Alternative pathways to power in late Postclassic Highland Mesoamerica

作者：Fargher Lane F^*; Heredia Espinoza Verenice Y; Blanton Richard E

来源：Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2011, 30(3): 306-326.

DOI：10.1016/j.jaa.2011.06.001

• Political economy
• Collective action
• States
• Commoners
• Revenue
• Bureaucratization
• Power
• Architecture
• Highland Mesoamerica

In recent years, scholars have become dissatisfied with neoevolutionists' view of social evolution as a series of step-like transformations leading to political centralization and have refocused attention away from traditional theory and toward issues of agency, power sharing, and alternative pathways to complexity. To build on this emerging theoretical orientation, we propose that collective action theory provides a useful path to explaining social change. To evaluate this idea, we make use of ethnohistoric and archaeological sources on the Postclassic (AD 1250-1521) of Highland Mesoamerica (Central Highlands of Mexico and the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca), to investigate the causes and consequences of key aspects of sociopolitical change. Of the study states, Tlaxcallan, Cholula, Texcoco, and other central Highlands polities relied extensively on internal revenues and, accordingly, implemented power sharing, control of political officials, and infrastructural power. Conversely, states in eastern Puebla and the Mixteca Alta focused on external revenues and, thus, exhibited greater degrees of despotic governance. These results suggest that collective action provides a useful starting point for understanding state-building in Highland Mesoamerica and merits further testing with other Mesoamerican cases as well as societies in other world areas.

• 出版日期2011-9