Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Economic Organization of a Postclassic Center and its Hinterlands in Veracruz, Mexico

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Under the supervision of Dr. Barbara L. Stark, Alanna Ossa will analyze archaeological residential inventories from the center of Sauce (Veracruz, Mexico) and its hinterlands to address the possible appearance of markets and the structure of exchange during the Middle Postclassic period (AD 1200-1350). Archaeologists have identified and studied market exchange for major highland states in the Valley of Oaxaca (Monte Alban) and the Basin of Mexico (Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan). For Lowland Veracruz, however, the nature of economic organization remains unknown. Increases in craft productivity and less powerful states are recognized as contributing factors in commercial economic development in Postclassic Mesoamerica. A study focused on a small-scale Gulf economy will reveal how extensive Postclassic period commercialization was in regions distant from the markets known for the larger states. Additionally, the small center of Sauce is a promising case study because prior regional survey identified changes in local commodity distribution and craft production suggestive of commercial exchange. This project develops a method to deal with the mix of social, political, and commercial factors that shape economic organization. Recent innovations in identifying exchange mechanisms posit that with marketing, all residential units should have access to products, with the amounts varying gradually based on wealth. Where social network exchange is prominent such as elite gift-giving or kin networks, products will be restricted in access, resulting in higher frequencies for a subset of residences, and absence or low frequencies in others. By first identifying exchange mechanisms for different products via residential consumption, this study uses the spatial fall-off of products from the center to identify how the economy articulated with the settlement system. This project will use 65 residential units from Sauce and its hinterlands to define the roles of marketing and social network exchange. All household items including cooking utensils, serving dishes, chipped stone tools, etc., will be analyzed for each residential mound. Market availability of luxury products is considered a key characteristic of commercialization within Postclassic Mesoamerica. Therefore, labor production cost and value estimates will be used to compare how basic necessities, such as cooking and storage vessels, versus more expensive goods circulated in south-central Veracruz. Results of this research will help answer how Gulf economic changes match and/or depart from broader socioeconomic trends in Mesoamerica. In its broader impacts, this research develops and tests methods linking market, networks, and fall-off patterning of products that can be used to evaluate exchange mechanisms and community-scale economic organization from archaeological data. These methods will prove useful in building substantive archaeological models of economic organization that can be applied to other economies in transition. This research also continues decades of collaborative efforts between U.S. and Mexican scholars in the survey projects. Mexican students will be incorporated in the field team, and local community members will participate in the surface collection and analysis of an important segment of their regional history. Data from this project will be shared, providing a base for expanding Gulf Postclassic research. The results, dataset, and methods used for this project will be disseminated through publications, presentations at scholarly conferences, and online through internet sites.