The Archaeology of Political Organization
Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico
by Barbara L. Stark
In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period. The political analysis considers archaeological evidence related to several organizational principles: collective versus autocratic, corporate versus exclusionary/network, and segmentary (unspecialized versus specialized). Many variables related to these principles used by other scholars are either suited to historically documented states, not archaeological ones, or ambiguous. Many published studies either focus on a particular city or use documents or other evidence drawn from the top of the settlement hierarchy, characterizing the whole society politically from a biased sample. This political analysis is regional in scope and attentive to variation in the settlement hierarchy, providing a guidepost to analysis of political principles with archaeological data.
- By (author) Barbara L. Stark
Other Titles in this Series
Recent advances in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes
In memory of Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff
Volume 39
Roman Foodprints at Berenike
Archaeobotanical Evidence of Subsistence and Trade in the Eastern Desert of Egypt
Volume 55
Ceramics of Postclassic Cholula, Mexico
Typology and Seriation of Pottery from the UA-1 Domestic Compound
Volume 43
Settlement and Subsistence in Early Formative Soconusco
El Varal and the Problem of Inter-Site Assemblage Variation
Volume 65
Ceramic Production and Circulation in the Greater Southwest
Source Determination by INAA and Complementary Mineralogical Investigations
Volume 44
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