The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond

9: Exchange, Assumptions, and Mortuary Goods in Pre-Paquine Chihuahua, Mexico

189 9 EXCHANGES, ASSUMPTIONS, AND MORTUARY GOODS IN PRE-PAQUIMÉ CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO John E. Douglas Archaeologists may fantasize about being able to directly observe the prehistoric movement of goods, but reality is not so kind. All interpretations of prehistoric exchange—from the “prehistoric trade route” maps of an earlier generation to World Systems Theory—are laden with assumptions . Early researchers focused on the quantity and the direction of movements of easily recognized long-distance goods, making what seem now to be simplistic assumptions about the causes and mechanisms that underlay those movements (e.g., Brand 1938). Today, archaeologists are focused on the causes of exchange: What purposes did exchanges serve, or more pointedly, whose needs did they serve? To answer such questions we employ models such as World Systems Theory, peer polity interaction, and prestige goods economy. These models’ histories and theoretical assumptions differ considerably, but they share a focus on understanding exchange as part of larger systems and on meeting the needs of certain individuals or segments of society. The match between the assumptions of these models and the archaeological record is explored here with a small-scale but detailed analysis of pre-Paquimé (or pre–Casas Grandes) mortuary goods from northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, focusing on the role of nonlocal goods. Specifically , I reexamine the pre-Paquimé mortuary data collected by Di Peso and colleagues (1974) from the Perros Bravos phase at the Convento site. These data are placed in context by comparing them with the roughly 190 Archaeology of Regional Interaction contemporary but distant mortuary remains from the Mimbres Valley and the later (post–A.D. 1200) practices at nearby Paquimé. These comparisons point to some shortcomings of the models and suggest that we should again reconsider some of our assumptions about the movement of goods in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico (SUSNM). THE MODELS AND THEIR EXPECTATIONS This section explores some salient assumptions and expectations of World Systems Theory, peer polity interaction, and prestige goods economy models regarding the distribution of nonlocal goods in prehistoric SUSNM (see also Saitta, Chapter 7, this volume). These brief synopses are not intended to be full summaries or critiques, but they do provide a framework for concrete comparison. WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY World Systems Theory was developed by Wallerstein (1974) in the context of understanding the rise of capitalism at an international or a worldwide scale. The theory’s central tenet is that powerful “cores” create economic dependencies in “peripheries,” with “semiperipheries” in an intermediate relationship. These regional inequalities created by economic exchange and development are given primacy in shaping the histories of the constituent societies. Although Wallerstein viewed precapitalist systems as intrinsically separate from world systems, a number of anthropologists have argued that the approach is useful for understanding other kinds of economic systems (e.g., Schneider 1977). Although it is universally appreciated that World Systems Theory cannot be transposed directly onto the prehistory of SUSNM, it has been assessed—favorably and unfavorably—many times by southwestern archaeologists (Baugh 1984; Di Peso 1983; Lerner 1987; Mathien and McGuire 1986; Plog et al. 1982; Upham 1982). The geographical scale of application can range enormously, encompassing systems as small as a core village with a periphery of a few homesteads and as large as the entire area of Mesoamerica and SUSNM. Furthermore, these scales are not necessarily conflicting because world systems are sometimes viewed in a hierarchical, nested fashion, with smaller core-periphery systems subsumed under larger ones. Although it is difficult to generalize about such a flexible approach, expectations for World Systems Theory include: (1) Cores should accumulate the greatest quantities of commodities, exotic goods, or both; (2) sacred, social, and political leadership should be centralized in core areas; (3) there 191 Exchanges, Assumptions, Mortuary Goods in Pre-Paquimé Chihuahua should be mechanisms that create needs in the peripheries and link them inexorably to cores. PEER POLITY INTERACTION Peer polity interaction is concerned with the consequences of interaction between spatially compact, politically independent societies that share a cultural heritage. A regional, or midscale, focus to peer polity interaction makes the geographical scale well-defined compared with applications of World Systems Theory. The polities within a region are envisioned as interacting intensively through exchange, warfare, competitive emulation, symbolic “entrainment,” and the transmission of innovation (McGuire 1991; Minnis 1989; Renfrew 1986). Renfrew (1986: 7–8), who initially developed peer polity interaction to analyze nonindustrial states, is uncommonly explicit about the...