by Martínez, Markens, and Winter is beginning to resolve this problem (Chapter 2). Debates over basic questions of chronology have led to widely divergent arguments about the Classic to Postclassic transition, ranging from massive depopulation to political fragmentation with relatively little change in overall population (Chapters 1 and 12). In this chapter, I address the Classic to Postclassic transition in Oaxaca by examining the Classic period collapse in the lower Río Verde Valley on Oaxaca’s western Pacific Coast (Figure 7.1).1 Recent research in the lower Verde has clarified the nature of demographic and sociopolitical change at this time (Joyce et al. 7.1 The lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, showing sites mentioned in the text. Domination, Negotiation, and Collapse 221 2001; Joyce et al. 2004; Joyce and King 2001; King 2003). I consider the Classic to Postclassic transition from the perspective of the history of centralized political authority in the lower Río Verde Valley. The history of sociopolitical change in the region has been the focus of interdisciplinary research over the past twenty years (Barber 2005; Grove 1988; Joyce 1991a, 1991b, 1999, 2005; Joyce et al. 1998; Joyce et al. 2001; King 2003; Urcid and Joyce 2001; Workinger 2002). This research has included horizontal and/or block excavations at the sites of Río Viejo, Cerro de la Cruz, San Francisco de Arriba, Yugüe, Cerro de la Virgen, and Tututepec as well as test excavations at thirteen other sites. The entire region has been the focus of a non-systematic surface reconnaissance, and full-coverage surveys have systematically studied an area of 152 square kilometers (Joyce 1999; Joyce et al. 2001; Joyce et al. 2004; Workinger 2002). The regional data demonstrate an initial period of political centralization toward the end of the Formative period, followed by a political collapse at ca. 250 CE. A second period of centralization occurred during the Late Classic period (500–800 CE) followed by collapse in the Early Postclassic (800–1100 CE). Although not a focus of this chapter, the prehispanic sequence ends with a third period of centralization during the Late Postclassic (1100–1522 CE), which was terminated abruptly by the Spanish Conquest. My historical analysis is based on a poststructural theoretical framework (e.g., Giddens 1979; Janusek 2004; Joyce et al. 2001; Pauketat 2001) and argues that regional political authority in the lower Río Verde Valley was relatively unstable and negotiated and was continuously produced by dynamic, ongoing social relations. Rather than representing the end of a long period of political relations that were overdetermined by a coherent and integrated political structure dominated by the elite (e.g., Fox et al. 1996; Marcus and Flannery 1996:chapter 15; Martin and Grube 2000; Schele and Mathews 1998), the Classic period collapse appears more like a “moment” prefigured, at least in part, by social contradictions and tensions that...