Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: The Political Economy of Late Postclassic Tututepec, a Mixtec Imperial Capital on the Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico

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Under the supervision of Arthur A. Joyce, Marc Levine will carry out archaeological excavations at Tututepec, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Ethnohistoric sources indicate that on the eve of Spanish Conquest, during the Late Postclassic Period (AD 1100-1522), Tututepec was the capital of Mixtec empire whose territory spanned most of coastal Oaxaca. Despite Tututepec's relative prominence, little archaeological research has been carried out at this center, limiting our understanding of socio-political and economic structures at Tututepec and its role in the Late Postclassic Mesoamerican world. The Tututepec Archaeological Project (TAP) will carry out the first excavations focusing on the Late Postclassic at Tututepec.The overarching goal of the TAP will be to examine the political economy of Late Postclassic Tututepec. The excavations will concentrate on one elite and one commoner residential area to test two models of political economy that present contrasting relationships between economic and political sectors of society. While the Political Model argues that the control of prestige goods was an important source of elite power, the Commercial Model denies that elites monopolized luxury goods and instead argues that elite power was based on the control of land and labor. The Political and Commercial Models will be tested at Tututepec through a comparative analysis of archaeological patterns associated with production, distribution and consumption activities in the elite and commoner households. Through stylistic and sourcing analyses of artifacts recovered in the excavations, the TAP will be able to evaluate differences in production and consumption patterns in the elite and commoner households.Current understandings of the political economy of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica are dominated by interpretations of ethnohistoric and archaeological data from the Central Mexican Aztec area. The TAP will provide empirical data on the political economy of an important imperial center and thus broaden our understanding of the variability in the association of political and economic institutions in the Late Postclassic Period. Information from the TAP will provide comparative data to scholars studying political economy in precapitalist states within Mesoamerica and beyond. Although the TAP excavations are limited to two household areas, this study will provide a baseline of data to guide future studies that will refine our understanding of the political economy of Tututepec. In addition, the TAP will integrate research and education by training Mexican students in archaeological field methods and by sharing the results of the TAP with the citizens of Tututepec through public presentations and guided tours of the excavations. Finally, the TAP will make a significant contribution by partnering with the people of San Pedro Tututepec to explore aspects of their history in a new way, through the material remains that their ancestors left behind.