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Alternative Pathways to Complexity
A Collection of Essays on Architecture, Economics, Power, and Cross-Cultural Analysis in Honor of Richard E. Blanton
By Lane F. Fargher, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2016 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-533-8
CHAPTER 1
It Was the Economy, Stupid
Stephen A. Kowalewski
Were the major cycles of growth and decline in Mesoamerican civilization (and other urban societies) caused by uncommon (in alphabetical order) aliens, droughts, eruptions, exhaustions, invaders, or raptures? This chapter reviews a theory of the ancient Mesoamerican economy, tests some of its expectations, and proposes that common economic forces would be a reasonable and sufficient cause for episodes of growth and decline. Despite problems of archaeological specification, there is sufficient reason to develop this line of research, in which preindustrial urban societies are treated as subject not to exotic forces but to things familiar to our own experience. Our field is weak in general theory concerning the long-term dynamics of urban societies. Explanations tend to be ad hoc, particularistic, long-since discredited, or reliant on exogenous causes; social science needs to identify regularities and processes in its domain, society itself — and central to social life is economics. Hence the title of this chapter: in 1992 the political advisor James Carville kept admonishing the Bill Clinton campaign to stick to the main issue, insisting it's "the economy, stupid" (Kelly 1992).
In a recent essay (Kowalewski 2012), I explored in conceptual or theoretical terms how the ancient Mesoamerican economy worked. Here I develop observable implications of the theory, using data from five decades of regional archaeological survey in highland Oaxaca.
THEORETICAL BASE
What follows is a general model of the ancient Mesoamerican economy. As a model it is not an empirical description. To distinguish the two, I use present tense for the model and past tense for the past observable world. The theoretical model is general, not designed for one place or time in Mesoamerican history. It is formal in the sense of using general concepts or principles not tied to specific cultural contexts. And in its economic anthropology style it is formalist rather than substantivist, as explained by Cook (1966).
Formal models such as what follows are not made from sensory data, but from principles; they are not data but they tell you what data are. The purpose of models is to run them up against real situations so one can see whether something was acting as if it were doing so according to one model's principles or those of another. The model is an ideal type designed for comparison — data against model, and by means of data, model against model (e.g., Apostel 1961; Braudel 1970; Clarke 1972; Weber 1947).
As I present parts of the theory here, I include a few key references to the relevant Mesoamerican archaeology and history. In themselves these sources do not "prove" the principle or premise, but only show that applying the premise here is reasonable and that it can have connection to Mesoamerica.
The following paragraphs describe this theoretical model of the ancient Mesoamerican economy. This economy works by market principles of supply and demand. Many scholars would deny that it is a market economy. Perhaps calling it a commercial economy (commerce means goods exchange) would be more agreeable. The real task is to explain how the economy functions and how economy and society shape each other.
I begin with the actors, which are households, mostly but not entirely smallholders. Households do not produce all the goods and services they consume. They desire to consume and they produce for exchange. Goods and services (including labor) circulate. The household is the firm, the marketer, and the consumer all in one. These premises are realistic given the abundant archaeological studies showing that in Mesoamerica the household or house was the unit of production and consumption (e.g., Hendon 1996; Hirth 2009, 2013; Robin 2003a; Santley and Hirth 1993). (That the household is the firm and the locus of specialization, and that there are so many household-firms, suggests that the ancient economy is a better case of the economist's "perfect competition" than is oligopoly capitalism.)
Products in ancient Mesoamerica are elaborated, specialized, differentiated, subject to fashion, and consumed in great quantities. Notice that the properties just listed are not exclusive to industrial manufacturing. This blurs the distinction in Western economics between agricultural and industrial sectors and in anthropology between industrial and preindustrial economies. Again, these premises about products are realistic (see Berdan, chapter 6, this volume), and for examples from the large literature on Mesoamerican technologies, Sahagún (1950–1982) for sixteenth-century historical descriptions, Feinman and Nicholas (2000) on shell, Healan (2011) on obsidian, and Tarkanian and Hosler (2011)on rubber.
Households produce for the market and consume from the market. Urban concentration increases exchange and market dependence. Given Mesoamerica's large urban and rural populations, the demand for goods and services requires widespread and daily participation in exchange. There is a high volume of transactions. In fact, urbanization rates in Mesoamerica were comparable in many respects to those in preindustrial Mesopotamia, China, and Europe (Kowalewski 1990). On theoretical grounds, Kohler et al. (2000) argued for anonymous market exchange rather than personal reciprocal exchange for late prehistoric pueblos in New Mexico, where populations and population density were much lower than in Mesoamerica.
Exchange takes place by means of goods markets (in and outside of marketplaces) in which prices are determined by supply and demand (a key characteristic of market economy, e.g., Pryor 1977). Mesoamerica's systems of periodic markets are well known. Comparative research by Richard Blanton (1985) showed that the density of market places was equal to or higher than that in preindustrial Europe and China. Recent archaeological studies of markets and marketing in Mesoamerica include for example LeCount (chapter 7, this volume) and Stark and Garraty (2010). Some prices may be set by tradition or local law but these too must vary in response to supply and demand in the longer run. Exchange also takes place through nonmarket mechanisms. The relative importance and relationship between market and nonmarket mechanisms is an important factor in the dynamics of the economy, as discussed below.
Given the high volumes of exchange, it is improbable that transactions take place without credit and culturally defined media of exchange. This is not barter. (Graeber 2011:21–41 argues that the barter economy is a myth.) There are multiple commodity monies, used as means of exchange, standards of value, stored value, and means of credit or account. For Mesoamerican monies, Millon (1955) compiled historic descriptions of cacao as money (see also Smith 2012).
The degree to which Mesoamerica diverged from the Old World in the matter of money has not been seriously investigated. Mesoamerica did not have state-minted coins nor carefully measured bullion. Nor is there evidence of the strong silver-staple grain nexus seen in the Near East (e.g., Davies 2002; Powell 1996;Wray 2004). Whether Mesoamerican commodity monies were a more popular, less statist method of exchange is an interesting speculative problem best left aside for now.
The preponderance of transactions takes place outside the tax or tribute system, that is, among the masses of household producer-marketer-consumer firms. The economy is largely structured by the principles governing the household consumption-exchange-production circuit, not tribute. On tribute in Mesoamerica, see for example Berdan and Anawalt (1992) for the Aztec Matrícula de Tributos/Codex Mendoza and Landa (1941) for Yucatán. The impressive total volume of the Aztec tribute needs to be tempered with per capita measurements (e.g., Kowalewski et al. 2010). The weight of the tribute burden would have varied with state power, core versus periphery position, local resources, and other factors.
The degree of regional specialization and division of labor is a function of transaction costs. This premise follows models developed by Krugman and colleagues (Fujita et al. 1999; Krugman 1980). Although these models explicitly privilege industry over agriculture, I see no reason to assume that the process only works with industry, since Mesoamerican agriculture and forestry could themselves be quite differentiated and dynamic.
The production, consumption, and exchange activities of firms — households, that is — drives the economy. In turn the aggregate household behavior sets the conditions that actors have to deal with in their affairs. The economy works by the invisible hand, or the aggregate effect of households consuming, exchanging, and producing. Lords and the wealthy, operating as large houses, manipulate and take advantage of exchange and accumulated labor, but this is not a state or command economy.
Consumption, production, savings, and investment are variable, not constant. Likewise, exchange through market versus nonmarket institutions is variable, not constant. A key factor influencing household behavior in these things is access to efficient markets. If access is poor or markets cannot deliver goods at acceptable prices, households can withdraw from participation; if access and efficiency are better, that encourages participation. High levels of demand encourage more market participation, all other things being equal, and withdrawal from the market, if sufficiently prevalent, makes the market less efficient. Participation depends on prices, expectations, demand, trust, and confidence. Here we have the ingredients for volatility, for good times and bad, and cycles of boom and bust.
These ideas were more developed in the longer article (Kowalewski 2012). In this essay, I ground aspects of the larger theory to archaeological data from highland Oaxaca, especially several features that should be manifest at the regional scale. Testing a broad theory of economy has to be done piece by piece, some of the pieces are more amenable than others; features that are better addressed at macro, local, or household scales are beyond the scope of this chapter.
If the ancient economy operated by market principles, then certain expectations follow. The distribution of cities should conform more to commercial than political needs. Regional specializations should take hold in response to market mechanisms. Economic cycles of growth and decline should affect rates of production and consumption; that is, output and consumption should be variable, not fixed, and they should be related to market integration. The distribution of material wealth among households should be strongly influenced by market participation. Some of these expectations can be tested fairly easily but others are more difficult because of the magnitude of the data requirements.
CITY SYSTEMS
To what degree was the distribution of cities determined by commercial factors — the invisible hand? Alternatively, did the landscape reflect the vision of the kingdom — the visible hand of power? We can assess whether the invisible hand or the naked hand was the stronger, because the two processes lead to distinctive settlement patterns.
In preview, the settlement pattern difference is this: if the hand of power is stronger, exchange is oriented toward a single center in an exclusive territory. If the invisible hand is stronger, exchange is distributed among multiple nodes in a network, boundaries are permeable, and commerce draws participants close together regardless of political affiliation.
Here I develop and use a simple model to measure where regional city systems fit on a continuum between these two polar positions, the political and the commercial. In the former, rulers place their capitals at a maximum distance from one another in order to have exclusive sovereign control over as much territory and as many subjects as possible, with a buffer zone between themselves and their counterparts. Christaller thought of this as a sociopolitical, noneconomic principle, which he called separation: "The ideal ... has the nucleus as the capital (a central place of a higher rank), around it, a wreath of satellites places of lesser importance, and toward the edge of the region a thinning population density — and even uninhabited areas" (Christaller 1966:77).
Christaller's separation principle resembles closely an idealized, isolated Mesoamerican city-state, in Aztec terms, the altepetl. Mesoamerica had many cities, states tended to be small although they could be combined into larger alliances or empires, the state had a capital that was the largest city in its domain, and the city-state had a longstanding territorial nucleus. In Mesoamerica, the city did not have the legal autonomy that many cities in Europe did, and the state was not always defined as a contiguous territory, since hereditary rulers sometimes had subjects or holdings in scattered places (Hirth 2003; Smith 2008). These particularities aside, the altepetl was a political, autonomous entity, defined by itself without relation to its neighbors, and it resided in a persistent core territory. The separation principle is thus a good representation of the Mesoamerican political vision.
I needed another ideal model for the other, commercial end of the continuum. I considered Christaller's supply or marketing principle: "The system of central places has been developed, on the basis of the range of the central goods, from the point of view that all parts of the region are supplied with all conceivable central goods from the minimum possible number of functioning central places" (Christaller 1966:72). This principle entails four assumptions that were difficult for me to make: that I knew the central goods (estimated population size of centers is what we have), goods were supplied everywhere, they were supplied by a minimal number of centers (Christaller wanted efficiency), and land was an isotropic plain (highland Oaxaca is not). I needed a simpler model.
I found the basic idea for a simpler model in Christaller's results and conclusions. He had observed that the wealthier, more populous regions in southern Germany had more numerous high-order central places, which tended to cluster and be close to one another, but the poorer regions had fewer high-order places and other central places were more widely spaced. For Germany as a whole, cities also tended to cluster together in the wealthy regions (such as the Rhine-Ruhr Valleys), whereas poorer regions had fewer, more separated, but larger high-order centers (Berlin and Munich, for example) (Christaller 1966:193; Smith and Branom 1937). This contrast gave me the direction I needed.
When commercial activity dominates, cities tend to cluster, as buyers and sellers of central-place goods try to increase the number of exchange partners within their reach. Cities are contagious, they are attracted to one another. But they are not totally drawn into one megacenter, because neither economic nor political power is monopolized and because competing centers serve and draw from hinterland customers and producers. Unlike the conceptual model of the independent kingdom, cities created in the commercial world are expressly situated in relation to each other in a wider world. The result is a galaxy or cluster of roughly equal-size centers located near one another, with overlapping wedge- or pie-shaped hinterlands expanding outward. In this manner the entire developed region is served not by one monopolistic center but by competing centers that may offer varying ranges of specialized goods. The borders of political territories are permeable and population does not thin out toward borders. In essence, the commercial economy develops multiple high-order central places relatively close to one another, without regard to borders.
City distributions can be assessed against the contrasting expectations of the ideal separation (altepetl) model versus this ideal commercial model. Richard Blanton (1996) mapped the distribution of Aztec altepetl centers overlaid on a reconstructed understanding of the regional market system in the Basin of Mexico. He was able to show that the market system was already an influence on the location of centers in Early Aztec times, and that the market network filled in and became more integrated in the Late Aztec period.
In the next several pages, I evaluate the spatial distribution of central places using three slightly different approaches: at a macroregional scale using only the largest cities; a regional scale that adds middle-size central places; and regional-scale analysis of large and middle-size central places that examines the location of centers with regard to the borders of political territories. Factors such as land quality, topography, and transport differentials influence city distributions. I can control these other factors partially by comparing change over several periods of time in the same place.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Alternative Pathways to Complexity by Lane F. Fargher, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza. Copyright © 2016 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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