The Me So American Urban Tradition

The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition Author(s): William T.
Sanders and David Webster Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 521-546 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/678222 . Accessed: 04/02/2011 13:58
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist.
http://www.jstor.org
WILLIAMT. SANDERS DAVID WEBSTER PennsylvaniaState University
The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition
Theprocess of preindustrialurbanizationis an importantarcheologicalissue becauseof its associationwith the emergence early complexsocieties. Thereis considerable debateamongMesoof americanarcheologists boththe evolutionary natureof theprocessitself and the configconcerning urationsandfunctions of the centersthat might be called "urban." Part of this debateis caused by the variationthat clearly exists among such Mesoamericancenters,as well as the distinctive natureof urbanizationin the culturearea, which differs in importantrespects from similar processes in the Old World. Components a modelproposedby Richard Fox are used to set the of Mesoamerican urbantraditioninto a wider, multilineal evolutionary framework. Copdn, Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan,and otherMesoamericancenters providecomparative examples.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE CITY AS A COMMUNITY
TYPE has long intrigued social sci-
entists, historians, sociologists, economists, geographers, and anthropologists. Archeologists in particular have been concerned with the evolution of the earliest cities, and we are only now beginning to understand the factors and processes that led to the "urban revolution." Part of the problem is definitional-the inability to agree about what constitutes a city as a special community type (see, for example, Wheatley 1972)-while another difficulty is the variety present even in those settlements that we would all characterize as urban centers. Mesoamerican archeologists have generally been divided in their conceptions of the attributes of cities, and the processes associated with their emergence, growth, and structures (Marcus 1983; Sanders and Santley 1983; Blanton 1981). We believe that the Mesoamerican urban tradition was a highly distinctive one compared to similar Old World traditions, and that Mesoamerican archeology has much to offer to the comparative study of urbanism. In this article we will discuss the problem of the nature of the Mesoamerican city in the context of a general model advanced by Richard Fox in his book UrbanAnthropology (1977). The model postulates and defines a wide variety of urban forms, several of which, we think, are extremely pertinent to the Mesoamerican urban tradition. Fox's approach is to identify a series of differentiated functions that define urban places and that distinguish different classes of them in a manner useful for cross-cultural comparisons. Joyce Marcus (1983) includes a very brief discussion of the implications of Fox's scheme, which she obviously finds attractive. We agree with many of her conclusions, and believe that a more complete examination of the Fox model is warranted. In our own consideration of this model we suggest some alterations and refinements, as well as some linkages with evolutionary and ecological theory, illustrating our points with pertinent examples of Mesoamerican urban centers such as Coptin, Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan, and others (Figure 1).
Definitions of the City

In our own research we have relied heavily on a standard sociological definition of the city, best expressed by Louis Wirth (1938). Wirth defines cities as having three major
T. is WILLIAM SANDERS Evan Pugh Professor, Department ofAnthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802. DAVIDWEBSTER Professor, Department of Anthropology,Pennsylvania State University. is
521
522
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
[90, 1988
11 109 N
1
0 300 km
12
3
2
1
Figure 1 Locations of archeological sites mentioned in text: (1) Copin, (2) Tikal, (3) Kaminaljuyu, (4) Xicalango, (5) Cholula, (6) Cozumel, (7) Tulum, (8) Naco, (9) Teotihuacan, (10) Tenochtitlan, (11) Tula, (12) Monte Alban.
features: (1) large population size, (2) dense population nucleation, and (3) high internal heterogeneity. Secondary and derivative attributes are secularism, anonymity, and vertical and spatial mobility. Heterogeneity refers to a great range of lifestyles produced by differences in political power, wealth, group affiliation, and the variable economic statuses and roles of the population. As archeologists, we are attracted to this definition because it is inherently quantitative, and hence usable in reconstructing important features of prehistoric centers. Archeologists can develop procedures to measure size, density, and heterogeneity, and although Wirth himself provides no magic numbers marking levels of urbanism, such demographic and cultural measures may be used to generate fruitful comparative frameworks for assessing archeological data. Secularism, anonymity, and mobility are, of course, more difficult features to deal with, although the first is to a certain degree manageable within the limits of archeological methods and techniques. Weber (1958:54-55, as referred to by Fox [1977:23]) also defines the city but restricts the definition even more than does Wirth, using the term only for relatively large, dense, heterogeneous communities with significant economic-and particularly commercialfunctions. He would exclude those centers that functioned primarily as centers of political administration. In fact, his definition of a city is a community with its own government and with relative political autonomy from the state, including the right to establish its own laws and even maintain a professional army. It is evident that Weber's concept derives from the historical tradition of Western urbanization and thus his concept is not directly appropriate for investigating prehistoric, and especially Mesoamerican, urban traditions. Sjoberg (1960) has criticized the use of just such ethnocentric sociological definitions as inapplicable to preindustrial cities, since such cities are usually rather small in size,
Sanders and Webster]
THEMESOAMERICAN URBANTRADITION
523
lack secularity, and often have strong political and ideological functions, and since many of them emerged in non-Western cultural settings. He suggests a broader use of the term "city" and sees a close association of preindustrial cities with the process of state formation, emphasizing cities as centers of ancient states. He also considers literacy to be an attribute of urbanization, thus excluding from the definition centers that many archeologists and anthropologists would identify as urban communities, such as Cuzco and Chan Chan in the Central Andes and the medieval and contemporary native cities of West Africa. The Fox Model Fox (1977) provides new insights concerning the nature of urbanization and new definitions of the city. While we do not agree with all of the details of his analysis, we feel that his work has particular applicability for studying the Mesoamerican urban tradition. His model has the advantage of being a product of a distinctly anthropological perspective, although still strongly oriented toward an Old World set of urban patterns. Selected portions of it, however, have great promise in the analysis of the genesis and growth of ancient Mesoamerican cities. Fox makes an initial and fundamental distinction between small homogeneous societies-what anthropologists have traditionally referred to as "primitive" societies-and large heterogeneous ones. Such large heterogeneous societies need to centralize a variety of activities, and a city is defined simply as a central place where such activities are concentrated. These activities may be purely ceremonial or ritual. Frequently, however, ritual activities at such centers are conducted by specialists who reside permanently at the locus of centralization, and the leaders in ritual also play important political roles. At a more complex level such places may have secondary economic functions. What Fox calls a city is basically what geographers would refer to as a central place. The emergence of cities, then, is basically the process of aggregation that produces central places: communities more functionally specialized or complex than rural communities. Because of its breadth, his definition encompasses a variety of centers serving very different functions. The quantitative values that Wirth considers essential to the definition of a city are peripheral to Fox's model. Furthermore, Fox feels that the variability in function in urban forms as he defines them clearly relates to the nature of the total society in which the city is embedded; most particularly, cities occur in the wider context of what he calls the state, as a general societal type. Societies on all levels, of course, exhibit some kinds of behavior that are "centralizing" in the broadest sense of the word. Even hunters and gatherers may have central places where periodic activities of a ritual, political, or economic nature take place, often in highly structured and predictable ways. These simple forms of the centralizing process are not addressed by Fox; he is interested only in central places that are occupied on a permanent basis by people whose activities are differentiated in function from those of the bulk of the population, and who exercise unusual amounts of ritual, political, or economic decision making. Fox presents a functional typology of urban centers, although he recognizes that there are important variations within each type. Three of his types-regal-ritual, administrative, and mercantilecities-are found in preindustrial societies and are thus of interest to us for the purposes of this discussion. Colonial and industrial cities, the other two forms, appear only with the Industrial Revolution and are not considered here. Regal-Ritual Cities All preindustrial cities have ideological functions. What particularly characterizes the regal-ritual city is that ideological functions are extremely obtrusive. As Fox puts it: The term regal-ritual cities signifies the essential quality of these settlements. Their primary urban role is ideological. This cultural role emerges from the prestige and status of the state ruler or the cohesive power of state religion. All cities have this ideological cultural role in varying
524
[90, 1988
degrees. What makes the regal-ritual urban type distinctive is that its existence depends almost entirely on ideological functions. [1977:41] Despite the emphasis here upon ritual and symbolic aspects of culture, it is clear from his presentation that Fox sees the centralizing process on the level of the regal-ritual center as primarily political in nature. What makes the ideological/symbolic dimension so obtrusive is the mode of governance, in which control of ideology and ritual display are essential. Wheatley summarizes the process this way: [The great ceremonial centers] functioned as instruments for the dissemination through all levels of society of beliefs which, in turn, enabled the wielders of political power to justify their goals in terms of the basic values of that society, and to present the realization of class-directed aims as the implementation of collectively desirable policies. [1971:305] Rappaport (1971:35) makes this point more succinctly with specific regard to religious ideology: "Sanctity helps to keep subsystems in their places." The permanent populatjon of regal-ritual cities consists of the political leaders of the state, their immediate families, and, to a degree, what one might call administrative personnel. We say to a degree because although some forms of centralized administration occur in all complex societies, the differentiation of functionally specific administrators may not be present. We would also add that the establishments of rulers frequently may be the focal points of courts, in the sense that all manner of people, from the very humble to the extremely exalted, may gravitate to them to enjoy the advantages of proximity to the ruler. Since so much of the anthropological literature on early state development has stressed the emergence of formal bureaucracies, it is worth remembering that the less formal court dimensions of centralization may also be extremely important. Leaders almost always have both political and religious functions, although in some cases such roles may be strictly differentiated. Some economic specialists may be attached to the elite household, but regal-ritual cities have very limited productive and distributive functions in a substantive sense, although much economic decision making may be centralized. Such centers are primarily places for consumption of food, raw materials, and craft products from the outlying countryside. Because their functions are primarily limited to political leadership and the ritual/symbolic expression of it, the permanent populations of ritual-regal centers tend to be small, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. The architectural forms found at the centers are often identical to those found in the rural countryside, only writ large, and much of urban architecture consists of the residences of the rulers and their immediate clients. Structures include actual residences, storage facilities (often for ritual paraphernalia), shrines and temples where rituals take place, and, in some cases, barracks-like quarters for unmarried young men. The household of the ruler or chief may be large in size simply because of the frequent practice of polygyny, but with relatively little functional differentiation when contrasted with rural households, and urban-rural settlement contrast is minimally developed. To state Fox's basic organizational concept in slightly different terms, we think that the regal-ritual center may fruitfully be conceived of as the expanded household of the because so many systemically important ruling functions, with their ruler-expanded attendant personnel, gravitate to the residence of the king or chief. The administration of the polity is in many respects an extension of household administration. Fox links the regal-ritual city to the larger political form he calls the segmentary state, by which he means complex polities with relatively weak, decentralized political systems. These exhibit what Durkheim called "mechanical solidarity." Typically, there is a supreme ruler whose position and exercise of authority are accompanied by impressive pomp and circumstance, but whose power is circumscribed by lesser but similar magnates, who usually also enjoy inherited status. Fox includes in his definition of the segmentary state those in which the ruling class consists of heads of expanded kin groups, one of whom monopolizes the position of paramountcy, as well as feudal states, such as those of western Europe, in which the king's supporters (and potential rivals) consist of
Sanders Webster] and
THE URBAN MESOAMERICANTRADITION
525
nobles with patrimonial domains (i.e., private estates with attached serfs). The illustrative examples he uses-Swazi and Rajput centers and the Carolingian capital-encomthis variety. pass A very important feature of what Fox calls the regal-ritual city is the lack of clear distinction between the urban population and those living in the rural countryside, a point emphasized by Marcus (1983). This is perhaps especially true of the kinship-integrated variety just described because leaders of the large expanded kin groups live at the city (in some polities for only part of the year), but are stewards of lands and other resources held by the expanded kin groups whose members reside in rural areas. Periodic rituals, often associated with political status, may involve large-scale participation of people from the rural countryside who congregate at the regal-ritual center, thus emphasizing the continuity of the urban-rural populations. A true peasantry probably does not exist in the segmental states associated with regal-ritual cities, at least those based on kinship. Because of the greater asymmetry in the economic and political relations, it is probably appropriate to refer to feudal tenants as peasants.
TheAdministrative City
Fox's administrative cities are larger, denser, and more heterogeneous urban communities than regal-ritual ones. In fact, his definition of this type fits Wirth's general definition of an urban center. The primary function of this kind of center is political. Administrative cities are the capitals of states, or centers of administration in political systems that consist of multiple urban centers. Compared to regal-ritual centers they are larger and more complex, since the political systems for which they provide centralized services are larger, more bureaucratically structured, and more highly centralized. Because of the larger territorial base and the size and complexity of the associated bureaucratic structure, administrative cities serve as places of residence not only for the ruling family and hereditary aristocracy, but also for a host of officials and their families and for a professional military class, all supported by taxation from the countryside. Internally the city is highly stratified, and there is a great gap in terms of ideology and lifestyle between the rural food producers and the urban population. Since the urban population is swollen by the presence of numerous bureaucratic and military personnel, administrative cities constitute expanded potential markets for the products of craftspeople, service personnel, and professional merchants and traders. Much of the craft production or trade involves high-status goods, but in the more developed cases may include a range of more mundane goods and technology as well. The principal customers, however, are still the inhabitants of the center itself, and such cities do not produce significant quantities of goods for the rural countryside or for long-distance exchange. Economic functions therefore remain subsidiary to political ones, especially since the size of the economically specialized class is limited by the growth of the politically specialized sector, and the city is still primarily a consuming community. In some cases trade and production may be heavily regulated by the state. Because of the complexity and range of functions performed by their inhabitants, administrative cities exhibit much sharper internal distinctions of social status and class than regal-ritual cities. The administrative city is thus much more stratified. Increased size and heterogeneity may even result in a certain degree of the anonymity that Wirth includes in his definition of the city, because cities provide supportive and protective settings for various pariah elements, such as professional beggars, thieves, and prostitutes. The increased economic functions of administrative cities offer considerable social and spatial mobility to individuals and groups. Of particular archeological interest is that administrative cities show much greater differentiation of architectural functions, including not only the range of functions found at regal-ritual centers but also workshops for craftspeople, warehouses (both state and private), marketplaces, bureaucratic offices, account libraries or archives, and a wide range of residential facilities.
526
[90, 1988
The principal examples used by Fox to demonstrate his concept of the administrative center are Mamluk Cairo and the Japanese castle-towns of the late 16th and 17th centuries. Of these the growth of Edo (the central establishment of the new Tokugawa shoguns) is a particularly striking example of the emergence of an administrative city. Founded as the stronghold of the Tokugawa family in 1590 on the location of what had earlier been a small fishing community, it expanded to 1.3 million people by the early 18th century, an extraordinary rate of growth for a preindustrial center. At the core of Edo were the fortified household facilities of the new shoguns and the elaborate bureaucratic apparatus and military personnel needed to administer all ofJapan. Regional lords were required to maintain houses in Edo, and they or their families resided there permanently as political hostages. Such concentrations of elites, administrators, and soldiers inevitably stimulated the emergence of a complex network of economic specialists which swelled the size of the city still further, effectively centralizing many forms of production and commercial exchange (Reischauer and Fairbank 1960). The Mercantile City The last of the three preindustrial city forms that Fox describes-the mercantile cityhas, we feel, the least relevance for Mesoamerican archeology, since we see it as very weakly developed, if present at all, in pre-Columbian times (see discussion below). In Fox's words, mercantile cities arise when political hegemony over a region is weak or absent, as during the periodic decay of bureaucratic states, or when only weakly centralized segmentary states obtain, andwhere a source of urban wealth and economic autonomy exists other than control over peasant subsistence agriculture .... Whatever the [economic] basis, the mercantile city is the primary source of wealth, accumulation of which is unhindered by the commercial restraints of a powerful state ruling elite. The city is a place for the production of riches, notjust a consumption center where wealth squeezed from peasant labor is expended by state rulers, or where artisans congregate to service the needs of resident state administrators. [Fox 1977:95, emphasis in the original] Fox obviously sees mercantile cities as profiting from the comparative weakness of ruling groups in their administrative centers, which allows dimensions of economic autonomy and specialization otherwise impossible. Of course the city may possess its own ruling elite, but if it does it is heavily involved in commercial enterprises as a source of its wealth, and control over the rural agrarian sector is of secondary importance. This is not to say that urban populations are independent of rural production. Clearly this cannot be the case, since raw materials from the countryside are necessary for the urban economy (as indeed rural labor may be, in the case of cottage industries), and in all agrarian states urban non-food producers must be provisioned with food energy from somewhere. The distinction is in the nature of the interaction between urban consumers and rural producers. In mercantile cities as Fox defines them patrimonial control over the countryside is weak or lacking altogether, so that rural products and labor may not be extracted as direct tax (as would be the case in most feudal systems), but rather must be paid for, either as direct payments or exchanges with the rural producers themselves, or with the rural land-holding elites who dominate them. Although Fox emphasizes the city as a center of production as well as consumption, he also recognizes that some mercantile cities thrive on their functions as nodes in shipment and bulking networks. Mercantile cities can only arise when the volume of craft production and/or trade (or the value of services such as bulking and transhipment) reaches or exceeds the level that produces wealth comparable to that generated by the control of agricultural land. It is only in this context that urban communities can achieve the kind of semi-autonomy that Weber stresses in his definition of a city. We would argue that preindustrial mercantile cities evolved primarily as centers of trade, and not as craft production centers, because of the relatively limited productivity of basic industries. Often, important commodities were produced by cottage industries, in which case the technology, workforce, and sched-
THE MESOAMERICAN URBANTRADITION
527
uling of activities were appropriate to the rural domestic household. As Wallerstein (1974) has pointed out, much trade before the Industrial Revolution was still in the form of highly valued prestige goods consumed primarily by the privileged strata of society. What permitted the rise of mercantile cities in the Old World, among other things, was the greatly enhanced potential of sea transport; large quantities of goods of all kinds could be efficiently distributed over enormous distances, resulting in ever greater expansion of mercantile economies. In fairness to Fox, it must be emphasized that our short summary of his model does not do justice to his contribution. Although he devises a typology of cities, it is evident that he thinks in processual terms, recognizing the variety present within his categories and, in some cases, the essential continuities between them. Although he is not primarily concerned with evolutionary models, he is also aware that through complex metamorphoses regal-ritual centers may be transformed into administrative cities, and the latter into mercantile or even industrial ones (although we do not wish to imply any unilinear sequence here). Evaluation Over the years we have resisted, in our own work, a broad definition of the city, reserving that term for the largest and most complex Mesoamerican communities. We have preferred to use more neutral terms, such as "central place," for the wide range of centers such as those Fox talks about. The advantage of such an approach is that it emphasizes major and significant differences in the form and function of such Mesoamerican sites as Tikal and Teotihuacan. It does, however, raise the hackles of those among our Mesoamerican colleagues who espouse a wider definition of the term "city." There is also a certain danger in our restricted use of the term, in that it tends to suggest, at least, a concern more with typology of culture than with process, although we have in fact always seen the evolution of what we have called cities in terms of process. Our definition is a quantitative one, but our position is that certain qualitative changes in human relationships occur when communities reach a certain critical size, and that there are clear and obvious differences in site functions that emerge as scale increases. Other Mesoamericanists, particularly Mayanists, have resisted this notion, and attribute sufficient functional diversity to Maya centers to warrant the use of the term "city" for them. To a great degree Fox presents a solution to this impasse, since he begins with a qualitative definition-centralization of a variety of functions-and then uses a quantitative approach to provide a typology of urban communities. This approach leads one to focus more on process than on cultural typologies. His second point, that variability in such centers can be understood in terms of the overall structure of the societies in which they are embedded, also has considerable value in that it is explanatory and focuses on process. What Fox calls cities, then, are places where a variety of functions-political, relicentralized. His typology is essentially dependent gious, residential, and economic-are on the quantitative value of these functions and on their respective ratios, and this is what makes his approach particularly attractive to archeologists, because most if not all of these variables are expressed in the archeological record. It is also clear from his discussion that when certain values are achieved, what might be called the lifestyle of the urban center becomes significantly transformed. Wirth's secondary and derivative features of urbanization, such as anonymity, mobility, and secularism, reflect the nature of these changes. In terms of the discussion that follows, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that despite Fox's occasional overstatement of the ritual/ideological determinants of the regalritual city (such as seen in the quote above [1977:95]), he is not reviving the old "theocratic/ceremonial" perspective that has obfuscated so many discussions of the origins of complex societies and urban centers (Webster 1976). He clearly believes that centralized power and authority derive mainly from control of important resources (especially proprietorial domination of capital resources), not from some manipulation of ritual and ide-
528
[90, 1988
ology disembodied from their material and political underpinnings. This is particularly apparent in his own detailed discussion of Rajput centers (Fox 1971), which he uses as major examples of his regal-ritual type. Thus the distinction must constantly be borne in mind between the centralizing processes that produce the regal-ritual center as a special kind of place, and the specific modes of governance characteristic of the political influences emanating from that place. The obtrusive ritual/ideological component of regalritual centers is primarily a manifestation of the latter. Geertz (1980) has recently advanced the notion of the "theatre state." While public displays may be very important in emphasizing ideology for purposes of political legitimization, we strongly resist the idea that the state evolves to satisfy some sort of "need" for this sort of display and that it can be a powerful explanatory mechanism for the origins of complex societies or urban places. Ideological display and manipulation, even when it is intense, may or may not be closely related to religion. Much of the pomp and pageantry of public display in some societies serves primarily to reinforce sociopolitical and economic ideology more or less directly. However it is expressed, such display functions to demonstrate the power and authority of its organizers and to differentiate the regal-ritual center as a special kind of place as opposed to others in the system. As we have seen, Fox links the regal-ritual city to the political form he calls the segmentary state. In his conception of this form it is clear that he has lumped together Service's (1962) chiefdom and Fried's (1967) ranked society, as well as what both would define as states. Aside from Service's (1962) broad definition of the state as a political system with legitimized use of force, we would add that with such legitimization goes a variety of new social structures which, in the early stages of state formation, are grafted onto a traditional set of kinship structures. One should be able to measure the differences between even a very large chiefdom and a relatively simple state in terms of these new features. For example, in the case of the Swazi it is true that the household of the local headman often includes a shrine and a dormitory for young men, and thus mirrors (indeed, provides a prototype for) the establishment of the paramount ruler. But the development of a national shrine of unprecedented dimensions, managed by the queen mother, and the expansion of the bachelors' quarters into a warriors' barracks represent radically altered and functionally different institutions at the king's court, and are significant departures from the purely segmentary organization of kin groups. Fox collapses kin-based societies and those based on feudal land tenure into a single political type which he refers to as the segmentary state. In our opinion this is a mistake, since the possession of land, no matter how traditional or paternalistic the relationships between owner and cultivator, must create political power of an entirely different dimension than that exercised by those who are essentially stewards of large, corporate, kinbased land holdings. We would prefer to restrict the definition of the segmentary state to those centralized political systems in which kinship still plays the dominant role in overall social and economic organization. Fox himself recognizes this distinction in the examples he uses, namely the Swazi state of South Africa (the kin-based variety) and the Carolingian state of Charlemagne (the feudal form), since he sees cities associated with these two variants as significantly different in a number of ways that essentially reflect the greater complexity of the political structure in the case of the latter-for example, the separation of church and state, a more differentiated administrative hierarchy, and the presence, consequently, of more specialized architecture. A major component missing in Fox's analysis is the concentration of farmers in some preindustrial cities. In both the archeological and ethnographic literature there are a number of very striking cases in which many food producers (sometimes corporate groups with direct access to land and sometimes tenants) reside in the cities and may even be the largest components of the urban population. Considering the fact that the size of an urban community does have a considerable impact on its structure, the presence of this component can be a powerful factor affecting the nature of the urban community. The
URBANTRADITION THEMESOAMERICAN
529
absence of a strong rural population necessarily dilutes or eliminates the contrastive urban-rural relationship that is such a cornerstone of his model. Fox does not discuss the role of part-time rural specialization in the economies of cities in his first three types. We are particularly cognizant of this deficiency because of our involvement with Mesoamerican archeology and ethnography in which this type of specialization, particularly for the production of peasant utilitarian goods, is a major economic feature. We will elaborate on this point in our discussion of Mesoamerican urbanism.
The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition

Before discussing the application of Fox's scheme to the origin and growth of cities in Mesoamerica, we must briefly review a basic structural characteristic of complex Mesoamerican culture that we believe constrained the process of centralization in important ways. Mesoamerican societies of all kinds can be characterized as what we might call "low-energy societies." By this we mean there were few effective sources of energy apart from human muscle power. Mesoamerican peoples lacked not only animal transport or traction, but also technological innovations such as sails, wheels, or metal tools that could provide alternative sources of energy or increase the efficiency of human muscles. Finally, many of the most precocious centers in Mesoamerica were not even located on major waterways, which might have facilitated interregional transportation. In all of these respects Mesoamerican high cultures differed radically from virtually all of their Old World counterparts, especially those in which the earliest urban centers arose. We suggest that the quality and trajectory of Mesoamerican urban development are accordingly quite distinctive. Specific constraints derived from this set of circumstances include the following: (1) Mesoamerican agriculture was comparatively inefficient compared to most Old World systems in terms of input:output ratios, especially when population densities were high. (2) Per capita production of food surpluses was therefore limited. (3) Ratios of producers to consumers had to be very high. (4) Human labor was an exceedingly valuable and expensive resource. (5) Energetic needs for centers of any kind had to be satisfied by extracting food products and other heavy, bulk products from small hinterlands within which the cost of human transport was feasible. Bearing these constraints in mind, let us examine the Mesoamerican urban tradition in light of Fox's categories.
TheRegal-Ritual Cityin Mesoamerica

Copdn. We believe that, with very few exceptions, Mesoamerican central places from Preclassic to Postclassic times are best characterized as regal-ritual cities, although we recognize the variations in scale and functions that they manifest. To illustrate this point a we will summarize the major features of a large Maya center-8th-century Copan-as case example. We have chosen Copan because it is a reasonable representative of the Classic Maya centers that are such conspicuous products of the Mesoamerican centralization process, and because such centers have loomed so large in discussions of urbanization. Furthermore, since 1980 we have co-directed a major archeological research effort at Copin, and thus possess an unusually rich data set for that site. Our reconstructions are based on a variety of data, including an extensive regional survey (Webster 1985) and large-scale horizontal excavations of approximately 110 buildings, mainly in residential compounds, which represent the full range of social statuses of the Late Classic Copan system. These data supplement a century of excavation at the Main Group and intensive studies of Cop~n inscriptions and iconography. Non-archeological data include historical references to 16th-century Maya institutions, as well as ethnographic analogies to mod-
530
[90, 1988
ern highland Maya populations and comparisons with unrelated but structurally similar societies, such as the more complex chiefdoms and states of West Africa. The Main Group at Copan, which can be described as a royal compound, possesses all the features of Fox's regal-ritual city (Figure 2). One of its elements is a huge ceremonial plaza about 280 m long and 100-200 m wide. Conspicuously associated with this plaza is a series of stelae, which record the political fortunes and ritual activities of five rulers, a central temple, and a large ball court. At the south end the plaza is delimited by the huge platform of the Acropolis, covered with a complex arrangement of buildings, many of which are embellished with sculpture and inscriptions that include a mixture of political and ritual themes. On the northeastern edge of the Acropolis is the famous Temple of the Hieroglyphic Stairway, with risers covered with the longest known Maya inscription, much of it filled with historical information. In front of it stands the stela of Ardilla, the 15th king of Copan, and the temple may well cover his palace as well as his tomb, analogous with other Maya centers. On the summit of the Acropolis are two major interconnected patios, one with large temples, including what may be the funerary monument of Rising Sun, the 16th and probably last of the great kings of Copan (Str. 16). A sculptured altar or throne sits at the base of the stairway of this temple, elaborately carved with representations of all of the putative 16 kings of Copan. It features Rising Sun accepting a baton or scepter from the earliest figure in the group, represented as a dead ancestor or predecessor. The easternmost patio group on the Acropolis was probably the residence of Rising Sun (the actual palace is the so-called Temple 22 [Trik 1939]). It includes a number of temples that could have been used by the royal family; one of these is Temple 18, which bears the latest inscription at the site, including the name of Rising Sun. This temple covers a now-looted tomb, possibly that of Rising Sun himself or a close relative. On the northeast corner of the Great Plaza is Group 3, consisting of a pyramid-temple, a residential building, and two smaller buildings of unknown function. We excavated and restored much of the residential building, and interpret this structure to be a bachelors' house cum school, possibly for members of the royal lineage and noble families at Copan. The entire complex clearly has a variety of functions. The Great Plaza provided abundant space for large politico-religious ceremonies and could easily have accommodated all of the estimated population of the Copan polity. It was well provided with ritual facilities such as altars (or outdoor thrones), temples, and a ball court, and was connected by at least one ceremonial road with nearby residential enclaves. Ball courts are of course associated in part with public ceremonies and the cosmic concepts of Maya kingship. The conspicuous display of political monuments depicting royal persons and celebrating their activities found on stelae, altars, and buildings both in the plaza and on the Acropolis is evident political propaganda heavily interwoven with religious concepts. All this, along with the probable residential functions of some of the Acropolis buildings, we think clearly shows the Main Group at Copan to be a classic example of the core of a regalritual city. Massed on both sides of the Main Group are two heavy concentrations of residences that are represented archeologically by a great number of mounds of earth and stone of in the varying size and shape, most of which are grouped into courtyard complexes-and most elaborate cases, into a series of conjoined complexes (Figure 3). Approximately 15 of these, characterized by unusually large size and high quality of architecture (features that indicate the high rank of the occupants), are physically attached to the south and west margins of the Acropolis. These we interpret as the residences of the expanded household of the ruler himself. More than 1,000 mounds are located in these two urban wards, and we estimate that the meandering of the Copan River has destroyed anywhere from 25-50% of this densely occupied zone. Recently, Webster and Freter (1989) have calculated that the total original population of the zone was between 5,000-10,000 people at A.D. 800-850. Popula-
531
22
on~
oo
Ii
Cg
lO0m
Figure 2 The Main Group at Copain. [Adapted from Hasso Hohmann and Annegrete Vogrin, Die Architekture von Copan, Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt.]
532
[90, 1988
....!
:,l
'-..***?
."
,a
r.5
.... :.
oi '1.'
'7,'"" ,!
"+"
'
ELBOSQUE t,
:.,.
.
r? .. .,
"- .. ,.
,%-
"
.5. .$ ..5r~ t..*.
I.,.-.
/,
. .. C~
GROUP0 :i:::B -
"""'
t,
..;
:l 2;
LAS SEPULTURAS
. ,b". , ?
'. r...
EL BOSQUE ;-
.
%'
..?
. cotu ??1OJm. intrva
." ,.
.,,
'f
.?:
conou /'.
inera
: lO
m.
Figure 3 The Urban Zone at Copin, showing the Main Group flanked by the residential enclaves of El Bosque (on the southwest) and Las Sepulturas (on the northeast). [Reprinted from Baudez 1983 with permission.]
tion densities would thus have been about 5,000-10,000 per km2. Both figures place the Cop~in urban zone, along with the Main Group, at the upper end of the range of regalritual centers in terms of size and nucleation. The architecture, on the basis of both its surface appearance and our extensive excavated sample, provides clear evidence not only of residential functions but of a wide range of social statuses. The most elaborate buildings are built of dressed stone masonry, including vaulted roofs, and are placed on high substructures. Some have sculptured facades and internal carved benches or thrones usually associated with Maya royalty. The simplest buildings have low substructures that supported perishable superstructures of wattle and daub. This continuum of architectural complexes has been classified according to a five-level system devised by Willey and Leventhal (1979) based on the size and quality of the architecture of the principal building in each group, with Type 4 units hav-
THE MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN
533
ing the highest status, and Type 1 units and single mounds at the simplest end of the range (see Table 1). In all cases, whether a low- or a high-status household is involved, the most common buildings are dormitories, kitchens, and storage rooms, and the high-status compounds differ only slightly from the low-status ones in the character of their basic facilities and features. In elite compounds we do find evidence for temples/shrines and other ritual buildings, occasional craft workshops, and evidence for a great range of differential status within the household, as indicated by the size and quality of rooms and buildings. Many of the smaller buildings may be housing for retainers or servants. Although the gradation of types, from the large, complex Type 4 units down to the small, isolated single structures, may be interpreted as indicating a similar gradation of status for their occupants, there is what we believe to be a significant "break" in the continuum. All Type 4 and 3 units that have been excavated have yielded sculpture and also entire buildings of conspicuously fine construction. We have identified 49 such compounds in the Copin political domain, most of which are residences (although a few Type 3 units seem to be specialized ritual structures). Twenty-three of these high-ranking units are located in the urban core, and 19 more are in outlying parts of the Copin pocket quite close (within 3-8 km) to the Main Group. Collectively they comprise a clear-cut elite settlement component. By contrast we lump the Type 2, 1, and single mound groups into a "low-status" category. Sculpture is rarely if ever associated with these settlement units, and construction quality is much lower. More significant, such units are comparatively numerous and widespread, and in rural areas where elite settlement components are extremely rare all of the lower types are common. Within the Copan pocket but outside of the urban core resided an additional 9,00011,000 people, and in the balance of the rural parts of the drainage (often 20-30 linear km distant) were another 3,000-4,000. We estimate the total population of the Copan polity at 18,000-25,000 people, distributed as shown in Table 2. Although more than a quarter of the overall population thus lived in elite households, many such residents were low-status clients, relatives, or retainers; the overall elite popTable 1 Distribution of population among groups of various ranks in the urban zone (percentages are approximate). Type 4a
Type 3
30%
24%
Type 2 Type 1 & single mound
32% 22%
aNote that while the elite Type 4 and 3 groups had the bulk of the population, many of the occupants were of low status.
Table 2 Distribution of population of the Copin polity among groups of various types.
Main Group Type 4 Type 3
Type 2
1% 16% 9%
27%
Type 1 Single mound
40% 7%
534
[90, 1988
ulation was probably no more than 10%. This figure, of course, is consistent with the postulated ratios of consumers to producers typical of Mesoamerican systems. We have convincing evidence of occupational specialization of two types: craftspeople who produced elite goods (specifically lapidarians and weavers) and lived in elite compounds, and rural part-time producers who lived in the countryside. The latter produced most of their own food, but also manufactured mundane items such as manos and metates, possibly on a seasonal basis, analogous to present highland Mesoamerican practices. In some of our elite courtyards we also seem to have residences of foreigners, some of whom might have been involved with trade. Our general model for Copan social structure, although still highly inferential at this point, identifies heads of high-status compounds as heads of expanded lineages whose support personnel fell into two categories. Some people were directly attached to elite compounds and performed a variety of administrative, economic, mercantile, and religious services; these may have been either lower-ranked kinsmen or clients. The balance resided in architecturally isolated households in the urban core and the rural countryside and produced primarily subsistence crops, along with some part-time craft products. Lineage heads were important nodes for the redistribution of many of these products, and also held court titles and participated in significant ritual functions, both in their own compounds and in the Main Group. Our reconstructed picture of the urban nucleus of Copin closely resembles Fox's regalritual city. It functioned as a residential enclave for the most politically powerful members of the polity and their immediate supporters, and as a focus of ritual activity, both public and private. It was primarily a place of consumption rather than production, and the population size was at the upper range of this urban type. In our reconstruction the Copan political regime as a whole approximates what we would call a segmentary state, or in Fox's terms the kin-based rather than feudal variant of the segmentary state. A number of specialized features, such as the palace dormitory/school for elite young men and the greatly enlarged royal household, emerged out of earlier institutions (as in the Swazi case) but seem to have appeared very late in Copan's evolutionary history, perhaps only during the reign of its last powerful king. The evidence of unusually massive architectural efforts during this reign, along with the appearance of a distinctive ideology based on a syncretism of warfare and solar cults that complemented the old ancestral cults, suggests the rapid crystallization of a true state, as opposed to a ranked or chiefdom form of political integration. regal-ritual centers are embedDespite these developments, Fox's major point-that ded in states with relatively weak, decentralized authority at the top-we see as valid for Copan even in its most mature stage. Lineage heads retained considerable independent power and substantial resources, including some of the ceremonial and ritual prerogatives of royalty, such as inscribed thrones, altars, and the use of symbolic and portrait sculpture on their houses. We know from both excavation and obsidian hydration dating that some of these elite establishments long survived the collapse of the royal Copan establishment around A.D. 800, exactly what we would expect given the segmentary structure of Maya polities. In our opinion the intense use of royal display found at Copan and other centers, especially as expressed in stelae, altars, and heavily embellished monumental architecture, is evidence for the essential weakness of Maya centralized rule rather than its strength. decentralized rule, emphasis Virtually all of the features discussed for Copin-weak, on ritual functions, poorly developed economic institutions, and fairly small populato most other Mesoamerican centers. In saying this we remain mindful of tions-apply the enormous variety found among such centers and emphasize that another level of problem is the reason for such variation within any particular general type as defined by Fox. For example, Tikal, the largest known Classic Maya center, has a core settlement pattern very different from Copin's. We believe that major dimensions of such variety (and this is true for regal-ritual cities and all other types of centers as well) are explainable
535
in terms of regional culture histories and basic demographic and subsistence variables that are locally distinctive, but for the purposes of this article our attention is mainly on the major set of unifying characteristics with which Fox is concerned.
Administrative Cities Mesoamerican

Tenochtitlan. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan is the outstanding Mesoamerican example ofFox's administrative city (Figure 4). Unlike Copan and Teotihuacan (discussed below), which are known to us almost entirely on the basis of archeological evidence alone, we have many historical accounts of Tenochtitlan, indicating that it clearly fits Wirth's definition ofa city in terms of its size, density, and heterogeneity. While estimates about its size vary, we feel that Calnek's (1973) calculation of 160,000-200,000 people is close to the mark. The city covered from 12-15 km2 so that its density was probably between 12,000-17,000 per km2. All of the evidence suggests that this huge urban population was almost entirely dependent upon outlying rural food producers, and was very diverse, its denizens ranging from kings, full-time specialists, and merchants, to prostitutes, beggars, and thieves. Apparently a city of this size provides enough anonymity so that the latter can thrive, and is also wealthy enough to attract the services of the first two. As did virtually all other Mesoamerican centers, Tenochtitlan had ideological functions as well: it was the center of a state religion whose facilities were concentrated in an enormous complex of specialized religious structures. Here also lived the Mexica kings in their huge palaces, which included not only the private quarters of the ruler himself, along with his wives and other members of his family, but also rooms for servants, council chambers, workshops for royal craftspeople, storage facilities for royal tax and tribute items, offices and libraries in which scribes kept the accounts of the empire, pleasure gardens, and even zoos and aviaries. The center of the city was crowded with masonry palaces serving as residences for a class of bureaucratic specialists, including administrators, tax receivers, judges, police, professional warriors, and resident orders of celibate priests who lived in the ceremonial precincts. The total number of such people in the early 16th century must have been in the tens of thousands, and government was clearly the biggest business of Tenochtitlan. In this respect it conforms perfectly to the dominant theme of Fox's administrative city. The sheer size and complexity of the empire called into being a large, privileged bureaucratic/military/ritual urban class, which in turn served as the clientele for an expanded population of merchants and economic specialists. The city was divided into approximately 100 wards, each of which was a unit of craft specialization; seven such wards housed professional merchants. That much of this specialization was geared to the sumptuary displays of the elite is clear: lapidarians, featherworkers, goldsmiths, sculptors, painters, and masons all thrived under elite patronage. Virtually all of the goods carried by the merchants involved in foreign trade were prestige commodities consumed primarily by the elite. Judging from early ethnohistoric accounts, many of the pre-conquest specialists dealt in utilitarian items as well. Sahagun (1961) provides us with a list of 40-50 such specialized crafts, and many local products may have been handled by retail merchants just as exotic ones were. At least some of the producers of luxury items, along with the long-distance traders, were organized into guilds, each with its own complex internal structures, all of which were under the control of the state. The city had a huge central market and a great number of neighborhood food markets (one of the clearest indications that most of the urban population consisted of non-food producers). These markets were also administered by the state. Sources mention police, government inspectors, and judges who arbitrated disputes, all in frequent or constant attendance. Thousands of buyers and sellers thronged the great market each day, and as many as 60,000 attended every fifth day, when the numbers were swelled by the direct participation of the rural population in the urban exchange network. Sources describe tens of thousands of canoes loaded with merchandise
536
ANTHROPOLOGIST AMERICAN
[90, 1988
CU TERCC
HTLMPUTL
ALCO ~TERT
xocn
uactt
COAnrAYAWn~
RunTE~
HucI
Mtma
TLATELOLC
LAKE Puerspe TENOCTITLA
TEXCOCO
TLAT
LAXTERCOOC
Maroa
TENOCatco
* LAK ".. XOCHIMILCOIUOIO
CAUSWAY -RIVEROR STRAM
0 ZlUSAPA
T I
WC 2
2 Mi~rtrrsOYO 3 TZCAC
CIVCW CEEMONIL PRCINunCTIOETR
Figure 4 Map of Tenochtitlan. [Reprinted from Sanders, Santley, and Parsons 1979 with permission.]
537
moving in and out of the city from lakeshore communities. Despite all of this economic complexity, however, Tenochtitlan was still primarily a consuming center. It depended upon the constant import of food and other basic commodities, and most of its own urban products were consumed by the resident urban population. Tenochtitlan was clearly unique in the history of Mesoamerica in terms of the scale and complexity of its urban development. There are, however, a number of other centers that we think were also administrative cities. These were all capitals of relatively large polities compared to most Mesoamerican chiefdoms and states, with population in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the tens of thousands. To a great extent it was the limitation in state size that constrained the degree of their urban development, most particularly their economic institutions. Teotihuacan.The earlier Classic city of Teotihuacan, like Tenochtitlan, had major political and religious functions (Figure 5). The latter are the most archeologically obtrusive. Two of the largest temples ever built in Mesoamerica lie in the heart of the city and are accompanied by a vast array of lesser religious structures. During the final phase of its history there was a huge regal compound along the Street of the Dead. Although it may have served earlier as a palace, the so-called Ciudadela seems to have ultimately become a religious precinct that had not only temples but monastery-like residences for sacerdotal personnel. Such priests may also have lived in ancillary buildings on the great platform of the Sun Pyramid, as well as near the Moon Pyramid. Recent Mexican excavations of what appears to be the final royal palace precinct straddling the Street of the Dead suggest that a great variety of political and administrative functions were centralized at the core of Teotihuacan. The city in this respect far more closely resembles Tenochtitlan than it does Copin. Surveys and test excavations also indicate the presence of a great marketplace, possibly with associated warehouses and administrative buildings. The dense concentrations of high-status residences along the Street of the Dead and elsewhere suggest the presence of an extensive cadre of high-status personnel, possibly numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands. The total population of Teotihuacan at its peak was approximately 125,000 people in an area of 18 km2 or a density of some 8,000 per km2. Certainly it, like Tenochtitlan, conforms to Wirth's definition. A major question is the degree of economic heterogeneity present at Teotihuacan. Data from surface surveys also demonstrate that about one-third of the population had some craft specialty, including foreign commerce. Besides government and religion, a key industry of Teotihuacan was obsidian production, and much of this production was probably under the control of the state. While many of the inhabitants of the city produced elite craft products, others made more mundane items, such as grinding stones, utilitarian pottery, and a variety of things used for household rituals, including figurines, incense burners, and ritual vessels. Specialists were apparently organized in corporate groups, probably lineages, and resided in large apartment houses whose patios and shrines suggest that there were important ritual functions attached to these residential units. Such apartments may have housed 30-100 people. While there is presently no way to determine how many people in these compounds actually were craft producers, we believe that most of them engaged in at least part-time if not full-time activities of this sort. Although many of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan were specialists, there is another economic feature of the city not dealt with by Fox: the presence of large numbers of food producers residing in the urban zone. This characteristic of Teotihuacan is unusual, though by no means unique (e.g., see Adams and Nissen's [1972] discussion of Uruk). While Teotihuacan is strikingly similar in many respects to Tenochtitlan, a major difference is the presence of a large class of resident food producers in the former center, organized like other urban dwellers into corporate groups living in large masonry and adobe apartments. We believe at least two-thirds of the population were farmers. More than half the population of the Basin of Mexico and adjacent areas of Hidalgo and Tlaxcala-the core of the Teotihuacan polity-resided at the city during its major period of
538
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
[90, 1988
iD"~t~ Ci 1...~i-~ iJ riII, i rl Ia~-;r

i ?'~-CT; j r- ??
i
..
ii ~lt
'' I: I: -.I ""'
r ~;
--1 L.. ..J iL_--I r---; i
1. j OD
Ir ,-----~
~. 1. -1 r-ii ~i ::
10
r- 7r:::r ,~ ;I i --- --~J~--?i--?~_L____1r L._._i 1~
i:i1:3
a If
~-Li
U
iI -?
I___, 1 C I 11 Ij
r
T~icl
ii
?!~Z! i--l
in jj ij !I iI :`ii.. i.;i. --jcid
:---:
I :: Lii Tlli. iiK
Ijj ii
1 -1 ,?,, : :1---1 S1 fb fr
~157
I: -"r?i7:
L.~.I ii.~.JC~..~; is,
r----~i.-....~-~
;_ i---jij
ij
~s~i~ I
::
i_.
14r-~~1~1i;
:: ~_,il Ij 803 olT~ ii 7 "7
ooc ooo
~liiIi.._,l
rzr; j: CZ;tl ~j
~rrn,
i
D rtj I i! iij
tl
:i
.i O 1 C]J ]i~"r j
:: j
II
t'
~J "~
CLI n
i ii~f~f~ i-11 I,, .. _i -, 'i i i
i,; ii
i ~....r:
L.~"
?rO I r i i
3i-1i
i ir'-zrt;;=-JL~~;==l;: iI ii r_:....~ Ii '-----: /i---j r? loo CLJ~ L
t
i' 1 T"fl 1 -- :---'iii i
c o r-~1~7~
r ,? Ir
ICi
io
er
~zl
I,
3
D
?f ,
"t 4
ur~ smor ~-fL--7 i L,,,I '1 i,,, ~t~D r ,~aC r
1I~~=~?
~~iip
?---,jiPDgOG: ~ ;---?
"c--`
7
i?t' O
t3 i..C, IID
i ~fC-?-~i f5~--i~~i
r-1
I": i _-i i ii i II i i L~tJ~ I'i 'i: ,,1 ti I-(i --~ 103 ill Od'-l I' i
1 i~
rp~3i E"5~,i r r 7 1? "
1 ^cl;
rij I" ~Oi~Zi j It$?~-j ~i~~

c.i~i~7
Llr~ t~ :ii i--( ?o i ~-?; L-J ir? ~T-~Z? i
P""~,i-' r
tj a
jj
;~ r; i?
_. i. L-----?Ll(i~. 4~;1-=ii j~LI i j=---fi;i!
? ij
"8 r~
cl-~7ii~i1 i ii
i'oi;
I, ._i; ?; i -J!
T"r;
9!
i~ 1 I i!
i?
L!
Irlj
tr-if-----;rr--1:---'--i __t t r L-.jL===_ 'I~
n fl u ,r ,t i
: 1 r)I i1( -7 II II jj rt I' It II~Y"/i~
IZj
O
i
ii
r /]
i
j
i f--L.,
i
r-
~i--di
?ii j/ ="iEir?r7, ~?r~r
I
II 1
i
I)
ii
i --
i:
tTO
1 MECM)-8----'
- I troa
~~t
o
jTII ?"~~ Zi
i: 1; --=IZPC
11 ~o0 tY1
i~-t~
Figure 5 North-central zone of Teotihuacan, showing civic-ceremonial pounds. [Courtesy of Rene Millon.]
core and residential com-
539
growth. In contrast, no more than 20% and perhaps as little as 10% of the Mexica population of the same region later lived in Tenochtitlan. This massing of food producers in the city certainly had enormous repercussions on the urban economy. An anonymous reviewer of this article suggested that since we do not discuss other urban centers administered by Teotihuacan it might be regarded as a hypertrophied regal-ritual center. As we pointed out, administrative centers are the centers of states; sometimes such states may contain multiple urban nuclei, but these need not be present. The history of Teotihuacan illustrates both these patterns (Sanders, Parsons, and Santley 1979:105-129). Between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100 a phase of explosive urban growth largely depopulated the Basin of Mexico, leaving few outlying communities of any size to administer. This was at least partially a coercive process, testifying to Teotihuacan's manipulative and administrative power. Later, in the city's mature stage from A.D. 300750, Teotihuacan dominated a reconstituted settlement hierarchy in the Basin of Mexico and probably outside the Basin to the east as well. In addition to Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, a number of other Mesoamerican centers may be classified as administrative centers, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. These include Monte Alban during phase 3B, Tula in Central Mexico, and possibly Cholula in the late phases of its history.
TheMercantile City
While we do not believe that the mercantile city was ever very important or well developed in Mesoamerica, at least as conceived by Fox, we realize that many of our colleagues will disagree, and so the subject deserves discussion. We begin by emphasizing a simple but all-important point: the presence of "commercial" activity, even on a large scale, is not necessarily indicative of the presence of such a city type. Both of the major highland cities discussed above had complex economic systems that included the production and exchange, whether internal or external, of various goods and services. Even without ethnohistoric documentation (for Tenochtitlan) such commercial activities would be detectable and even obtrusive in archeological terms. But in both cases, as we have seen, the cities were dependent upon the agrarian potential of their peasant populations and were primarily consuming rather than producing places. Both were characterized during their evolution by predominant political/administrative/ritual functions, and these remained the most important determinants of urban growth and complexity throughout their respective sequences. We suspect that Copin may well have been involved in some commercial agriculture, such as the production of tobacco or cacao, especially during its final Classic phase, although we have no direct evidence for this. Copan certainly had far-flung trade relations that guaranteed access to foreign goods such as obsidian. But even when the results of such trade are archeologically recoverable and quantifiable, as in the case of obsidian, the importance in socioeconomic and sociopolitical terms was minimal (Mallory 1984). In Fox's model two dominant characteristics of mercantile cities are that they (1) thrive outside the effective political orbits of strong, centralized states, or in periods when state power is weak; and (2) are predominantly dependent for support, and the local elites for their power, on commercial production, trade, transhipment, or other commercial enterprises rather than extraction of goods and services from a rural peasantry. Of these two the second is, in our opinion, by far the more structurally important feature. The question essentially is, to what degree do we use a definition derived (as Fox's primarily is) from a particular historical case, that of western Europe during the medieval and Renaissance periods? A broader definition might encapsulate any center in which trade and craft production provided a greater amount of wealth and political power than taxation or rents collected from a rural peasantry. In this broader model the matter of political autonomy, and even the evolution of a differentiated merchant class, become irrelevant. The important feature would be the source of income of the ruling class, regardless of whether the status positions were achieved or ascribed. The major archeolog-
540
[90, 1988
ical problem in identifying such cities would be methodological: how can one quantify the economic sources of political power? A number of Mesoamerican centers superficially seem to conform to the mercantile pattern. Most conspicuous among these is a set of centers in southern Mesoamerica. Naco, in the Sula Valley of Honduras, is purported to have had a settlement of foreign merchants in the 16th century. On the eastern Yucatan coast Tulum and Cozumel may have been links in seaborne trade around the peninsula, and Xicalango was apparently an important terminus for the same system. Unfortunately we know virtually nothing about the functions of any of these centers, and Xicalango remains unlocated. Only Cozumel has been investigated with an eye to its commercial functions (Sabloff and Rathje 1975); both it and Tulum may have been bulking and transhipment centers for trade around the Yucatan Peninsula. Tulum, at least, probably derived little support from its rural hinterland, judging from its fortifications, and seems to have had only a very small resident population. The dependence of the Cozumel elite on rural peasantry remains unclear. Several of the ethnohistorically known Postclassic Maya states in northern Yucatan appear to have been heavily involved in the salt trade (Roys 1943; Andrews 1980). Certainly such commercial activity failed to produce centers of conspicuously large size or complexity, and we cannot assess the degree to which local northern Maya elites depended upon such trade for their wealth and political power, as opposed to the contributions of common food producers. A similar situation exists for the Soconusco, famous for its cacao production. Quite possibly the incorporation of this region into the Mexica empire in the Late Postclassic stimulated the demand for cacao to such an extent that some populations specialized in commercial cropping of the plant to a large degree, and some centers are developed to facilitate its accumulation and transhipment. During the Classic period some major sites apart from Teotihuacan were certainly involved in production and trade. Kaminaljuyu has often been singled out as a commercial site involved heavily in the production and foreign exchange of obsidian, and certainly had Central Mexican residents who had some specialized mercantile functions. But Kaminaljuyu never attained great size and complexity even during the height of the Classic period (see Murdy 1984), and our own work there convinces us that the primary determinants of its growth were local, based largely upon the traditional Mesoamerican pattern of the domination of an agrarian farming population by local lords. In her characterization of Fox's model, Marcus makes a potentially confusing comment: "he [Fox] further expects that when the state is strong and the economy is autonomous, the mercantile roles are primary" (1983:210), and goes on to cite Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, and Tula as examples. It is unclear from the wording of her comment whether she would consider such cities as examples of Fox's mercantile type, and it is here that the confusion arises. As we have seen, Fox associates the mercantile city (as he defines it) not with situations in which the state is strong, but rather in which it is weak. Despite the undoubted mercantile activity present at Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, or Tula, according to Fox's models all of these are primarily administrative centers. Because they were so powerful and so many elite/bureaucratic personnel were congregated in them, unusual levels of mercantile/commercial activity appeared as well, even involving considerable foreign exchange. But they all remained primarily political centers that were basically centers of consumption rather than specialized production, and all were dependent upon food from the surrounding countryside obtained as tax or tribute from a subordinate peasantry. To sum up, those Mesoamerican cities with well-known commercial and mercantile functions such as Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan conform much better to Fox's administrative model than to his mercantile one. Though we cannot rule out the possibility that other centers may conform more closely to his mercantile type, those that we do have some information about seem small and poorly developed by contrast with regal-ritual or administrative urban centers in Mesoamerica.
MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN THE
541
Energy and the Development of Mesoamerican Urbanism

A major theoretical problem is the explanation of the special nature of urban development in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The basic factor, we feel, lies in the energetics of food and craft production and particularly transport. As we have indicated above, Mesoamerica is clearly the most deprived of all the ancient complex sociocultural traditions in terms of its technological efficiency. All primary tools were made of wood or stone, thus severely limiting productivity of both basic agricultural staples and all luxury items as well. Even more important, all transport of goods of any kind, as well as all production, was basically powered by human energy. At the base of the problem is the production and transportation of food. With hand tools and human labor, nuclear families with only one or two adult males could put into production only about one or two hectares of land. With maize as a staple, the vast majority of cultivators had a highly limited capacity for producing surpluses, from little or none to a maximum of 50%, taking into account various regimes of intensive cultivation, as well as great variability of soil productivity. This calculation does not take into account ranges in such yields and surpluses due to unpredictable and variable climatic conditions or other sources of risk. Systems that are energy-limited in this fashion are certainly capable of supporting a small class of regal-ritual specialists and their immediate support personnel, including relatives, servants, administrators, and elite craftspeople, and these may reside in centers of some size. The principal limitation to the expansion of such urban centers is not so much productivity but transport.Judging from data from the post-conquest 16th century (Sanders and Santley 1983:246-249), the average long-distance human porter in Mesoamerica carried about 23 kg (or just over 50 lbs.) on his back. For short distances this load might be increased to 40 kg (88 lbs.), and this is about the load that modern traders carry to go to local periodic markets. In such cases the orbit from which staple foods could be moved to provision a given community was very limited-generally a distance of 1015 km. Other products, such as those of specialized craftspeople, were produced at a very low level of technological efficiency. In order for craft specialization to evolve to the level of full-time urban specialization, a specialized producer must receive a high enough return on labor expended to feed his or her family and to provide for general household maintenance (see Table 3). This means he or she must be able to service a considerable number of consumers. Using figures provided by Sanders and Santley (1983:249-256), we calculate that a single full-time (250 days per year) obsidian knapper could service 2,372 families, or on a part-time basis (100 days per year) 952 families. Such a craftsperson
Table 3 of craft production in Mesoamerica.a Energetics

Annual person-days necessary to provision household Ratio of numbers of consumer families to craftsmen Full-time: 250 Part-time: 100 days work per year days work per year 65.8:1 26.3:1 21.7:1 8.7:1 5.3:1 2.1:1 71.4:1 28.6:1 952.4:1 2,372.0:1 125.0:1 50.0:1
Pottery Basketry Weaving Manos/metates Obsidian blades Small wooden tools
3.8 11.5 47.0 3.5 0.1 2.0
aThese data were assembled from various ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources during a seminar on craft specialization directed by William Sanders.
542
[90, 1988
could function effectively as a specialist. By contrast a potter working full-time could supply about 66 families, and about 26 families working part-time. Clearly this specialization is less feasible. Although we have not quantified it, our impression is that a craftsperson who practiced weaving, a very time-consuming activity, could supply so few families that effective specialization would be impossible. The implication is that only clients with unusual access to basic resources such as maize-in Mesoamerica, the ruling class-could purchase or make other kinds of exchanges to obtain many kinds of products. In order for craft specialists to be fully urban and fully specialized (i.e., produce no food) the ratio of producers to consumers must be reduced by technological developments to the degree that even people in the lower and middle ranges of the social hierarchy can purchase the goods, but Mesoamerican technology was remarkably inflexible in producing such innovations. Theoretically, even mundane items could be sold to elite consumers over a wide geographical area, but the problem here is the excessive cost of transport, which makes it possible for producers in one area to compete with distant competitors, closer to elite consumers, who do not have to incur such costs. It is for precisely this reason that long-distance trade in Mesoamerica generally involved costly high-status items which were restricted in their natural distributions, and which had relatively low consumption rates and high exchange values. This is also why most specialized production was probably carried out on a part-time (and often rural) basis rather than a full-time, urban one. A wealthy nobleman, who enjoyed access to the surplus productivity of a large number of people (either an expanded kin group as was probably the case at Copan or tenants or serfs in the Aztec system), could, on the basis of his access to this surplus, finance full-time goldsmiths, stoneworkers, or weavers, but the peasant could not afford these goods. Part-time specialization was made possible because the craftsperson's household also produced much of its own food, and hence the ratio of producers to consumers could be quite high, but generally only if the settlement system remained very rural. Furthermore, most of the examples of this type of specialization in highland Mesoamerica today consist, in essence, of exchanges of technology for technology or for foods with a high market value and low consumption rates. That is, the potter produces a surplus of pots, sells them (today for cash, in pre-Hispanic times directly for other products), purchases metates from specialized metate workers who produce surpluses of this item, and no profit is involved. The energetic costs of production of the various goods and their consumption rates are roughly equivalent. The purpose of this trade is to achieve access to processed raw materials, usually highly localized in a highly differentiated geographic environment. Many of the products that might have entered into commercial networks as specialized products were not themselves necessarily products of specialization. For example, we know that in Late Postclassic times in northern Yucatan rulers and elites were conspicuously involved in the trade of goods such as cloth, honey, and cacao. At least the first two of these commodities could have been routinely derived as tax contributions from the producer households dominated by the elite trader, that is, as a normal part of the political economy which included contributions of maize and labor. Both cloth and honey were items produced by households within the limits of their domestic capabilities as part of their domestic economies. The tax contribution simply raised the level of production to some degree, but this is not even, properly speaking, part-time specialization, and would probably be invisible archeologically. Yet the effect, when large numbers of households were so taxed, was that elites could effectively deal in these commodities in a commercial sense. Basically, then, most Mesoamerican cities fall into the regal-ritual category and had minor economic functions apart from administering the surpluses produced by the attached rural farmers. It is on the regal-ritual level that we find the least differentiation between urban and rural communities. The sizes of regal-ritual cities were governed primarily by the sizes of the states that they served and the productive potential of the hin-
543
terlands they dominated, and most polities in the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican tradition were small in size. Immediately prior to the Spanish Conquest, and before they were incorporated into the Aztec empire, for example, most Central Mexican states had populations ranging from 5,000-30,000 people (Sanders 1976). Mixtec and Zapotec kingdoms were of comparable size (Spores 1967). In northern Yucatan the remnants of the Lowland Maya were organized in some provinces into batabships or small chiefdoms of only 2,000-3,000 people. The largest polity in Yucatan at this time was that of Mani, which had a population of about 60,000 people in the 16th century (Sanders 1962:94). We feel that this number is just about the upper long-term limit for Classic Maya states. Our own calculations for Copan, based on very good settlement and excavation data, indicate a polity of only 18,000-25,000 people, and we anticipate that the forthcoming synthetic volume on Lowland Maya demography (Culbert and Rice 1989) will reinforce this picture of generally small size. Tojudge from the size and complexity of architectural complexes at many Classic Mesoamerican regal-ritual centers, most Mesoamerican polities fell into this size range. Political groupings during the Middle and Late Preclassic would be at the lower end of the range. We find ourselves in fundamental agreement with Fox that cities can be understood only in terms of the kinds of states in which they are embedded, and that the primary business of most impressive preindustrial cities was government; some exceptions would be the mercantile cities and city states of medieval and Renaissance Europe, along with others in the Near East and eastern Asia. In the few cases where large administrative centers evolved in Mesoamerica because of unusually large governments, they were centers of huge states with populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands (Teotihuacan and Tula, for example, were centers of states that we estimate had populations of perhaps 500,000; Tenochtitlan dominated 5-6 million people; and Monte Alban and Cholulu possibly had subject populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands). With the probable exception of Tenochtitlan, and possibly Tula, the communities in Central Mexico we are calling administrative centers also had large populations of food this must be confirmed by expanded producers resident in the city. In our opinion-and all of the occupational specialists at Teotihuacan were probably excavations-virtually part-time farmers, and many of the compounds we now believe were occupied by farmers probably had some as yet undetected specialty as well. What was probably present was a virtual continuum of economic statuses and roles ranging from compounds occupied by people who were almost entirely food producers to those that housed full-time craftspeople (the latter possibly limited to those involved in the long-distance obsidian trade). Most producers were somewhere in the middle of this range. The average Teotihuacan compound probably had a mixed economy in which subsistence crops, commercial crops, trade, and craft production all contributed to the livelihood of the lineage or patron/client type corporate groups that resided in them. Such an economy is found today in Yoruba cities in Nigeria (Galetti, Baldwin, and Dina 1956) (see Table 4). Yoruba producers are organized into corporate groups that live in house compounds similar in size to those at Teotihuacan. As at Teotihuacan, the residential group also has ritual-political functions. We do not suggest that the details of the Yoruba pattern apply to any Mesoamerican urban center, but rather that Mesoamerican urban dwellers might have exhibited some similar mix of general economic endeavors. What a settlement pattern such as that of the Yoruba or Teotihuacan does is to considerably enhance the level of economic urbanism, since it solves the problem of the limited capacity of production of Mesoamerican farmers and craft producers. In effect the rural part-time specialists are living near an urban market (or, more properly, the density of occupation produces an urban market situation), and like the rural producers they can spend part of the year growing their own food, and part in craft or mercantile activities. The peasant thus becomes a consumer of urban production. In the Teotihuacan case the obsidian export industry may be an exception. The obsidian industry of Mesoamerica has a number of distinctive features: low production costs
544
[90, 1988
Table 4 Occupations in 26 Yoruba townships." Occupation No occupation or housekeeping Farming only Farming with wage labor Farming with home industry Farming with trade only Farming with processing and trade Farming with profession Wage labor with farming Craft with farming Processing and trade with farming Trade with farming Professionwith farming Wage labor only Craft only Processing and trade Trade only Professiononly aAdapted from Galetti, Baldwin, and Dina 1956. due to the core/blade technique, low consumption rates, and relatively low transport costs. The raw material, moreover, occurs in a few highly localized and thus controllable places. The evidence from Tula also suggests a highly evolved obsidian industry, but again government was probably the major business. Summary In summary, the vast majority of Mesoamerican centers were classic examples of Fox's regal-ritual city and had relatively small resident populations. They were primarily political and religious centers whose leaders ruled relatively small states. The general small size of the Mesoamerican state, along with constraints on transportation, communication, and production, limited the size of the associated centers. In a few cases macrostates emerged in areas where there was unusual potential for the production of certain goods, especially elite products, and a sufficiently productive agrarian economy to support numerous specialists. These macro-states were dominated by large elite classes and required large corps of service personnel for administrative purposes. The concentration of such nonproducers, along with the other factors just mentioned, stimulated the emergence of the kind of centers Fox calls administrative centers. An additional variable that Fox does not discuss is the possibility that large numbers of food producers were in residence in some administrative cities. This development clearly relates to a particular kind of agrarian economy that has a potential for maximum intensification of land use and an unusual capacity to generate per capita surpluses and to overcome the constraints of inefficient Mesoamerican transport systems. The presence of farmers as urban consumers of craft products and other services generated an expanded market economy, but ultimately it too was limited by the agricultural potential of the immediate hinterland. Ultimately the "low-energy" constraints generally characteristic of Mesoamerican societies frustrated the emergence of large and sophisticated forms of the mercantile city. Hopefully this consideration of the Fox model will help to circumvent many of the semantic arguments in which Mesoamericanists become involved when considering the process of urbanization. By broadening the definition of city to include all significant central places, we may envision all complex societies as involved in urban development. At Males 1,561 1,055 107 52 0 100 85 3 54 0 52 19 3 36 0 14 27 Females 1,268 300 1 146 71 85 3 6 144 411 223 2 6 121 348 387 3
THE MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN
545
one level all cities are unique, and have characteristics that must be explained by variables that are unique, namely, their own environmental settings and culture histories. But on another level we must compare and generalize, and Fox reminds us that we can do so productively, so long as we bear in mind the fundamental processes that affect urban development in larger sociocultural settings.
References Cited
Adams, Robert Mc., and Hans Nissen 1972 The Uruk Countryside. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Andrews, Anthony 1980 Salt Making, Merchants and Markets. Ph.D. dissertation, University ofArizona, Tucson. Baudez, Claude, ed. 1983 Introduction a la Arqueologia de Copan, Honduras. Secretaria de Estado en el Despacho de Cultura y Turismo, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Blanton, Richard 1981 The Rise of Cities. In Handbook of Mesoamerican Indians, Supplement 1. Jeremy Sabloff, ed. Pp. 392-400. Austin: University of Texas Press. Calnek, Edward 1973 The Location of the Sixteenth Century Map Called the Maguey Plan. American Antiquity 38:190-195. Culbert, T. P., and Donald Rice, eds. 1989 Prehistoric Population History in the Maya Lowlands. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. (In press.) Fash, William 1983 Deducing Social Organization from Classic Maya Settlement Patterns. In Civilization in the Ancient Americas. Richard Leventhal and Alan Kolata, eds. Pp. 261-288. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Fox, Richard 1971 Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule: State-Hinterland Relations in Preindustrial India. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1977 Urban Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fried, Morton 1967 The Evolution of Political Society. New York: Random House. Galetti, R., D. S. Baldwin, and I. O. Dina 1956 Nigerian Cocoa Farmers. London: Oxford University Press. Geertz, Clifford 1980 Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hohmann, Hasso, and Annegrete Vogrin 1983 Die Architekture von Copan. Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt. Mallory,John K. 1984 Late Classic Maya Economic Specialization: Evidence from the Copn Obsidian Assemblage. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University. Marcus, Joyce 1983 On the Nature of the Mesoamerican City. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns. Evon Vogt and Richard Leventhal, eds. Pp. 195-242. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Murdy, Carson 1984 Prehistoric Man-Land Relationships through Time in the Valley of Guatemala. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University. Rappaport, Roy 1971 The Sacred in Human Evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2:23-44. Reischauer, Edwin O., and John K. Fairbank 1960 East Asia: The Great Tradition. Boston: Houghton Miffin. Roys, Ralph 1943 The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan. Washington: Carnegie Institution Publication 548.
546
[90, 1988
Sabloff, Jeremy, and William Rathje, eds. 1975 A Study of Changing Precolombian Commercial Systems. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology Monograph 3. Sahagun, Fray Bernardino de 1961 General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 10. Arthur Anderson and Charles Dibble, transls. Santa Fe: School of American Research and the University of Utah. Sanders, William T. 1962 Cultural Ecology of the Lowland Maya. Estudios de Cultura Maya 2:79-120. 1976 The Population of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region, the Basin of Mexico, and the Teotihuacan Valley in the Sixteenth Century. In The Native Population of the Americas in 1492. William Denevan, ed. Pp. 85-150. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Sanders, William T., Jeffrey Parsons, and Robert Santley 1979 The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization. New York: Academic Press. Sanders, William T., and Robert Santley 1983 A Tale of Three Cities. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns. Evon Vogt and Richard Leventhal, eds. Pp. 243-291. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Service, Elman 1962 Primitive Social Organization. New York: Random House. Sjoberg, Gideon 1960 The Preindustrial City, Past and Present. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Spores, Ronald 1967 The Mixtec Kings and Their People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Trik, Aubry 1939 Temple XXII at Copin. Contributions to American Archaeology and History 5:27. Washington: Carnegie Institution. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World System. New York: Academic Press. Weber, Max 1958 The City. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Webster, David 1976 On Theocracies. American Anthropologist 78(4):812-828.
1985 Recent Settlement in the Copin Valley, Honduras. Journal of New World Archaeology 5:39-51. Webster, David, and AnnCorinne Freter 1989 The Demography of Late Classic Copin. In Prehistoric Population History in the Maya Lowlands. Patrick Culbert and Donald Rice, eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. (In press.) Wheatley, Paul 1971 The Pivot of the Four Quarters. Chicago: Aldine Press. 1972 The Concept of Urbanism. In Man, Settlement and Urbanism. Peter Ucko, Ruth Tringham, and George Dimbleby, eds. London: Duckworth and Company. Willey, Gordon, and Richard Leventhal 1979 PrehistoricSettlement at Coptin. In Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Norman Hammond and Gordon Willey, eds. Pp. 75-102. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wirth, Louis 1938 Urbanism as a Way of Life. American Journal of Sociology 44:3-24.

The Me So American Urban Tradition

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Me So American Urban Tradition

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition Author(s): William T.

WILLIAMT. SANDERS DAVID WEBSTER PennsylvaniaState University

The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CITY AS A COMMUNITY

TYPE has long intrigued social sci-

Definitions of the City

Sanders and Webster]

Sanders Webster] and

THE URBAN MESOAMERICANTRADITION

Sanders and Webster]

THE MESOAMERICAN URBANTRADITION

Sanders and Webster]

The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition

TheRegal-Ritual Cityin Mesoamerica

Sanders and Webster]

.5. .$ ..5r~ t..*.

Sanders and Webster]

THE MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN

Type 2 Type 1 & single mound

Type 1 Single mound

Sanders and Webster]

Administrative Cities Mesoamerican

LAKE Puerspe TENOCTITLA

* LAK ".. XOCHIMILCOIUOIO

CAUSWAY -RIVEROR STRAM

CIVCW CEEMONIL PRCINunCTIOETR

Sanders and Webster]

iD"~t~ Ci 1...~i-~ iJ riII, i rl Ia~-;r

--1 L.. ..J iL_--I r---; i

r- 7r:::r ,~ ;I i --- --~J~--?i--?~_L____1r L._._i 1~

I :: Lii Tlli. iiK

:: ~_,il Ij 803 olT~ ii 7 "7

i ii~f~f~ i-11 I,, .. _i -, 'i i i

i ir'-zrt;;=-JL~~;==l;: iI ii r_:....~ Ii '-----: /i---j r? loo CLJ~ L

rij I" ~Oi~Zi j It$?~-j ~i~~

_. i. L-----?Ll(i~. 4~;1-=ii j~LI i j=---fi;i!

core and residential com-

Sanders and Webster]

Sanders and Webster]

MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN THE

Energy and the Development of Mesoamerican Urbanism

Table 3 of craft production in Mesoamerica.a Energetics

Pottery Basketry Weaving Manos/metates Obsidian blades Small wooden tools

3.8 11.5 47.0 3.5 0.1 2.0

Sanders and Webster]

Sanders and Webster]

THE MESOAMERICAN TRADITION URBAN

You might also like