LISS.398A TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT and HUMAN ADAPTATION:
PART II PRE-EUROPEAN MESOAMERICA

VALLEY OF OAXACA: MONTE ALBAN I; SOCIAL INTEGRATION

Increasing craft speculation in ceramics at the hamlet level, the emergence ceramic workshopsoutside the household, and the appearance of ceramic types at sites remote from their manufacture provide, relatively direct, evidence of interaction.

Clearly, food and other commodities must have moved from the surrounding area to Monte Albán. The extent to which food moved among other social units is less clear. Given the spatial inhomogeneity of rainfall it is not unlikely that food was transported, from time to time, to level out scarcity caused by local crop failure. But, evidence for this is not apparent.

It has been suggested that during Monte Albán Early I a market type distribution mechanism emerged to significantly displace the redistributive mechanism operating during the Rosario phase. Direct evidence for either of these mechanisms is absent. However, Blanton, et. al. ( '93:28-32) offer plausible indirect evidence for the presence of markets in Early I. Essentially their argument that certain features of ceramic production observed in the archaeological record are consistent with distribution of ceramics by a market mechanism. These features are:

Specialized Producers

Either households or workshops will do, though both were apparently present.

Non-random Location of Specialized Producers

Raw materials for ceramics are uniformly distributed spatially. Non-random distribution ceramic production is consistent with producers location near potential consumers to minimize transport costs, which is in turn, consistent with market distribution.

Variety of Costliness in Items of One Type/Function

More costly items will always be less numerous than less costly items at any site. But the relative frequency of more costly items will vary with the position of the site in the settlement hierarchy. The intuitive idea is that there are relatively more rich people with the desire for and means to purchase fancy pots as one moves up the settlement hierarchy.

Assuming there was a market system during this time, one might naturally suppose that a central market place would have been located at Monte Albán However, there is no evidence that any part of this site served as a marketplace during this period -- or any other period. Indeed, during Monte Albán IIIb when we know most about the spatial organization of the site the absence of any location that could plausibly serve as a market is striking.