Balkansky 2006 Mesoamerican Archaeology Macroregional Paradigm.pdf

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Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm Author(s): Andrew K. Balkansky Source: Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 53-95 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41053225 . Accessed: 18/05/2014 15:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Archaeological Research. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 201.144.58.242 on Sun, 18 May 2014 15:59:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Transcript of Balkansky 2006 Mesoamerican Archaeology Macroregional Paradigm.pdf

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Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional ParadigmAuthor(s): Andrew K. BalkanskySource: Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 53-95Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41053225 .

Accessed: 18/05/2014 15:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of ArchaeologicalResearch.

http://www.jstor.org

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Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol 14, No. 1, March 2006 (© 2006) DOI: 10.1007/S10814-005-9001-0

Surveys and Mesoamerican Archaeology: The Emerging Macroregional Paradigm Andrew K. Balkansky1

Published online: 6 May 2006

This article is a review of regional archaeological surveys in Mexico, em- phasizing published full-coverage surveys from the last 20 years. The geo- graphic focus is non-Maya Mexico terminating at the Tropic of Cancer. The temporal focus is the 3000-year period from the earliest settled villages to the Spanish conquest (A.D. 1521), with emphasis on long-term evolutionary tra- jectories. The main argument is that explanations of regional-scale settlement patterns are proving to be incomplete now that archaeologists are confronted with site distributions on the macroregional scale. Implications of the emerg- ing macroregional paradigm are discussed for current debates in Mesoamerican archaeology. KEY WORS: survey; settlement patterns; concordant change; Mexico.

INTRODUCTION

This article is a review of regional surveys in non-Maya Mexico, building on prior overviews of Mesoamerican survey (Ammerman, 1981; Kowalewski, 1990; Nichols, 1996; Parsons, 1972) but arguing that region-centered views of ancient Mesoamerican civilization are confounded by a new empirical reality: the extreme variation among interacting regions that so far defies explanation. Mesoamerican archaeologists are now confronted with settlement pattern maps having continuous site distributions across multiple regions, but have barely begun to consider the implications of these data for understanding past culture change. This review emphasizes only large-scale, full-coverage, and published survey results from the last 20 years, with other analyses of survey data listed in the additional bibliography. Attentive readers will note that the citations favor

Apartment of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois, 62901; e-mail: [email protected].

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1059-0161/06/0300-0053/1 © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

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published sources and empirical contributions and avoid altogether unpublished conference papers and reports. These latter sources of information belong to the growing body of "gray literature" that precludes informed comparative analysis.

The cumulative results from over 40 years of systematic regional surveys show how complex societies evolved in diverse parts of Mesoamerica, though never in isolation and seldom if ever in the same way (Fig. 1, Table I). Interdepen- dence among multiple regional-scale societies was one of the salient features of the prehispanic world, despite wide environmental and ethnolinguistic divergence. This connectedness on the large scale coexisting alongside regional variation is fundamental to understanding Mesoamerica, especially during episodes of tran- sition in the prehispanic past (Blanton et al, 1993; also Balkansky, 2002, pp. 83-101). However, before proceeding further, it is necessary to define certain terms and make some remarks about their implications. Macroregions are two or more contiguous regions (usually the latter), each of which is definable using con- ventional methods of regional analysis (the region as a physiographic or cultural entity, usually both). Macroregions are the minimal unit of analysis needed to understand early civilizations and are measured in thousands of square kilometers (rather than hundreds as in the typical regional survey), a threshold that has seldom been reached (Balkansky et al, 2000). Despite these data requirements, one of the essential contributions of the recent surveys has been the discovery of regional vari- ation that co-occurred with settlement shifts on the macroregional scale. Extreme variation among early civilizations worldwide (Wright, 1986) also existed within these same civilizations, though to a degree few scholars would have guessed even 10 years ago.

The current theoretical landscape is littered with the corpses of dead models, likewise the numerous passing fancies whose approximate half-lives are limited to the latest meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. But if one common trend in recent theoretical work is discernible, it is renewed interest in studies of interaction on the Mesoamerican scale despite recognized local differences (e.g., Berdan et al, 1996; Braswell, 2003; Smith and Montiel, 2001; also Schortman and Urban, 1992). Regional archaeological survey remains the unique means of gathering systematic data on the very large scale, and in the next section there is consideration of some of the more enduring theoretical frameworks for making sense of regional and macroregional settlement patterns. The review of surveys follows and finally the article highlights the "macro components" of emerging debates in Mesoamerican archaeology.

The essential lesson from the cumulative survey results is that the discovered variation within macroregions cannot be explained via current theoretical models, not for any given region, time period, or research question. This observation ought to be viewed as positive because it reflects significant new empirical contributions and will force us to consider innovative ideas that better explain the Mesoamerican past.

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Fig. 1. Map of central and southern Mexico showing places mentioned in the text.

SYMBIOTIC REGION, WORLD SYSTEM, AND CONCORDANT CHANGE

Archaeological interest in the macroregion and its causal properties is trace- able to considerations of the nested social structures extending from household through regional, macroregional, and even world or global scales of analysis (Adams, 1977; Flannery, 1976). This multiscalar approach (see also Blanton, 1994; Feinman, 1997; Spencer and Redmond, 1997) continues to be the most productive research strategy in Mesoamerican archaeology, though it too often remains an ideal seldom achieved in practice.

There is also a specific intellectual lineage traceable from William T. Sanders' survey of the Teotihuacan Valley and concept of the "central Mexican symbiotic region" (Sanders, 1956, 1965; Sanders and Price, 1968, pp. 188-191). Symbiosis, according to Sanders, arose from diversity in the Mesoamerican physical environ- ment including its raw material sources, and this microgeographic zoning selected for economic specialization on the local level. In terms of culture change, Sanders and Price (1968, p. 190) argue that "the implication of the concept of economic symbiosis is that when areas were in constant historic contact, such contacts were a primary force in the enrichment of local cultural traditions. It is also evident that a number of areas acted more frequently as donors than as recipients, or, in other words, that events there had greater repercussions on the area as a whole. This is where the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region is outstanding." These authors

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Table I. Mesoamerican Chronological Sequence, Select Major Sites, and Notable Developments for Each Period

Years (A.D./B.C.) Period Major sites Cultural characteristics

A.D. 1520-1820 Spanish Colonial Mexico City, Mérida, Conquest and its aftermath; Puebla, Guadalajara cultural syncretism;

Colonial documentary sources

A.D. 1200-1520 Late Postclassic Tenochtitlan, Tzintzuntzan, Aztec and Tarascan Empires Tlaxcala, Tulum, Cacicazgos/Señoríos Mayapan, Mitla, Codex-based writing; Zaachila, Cuilapan, Popol Vuh Teposcolula

A.D. 900-1200 Early Postclassic Tula, Chichén Itzá, Cholula, Toltecs, Tilantongo, Tututepec Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl; 8

Deer "Jaguar Claw" A.D. 500-900 Late Classic Maquilxochitl, Lambityeco, Teotihuacan, Maya

Jalieza, Xochicalco, collapses; "Epiclassic" Cacaxtla, Cantona, El city-states Tajin

A.D. 300-500 Early Classic Teotihuacan, Teuchitlan, Teotihuacan expansion Jalieza, Monte Alban, Maya and Zapotee Tikal, Copan, Calakmul, writing on carved stones C. Jazmin, C. de las West Mexican cultural Mesas, Matacapan florescence

300 B.c. -A.D. Late Preclassic or Cuicuilco, Teotihuacan 's Urbanization; pristine state 300 Formative origins, Huamelulpan, formation

Yucuita, Monte Negro, Chiapa de Corzo, Tres Zapotes, Izapa, Kaminaljuyú, El Mirador, Tikal, Monte Albán 's expansion

900-300 B.C Middle Preclassic or San José Mogote, Tay ata, Competing chief doms; Formative Abaj Takalik, earliest writing

Chalcatzingo, La Venta, Monte Albán's origins

2000-900B.C Early Preclassic or San Lorenzo, San José Early villages; "Olmec Formative Mogote, Cuello, Paso de Horizon"

la Amada, Tlapacoya, Tlatilco

8000-2000 B.c Archaic Coxcatlan, Guilá Naquitz Foraging, incipient cultivation; earliest ceramics

15000-8000 B.c Paleoindian Ixtapan Hunting and gathering

attribute the central Mexican advantage to the presence of intensive agriculture and dense populations across the entire symbiotic region, giving successive rise to Teotihuacan, Tula, and Tenochtitlan as supercenters integrating wide areas of Mesoamerica. But the essential - and fatal - limitation of this analytical ap- proach is demarcating the bounds of Mesoamerica's several symbiotic regions as closed systems. Sanders' formulation of local-level economic specialization (and

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local-level developmental variation) nonetheless continues to resonate across the cumulative regional data sets.

Study of Mesoamerica as a world system (Blanton and Feinman, 1984) composed of competing cores and their peripheries is among the most common theoretical approaches for understanding Mesoamerica on the macroregional and continental scales (Blanton et a/., 1993, pp. 219-224; Smith and Berdan, 2000). World system models are designed to transcend the region as the unit of analysis. Many current archaeological studies of interaction are now predicated on some form of world system reasoning (Hall and Chase-Dunn, 1993), ultimately derived from Wallerstein's (1974) historical explanation for the origins of capitalism albeit with modifications for prehistoric cases (Feinman and Nicholas, 1991; Peregrine, 1996). The world system, according to Wallerstein, is an economic zone of core and peripheral societies that extends beyond a single region in which an exchange differential benefits the core (the most economically differentiated, technologically advanced, and politically complex part of the world system). The core region has thus become the de facto cause of changes occurring over wider areas, but in many archaeological formulations amounts to little more than neodiffusionism.

Some of the hardest-hitting critiques of world system reasoning have come from outside Mesoamerica (Kohl, 1987; Stein, 1998). The recurring criticism is that peripheral societies are more active in structuring their exchange relations, and their economic organizations are more variable, than the world system model allows (something of a point, counterpoint for Uruk Mesopotamia appears in Rothman, 2001). Archaeologists working within this framework emphasize the modifications of Wallerstein used for prehistoric cases, most notably the impor- tance of prestige goods exchange (rather than bulk commodities) in structuring macroregional linkages (e.g., Lekson and Peregrine, 2004). And although exploita- tive relationships between cores and peripheries are fundamental to the capitalist world system (Frank, 1967), there is disagreement over whether this was the case in prehistoric times (Chase-Dunn and Hall, 1991). The problem for world system theorists is that new data from supposed peripheries suggest that many regions were not peripheral at all. Mesoamerica was composed of too many cores (with socioeconomic differentiation rather than core domination distinguishing them) for world system models to continue to operate unaltered (cf., Smith and Berdan, 2000). As yet, however, no current body of theory exists to replace the world system on the macroregional scale.

New macroscale perspectives in Mesoamerican archaeology build on these foundations. Concordant change (the term was coined in Kowalewski, 1995, 1996) or "macroregional concordance" is regional variation emerging from common underlying processes; it is an empirical outcome in which synchronous changes occur over wide areas but with different local outcomes (see also Balkansky, 2002, pp. 13-14; Kowalewski, in press; Smith, 2002). Macroregional concordance departs from the region-centered view of prehistoric societies in which bounded geographic entities are the primary unit of analysis. These bounded geographic

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entities, usually a river valley or the limits of a modestly sized survey, are analytical constructs and thus entirely artificial; such regional boundaries have no bearing on actual patterns of prehistoric interaction.

Scholars recognize that prehispanic societies interacted on scales beyond their local valleys in several dimensions, yet the region-centered paradigm still underlies competing models of Mesoamerican culture change (Blanton et al., 1993, pp. 217-219). Kowalewski (1990, p. 52) anticipated the current theoretical dilemma, writing that "none of our current explanations of how complex soci- eties evolved yet comprehends the prehistoric cases described by the regional archaeological surveys. Most such explanations are not equipped to reflect the behaviorally significant variation within a region at one time, between regions, or in one of several regions over the long run. Theory and data scarcely speak to one another." Kowalewski's observation still holds true today. One of the objectives in writing this article is to draw attention to the disconnection between current explanatory models and existing settlement pattern data.

Widespread synchronous change and common horizons are part of the New World prehistoric record (Willey, 1991), but in the new thinking about macrore- gions the local differences are crucial to understanding the larger-scale processes at work. One early result from the regional surveys of the 1960s and 1970s illus- trates the meaning of concordant change: the differing trajectories of urbanization at Teotihuacan and Monte Alban (Blanton, 1976a, 1983). Both sites urbanized rapidly and at about the same time, yet these centers, their surrounding regions, and subsequent trajectories seemed wrought from entirely different templates. Recent survey results from Oaxaca (Balkansky et ai, 2000) suggest that con- cordant change involved multiple interacting regions, none of which were alike. Explanations based on but one of the interacting regions would miss impor- tant aspects of the overall process. Macroregional concordance was among the key structural properties of Mesoamerican civilization, yielding weird resonances from region to region that are telling lis something important about culture change.

If this article is to identify trends in recent survey results, it must first re- view those regional studies that were directly antecedent to the contemporary era. The regional studies of the 1960s and 1970s were a "Golden Age" when surveyors in many world areas began making contributions that soon outpaced the results generated from excavations and other research methods (Ammerman, 1981; Kowalewski, 1990; Wilkinson, 2000). The next section is a review of those initial surveys because they were the foundation of all subsequent survey work and remain essential components of regional comparisons and macroregional data sets. The emphasis in this article, however, is regional survey work begun in the 1980s and 1990s, and the implications of this work for current debates in Mesoamerican archaeology. In due course, there is consideration of ways of making macrore- gional research designs operational and some of the limitations of this approach. Only now, more than 40 years after Sanders began surveying the Teotihuacan Valley, are the outlines of a new macroregional problematic beginning to emerge.

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REGIONAL STUDIES IN THE 1960s AND 1970s

Archaeological surveys with a problem orientation and corresponding intel- lectual lineage began with Gordon R. Willey's first steps in Peru in 1946. The direct line of descent passes from William T. Sanders to Jeffrey R. Parsons to Richard E. Blanton and their students on down to the present. Willey's (1953) Virú Valley survey and subsequent work in Belize (Willey et ai, 1965) articulated the goals for all systematic regional surveys that followed: understanding pop- ulation trends, the history of land use, site function, and settlement pattern (see also Sabloff and Ashmore, 2001). Subsequent debates over the role of population pressure, exchange systems, and information flows as causal agents are extensions of Willey's basic research design. By the 1960s, the idea was to use settlement patterns to understand culture change processes; the region was equated with the whole society and became the de facto unit of analysis from the 1960s onward (e.g., Chang, 1968; Trigger, 1967).

Mesoamerican surveys that anticipated the modern era include Eulalia Guzman (1934) in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca; Heinrich Berlin (1951) in the Sola Valley, Oaxaca; Ignacio Bernal (1965) in the Valley of Oaxaca; and Paul Tolstoy (1958) who visited sites in the northeastern Basin of Mexico and Teotihuacan Valley. Pedro Armillas (1948, 1971) brought a regional ecological approach to his work in central Mexico, was a primary influence on Sanders, and inspired a parallel series of regional studies in Mexican archaeology (reviewed in Bernal, 1983). Armillas, as one reviewer of this article commented, also introduced the concept of "landscape archaeology" in Mesoamerican studies 25 years before this idea reappeared in the literature. One common concern linking the early surveys with those that followed was the search for systematic data on sites having contact with the major known centers. This early survey work went beyond finding new sites to excavate and was directed toward defining culture areas and elaborating models of diffusion.

In this author's view, the most striking achievements of the 20-year period beginning in 1960 were the long-term survey projects in the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca, and that from today's vantage were staggering in their audacity. Sanders (1999) describes how the original goal of the central Mexican surveys was to cover the entire 1 8,000 km2 of the central Mexican symbiotic region (a goal that is still far from being reached). It was only at this scale of analysis that the precocity of central Mexican civilization could be understood and a proper analysis of the microgeographic variation among interacting regions achieved. "The major problem," Sanders (1999, p. 14) recalls, "was tactical. We knew what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it (i.e., the strategy of research), but we were very tentative and unsure as to how to actually conduct the surface survey. The 1960 summer season was a test of survey methodology." That initial test continues in the present, as survey methods are improved, new sites discovered, and new questions asked of old data sets.

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Archaeologists thus began long-term survey projects in the Basin of Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and an ambitious but underreported multidisciplinary project in Puebla. For other parts of Mesoamerica, regional surveys were rare, although archaeologists occasionally surveyed as part of salvage operations in Guerrero and Michoacán. What follows are brief overviews of the major regional surveys of the era, focusing on the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca.

Central Highlands

Sanders and colleagues began the Teotihuacan Valley surveys in 1960-1965 (Sanders et al, 1979), working back in time from an ethnographic and ethno- historic baseline and integrating survey with excavation. The project goals were to reconstruct the agricultural, settlement, and population history in the region surrounding the ancient city of Teotihuacan in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, and from these data infer processes of cultural evolution. One important trend begun at this time was refinement of survey methods, not least of which was rejecting sampling designs in favor of 100% areal coverage (see also Fish and Kowalewski, 1990). By the late 1960s, Parsons (197 1) was recording a continuous flow of data on aerial photographs, and this method was continued in other regions (e.g., Blanton et al, 1982; Hirth, 1980). Population was estimated from the density of surface ceramics. Sites were classified according to size rather than internal cri- teria. The research problem was refined as well, with a focus on regional cultural ecology as the analytical framework (Parsons, 1974) and population pressure as the explanation of culture change (Sanders, 1 972). It is important to note, however, that other conclusions were being drawn from the same regional data sets (e.g., the divergent views in Wolf, 1976). It was possible to ask questions of regional data sets from an ecological perspective beyond evaluating population pressure models, and that was another trend that has continued to the present (Blanton, 1990).

Sanders and colleagues organized their primary empirical contribution into four sets of publications: Formative (Sanders et al, 1975), Teotihuacan or Classic (Sanders, 1996), Toltec or Epiclassic (Sanders, 1987), and Aztec or Postclassic (Sanders and Evans, 2000). The initial central Mexican surveys were synthesized by Sanders and others (1979) in The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, with other data reported in tabular form (Parsons et al, 1983). Authors of The Basin of Mexico emphasize cultural adaptation to the environment and population pressure as the primary cause of culture change (see also Sanders, 1972); this volume lacks the complete site-by-site data set but features a stunning set of settlement pattern maps including many sites now buried under Mexico City. Various researchers also surveyed along the eastern margins of the former lake basins. Parsons (1971) surveyed the Texcoco region in the eastern Basin of Mexico. Blanton (1972) surveyed in the south-central

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basin along the Ixtapalapa Peninsula Parsons et al (1982) worked south of there, in the Chalco-Xochimilco lakes area of the southern basin. All told, these projects covered 3500 km2 during the period from 1960 to 1975.

By the 1970s, as part of efforts to understand the extent of Teotihuacan's contacts with other regions (e.g., Hirth and Angulo Villaseñor, 1981), several researchers began to investigate trade routes. Otis Charlton and Charlton (2000) examined trade routes from Teotihuacan extending into the northern Puebla Valley and toward the Gulf Coast, recording sites in narrow bands across the landscape. Charlton (1972) also resurveyed portions of the Teotihuacan Valley to identify colonial period sites.

Other notable surveys of the era ventured north of the Basin of Mexico, where researchers surveyed in and around the Toltec capital of Tula, Hidalgo (Mastache and Crespo Oviedo, 1974). A recent publication (Mastache et al, 2002) makes those data more accessible. In southeastern Puebla, MacNeish et al. (1975) surveyed in the Tehuacán Valley, examining nearly 2000 km2 of mixed full-coverage transects and broader reconnaissance that was not filli coverage. Precourt (1983) reports on the Formative occupation near Amozoc de Mota, east of the City of Puebla. Snow (1969) initiated survey work in Tlaxcala.

Lastly, the multidisciplinary German-Mexican studies in Puebla-Tlaxcala began in 1968 and recorded not only archaeological sites but also studied the geological and modern cultural setting (e.g., Garcia Cook, 1976; Lauer, 1970). German scholars published two volumes (Tschohl, 1976; Tschohl and Nickel, 1972) on the archaeological sites they recorded in the central Puebla Basin, but the third and final volume of the series has never appeared. Dumond (1972) re- analyzes these data and considers alternative models of urbanism for Teotihuacan and Cholula. Garcia Cook and others continued the Puebla-Tlaxcala surveys into the 1980s and have published summary information (e.g., Garcia Cook, 1981; Garcia Cook and Merino Carrion, 1989; Merino Carrion, 1989), but no primary site data or descriptions of survey methods have been published. This is un- fortunate, because the Puebla-Tlaxcala surveys encompass the largest areas of any projects undertaken in the study area; the Puebla-Tlaxcala surveys covered an estimated 4000 km2 and the southeastern Puebla survey examined another 2700 km2.

Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast

Ignacio Bernal (1965) began looking for systematic information on sites surrounding Monte Alban, and so made an inventory of Valley of Oaxaca sites. Working in collaboration with Lorenzo Gamio, Bernal (1965, p. 795) visited 251 sites and recalled, "I began the work by trying in all innocence to collect pottery wherever it lay and to mark the sites on the map. I soon found that it was easier to mark places where there was nothing, since the valley is literally covered with

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remains of all sorts, especially potsherds." Bernal's survey demonstrated that the Valley of Oaxaca was both a physiographic and a cultural region, with sites throughout the valley having a ceramic complex comparable to Monte Albán's. One of his crucial discoveries was the existence of pre-Monte Alban sites, whose subsequent excavation (Flannery, 1976) demonstrated in situ cultural development for the Valley of Oaxaca.

An explicit regional approach to Oaxaca archaeology began with the Nochixtlán Valley project in 1966 (Spores, 1972). Ronald Spores sought to find the prehistoric origins for the Mixtee system of social stratification and the late prehis- panic cacicazgo. The Mixteca Alta was known for its late prehispanic kingdoms and painted codices (Smith, 1973), but Spores' survey results found continuous occupations dating back to the Early Formative. In using a native model of political structure, and with reference to continuous settlement patterns within subregions of the valley, Spores (1983) identified Yucuita as one of Oaxaca's original urban centers and argued that it arose independently of other centers including Monte Albán. Nochixtlán is the largest of the Mixteca Alta valleys, and Spores' conjunc- tive ethnohistorical-archaeological project was the springboard for all subsequent work in the area.

Byland's (1980) survey of the Tamazulapan Valley was the first systematic foray beyond Nochixtlán in the Mixteca Alta. One important result of this project was identifying differing regional trajectories within an otherwise integrated set- tlement system in the Mixteca Alta, a pattern that has become more apparent with each subsequent survey (Balkansky, 1999). Survey work in the Mixteca Alta since the 1960s has been the basis for making systematic comparisons between the Mixtee and Zapotee civilizations (Balkansky, 1998a; Flannery and Marcus, 1983), and this parallel growth in the Mixteca Alta and Valley of Oaxaca survey databases has continued to the present.

Shortly after Spores began work in Nochixtlán, Blanton transplanted the Basin of Mexico survey techniques to the Valley of Oaxaca and began surveying Monte Alban in 1971. This project covered Monte Alban and has since continued to the margins of the valley and beyond (Blanton, 1978; Blanton et al, 1999). The first of the Oaxaca regional surveys were dissertations by Dudley Varner (1974) and Stephen Kowalewski (1976). These data were incorporated into two later publications that included still larger chunks of the valley that were finished in 1977 and 1980 (Blanton et al, 1982; Kowalewski et al, 1989). The full report on 2150 km2 and 2700 sites (with over 6000 components) is the Kowalewski et al (1989) volume Monte Alban' 's Hinterland, Part II .Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in Tlacolula, Etla, and Ocotlán, the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. This volume is one of the enduring empirical foundations for Oaxaca archaeology. Today's debates over Monte Alban (e.g., Blanton et al.9 1999; Marcus and Flannery, 1996) continue to revolve on the Monte Albán/valley survey empirical axis, underscoring the need for comparable data from other regions.

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Blanton and colleagues moved away from ecologically functional explana- tions toward a systems framework to balance social variables with population and the environment (see Blanton, 1990). Whereas the earlier Basin of Mexico surveys had used sites to infer population pressure as a cause of change, Blanton and his coauthors' approach (e.g., Blanton, 1976b, 1983; Feinman et a/., 1985; Kowalewski, 1990; Kowalewski et ai, 1983) was to view sites as central places and apply spatial models derived from economics and geography to understand settlement patterns (e.g., Smith, 1976). The Valley of Oaxaca was modeled as a discrete functional region, Monte Alban as its principal central place, and the Monte Albán/valley survey area as the core region within Oaxaca. Subsequent research has carried the valley survey program into adjacent regions and is mak- ing each of these assumptions increasingly problematic. System boundaries were not coterminous with the valley in all periods; Monte Alban was one of several competing centers in most periods; and multiple core regions existed in all periods, as is discussed below.

Survey also began in mountainous regions bordering the Valley of Oaxaca (Drennan, 1989), and work in these challenging though critically important envi- ronments remains a feature of the Oaxaca surveys. Survey in the vast Miahuatlán Valley also began in the 1970s (Markman, 1981; also Brockington, 1973), with a small full-coverage zone embedded within a larger area of transect sampling. Miahuatlán is important for questions of Monte Albán's early political expansion (Marcus and Flannery, 1996, pp. 200-201) and its role in highland-lowland ex- change dynamics for all periods (Whitecotton, 1992); it is vital that a full-coverage survey of Miahuatlán on the valley wide scale approaching 1000 km2 be undertaken in the future.

Redmond (1983) surveyed the Cuicatlán Cañada, testing a model of Monte Alban conquest for regions located outside the Valley of Oaxaca (also Spencer and Redmond, 1997). This was a small survey covering only 52 km2 but targeted an important prehispanic transport corridor through the highlands. Redmond was therefore able to integrate more intensive mapping and surface collection strategies at sites pertinent to the question of Monte Alban expansion during the Late and Terminal Formative; the results included a regionwide settlement shift to higher ground and construction of a Zapotee fortress controlling access to the region. Excavations (Spencer, 1982) revealed further evidence for a Zapotee takeover (also Spencer and Redmond, 2001a). Redmond's (1983) survey also recorded settlement shifts later in the prehispanic period, showing the breakdown of Zapotee control and local readjustments. Redmond's (1983) survey report was based on her dissertation and is among the best of the many Mesoamerican survey dissertations. Students would be well advised to consider using this project as a model for any survey-based research they might contemplate.

In other parts of Oaxaca, Brockington and others (Brockington, 1957; Brockington and Long, 1974; Brockington et al., 1974) reconnoitered a broad

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swath of the Oaxaca Coast, bringing attention to this important but overlooked area. Zeitlin's (1978a,b) survey in the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec yielded settlement data on multiple prehispanic periods, including the Formative center of Laguna Zope where subsequent research focused on exchange and highland- lowland interaction (Zeitlin, 1993). Survey of the Oaxaca Coast has continued to the present.

West Mexico

Early survey projects in Michoacán and the Tarascan area focused on "the bet- ter known ruins" (Osborne, 1 943, p. 59), using field techniques similar to Tolstoy's surveys in the Basin of Mexico. Many sites recorded on these early surveys were near roads, although they reached some sites by "horseback, foot, airplane and automobile" (Brand, 1942, p. 140). Goggin (1943, p. 46) reports, "guides usually took me to the more conspicuous 'monuments,'" but he also located residential sites lacking architectural remains. Goggin sought to conceptualize his study area as a region, though he never applied a theoretical framework for analyzing regional settlement pattern data.

Survey in Guerrero became common during the 1960s after the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) undertook a salvage archaeology project along the lower and middle Rio Balsas (Lorenzo, 1964), before flooding by dam projects (Chadwick, 1971, p. 659). González Crespo (1979) later reported on further survey work in this region. Castillo Tejero (1967) reported on another predam salvage survey. Greengo (1967) investigated the area around Huitzuco, in northwest Guerrero, an area that Henderson (1979) also examined. Despite this initial survey work, Lister (1971, p. 619) remarked that the archaeology of Guerrero remained poorly understood.

Perhaps the most significant antecedents to modern surveying in West Mexico were Isabel Kelly's surveys in Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Colima (Kelly, 1945a,b, 1949, 1980). Kelly provided much of the baseline information on West Mexican ceramic distributions and culture areas, including data on the shaft tombs that are among the main focal points of West Mexican archaeology. Kelly's surface studies would not meet contemporary standards for regional surveying but nonetheless contain tabular data and descriptions for dozens of sites and have the additional advantage of being published.

Regional survey has continued in West Mexico (particularly as tied to salvage archaeology projects), although one persistent limitation is the relative absence of published results with complete data sets. Among the few surveys with pub- lished results from the 1970s are Gorenstein and Pollard's (1983) study of the protohistoric Tarascan state (though emphasizing early colonial settlement patterns) and Trombold's (1978, 1985a,b) survey work near La Quemada in Zacatecas.

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Gulf Lowlands

In the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists working in the Gulf Coast focused on excavation and building pottery sequences for the area, and understanding For- mative period relationships between the Olmec and their contemporaries in other regions (Coe, 1965). The absence of systematic regional survey data continued throughout the 1970s. García Payón (1971, p. 525), despite being able to list over 600 archaeological zones, remarks on the lack of regional ceramic nomenclature and typological correlations. Medellín Zeñil (1979) reports on the archaeology of central Veracruz without reference to large-scale or full-coverage regional surveys.

The large-scale, ecologically focused, and full-coverage regional surveys that typified the highlands during this period went unreported in the Gulf Lowlands before the 1980s. Some studies from the 1960s and 1970s anticipate the contem- porary era of surveying, especially near major Olmec sites (reviewed in Grove, 1997). But too many Gulf Coast surveys were closer to being Olmec colossal stone "head hunts" than problem-oriented full-coverage surveys. Sisson's (1970, 1976) reconnaissance near La Venta was an exception in locating over 200 sites. Sanders (1971) provides an early assessment of the Gulf Coast from a regional perspective.

Summary

The regional surveys of the 1960s and 1970s generated comparable regional data sets and created the potential for systematic comparisons among emergent civilizations. Methods were refined over time, sampling issues addressed, and the limitations of regional data sets came to be understood. Sites were the basis for early studies of population growth but eventually became raw material for

generating settlement hierarchies and testing central place models. The success of these ventures in the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca is easily traced to the sustained work in each region by a core group of committed researchers whose cumulative experience resulted in high-quality data sets covering thousands of archaeological sites. The long-term trends discerned in the settlement pattern maps defined the research questions that would be pursued in the coming decades.

FROM REGION TO MACROREGION IN THE 1980s AND 1990s

The great strides forward begun in the 1960s and 1970s continued in the last two decades of the twentieth century, taking regional surveyors past the bounds of the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca and into more peripheral regions on the margins of the large valleys. Although even the most ambitious surveys of the last two decades covered far less ground than the multiyear efforts of the 1960s and 1970s, expanded coverage outside the original core areas is leading

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to a revolution in thinking about long-term sociopolitical evolution. Feinman and Nicholas's (1990) survey of the Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, was among the first of the contemporary surveys to consider system-scale issues using a peripheral region as an explicit part of the research design. Ejutla is one example of the multiplied analytical advantage when small surveys form parts of larger survey blocks. The Guirun survey is another example; though only 1/20 the size of the adjacent Valley of Oaxaca, the Guirun area has yielded results important for understanding both regions (e.g., Feinman and Nicholas, 1999).

Lastly, the contemporary era has faced new challenges in managing the enor- mous data flow from the cumulative regional studies (e.g., Chamblee, 2000). Geographic Information Systems has become a basic part of the surveyor's an- alytical repertoire for managing relational databases, but renewed attention must be paid to recording methods and data quality control in the field. As surveys have become more common, students of the discipline have too often assumed that its application was self-evident. The essential empirical contribution of a good survey is having comparable data on site size through time at the regional level (and, by extension, be able to show the data flow from the initial visit to the site to the final settlement pattern map). Far too many surveyors, including many of those cited in this article, cannot or have not published these basic data. The best recent surveys descend directly from earlier efforts in the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca, emphasizing the multigenerational nature of the survey program. The nearly continuous surveying in highland Oaxaca, for example, has paid dividends in data quality and comparability (Fish, 1999). A final point of concern is the growing "gray literature" of unpublished survey data. It is impossible to compare regions systematically without published results.

In the area capsules that follow, the emphasis remains on those studies having published results and that meet contemporary standards of data gather- ing in the field. Studies at the regional scale (usually measured in hundreds of square kilometers) and covering multiple periods are likewise emphasized. Re- cent surveys in Oaxaca and the Gulf Lowlands are especially important for their impact on broader theoretical issues. Surveys in other regions are mostly un- published or focus on a single period (usually the Classic or the Postclassic), making them difficult to use in comparative studies of cultural evolution. The full listing of pertinent surveys is found in the bibliographies at the end of this article.

Central Highlands

Since the 1970s, regional surveys have ceased in the Basin of Mexico, al- though as mentioned earlier, monographs on the basin surveys continue to appear. Published results from other surveys in this area are hard to come by and most of- ten concentrate on single periods. Cárdenas (1999) published a volume on Classic

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period settlement patterns in the Bajío. Surveys in other areas adjacent to the Basin of Mexico (e.g., Puebla, Morelos) emphasize Postclassic settlement patterns and questions about the Aztec empire.

In Puebla, a recent survey of 560 km2 focused on the Acatzingo-Tepeaca area east of the City of Puebla, but these data remain unpublished (Formative period settlement is covered in Castanzo, 2002). Survey in Puebla's northern Cuenca de Oriental, completed along with mapping and excavations at the Epiclassic site of Cantona (García Cook and Merino Carrion, 1998), so far lacks published re- gional settlement pattern data. In southern Puebla, Plunket (1990a) surveyed near Atlixco, on the southeastern flanks of the volcano Popocatepetl. These data sug- gest that in the Postclassic the northern Atlixco area was affiliated with Cholula peoples, while the southern area had more affiliation with the Mixteca. Analyses of earlier time periods remain unpublished. Rattray (1990, 1998) refers to surveys in southern Puebla with regard to Thin Orange ceramics and questions of Teoti- huacan's Classic period trade routes, though the complete data set has yet to be published.

In the Toluca Valley, Yoko Sugiura's (199 1) dissertation reports on Epiclassic settlement patterns after the fall of Teotihuacan (see also Sugiura, 1998). Earlier sites are reported in González de la Vara (1999). The Toluca Valley has great potential for regional survey and was an area located on the Aztec and Tarascan frontiers with obvious research questions embedded in that special geopolitical setting.

South of the Basin of Mexico, Michael Smith and colleagues surveyed over 150 km2 surrounding the Late Postclassic Aztec city-state of Yautepec (Hare, 2001, pp. 17-19). This project was conjoined with an earlier intensive site survey of the city of Yautepec (Smith et al, 1994) as well as excavations aimed at refining the Postclassic chronology (Hare and Smith, 1996). Hare's (2001) analysis of the Postclassic settlement pattern data uses Geographic Information Systems and

spatial statistical methods. One important conclusion of the study, albeit in the absence of a complete set of site descriptions and data, is that local processes mediated regional and macroregional interactions. Aztec imperial administration was less monolithic than often assumed, and this result reflects the highly variable settlement trends and economic organization of individual city-states and their subregions within the Yautepec Valley. Hare (2001, p. 620) goes so far as to say, "imperial conquest had no archaeologically discernible impact on settlement organization in the Yautepec valley."

Results from the Yautepec Valley survey set up potential new research on the varied patterns of subregional organization and integration among Postclassic city- states. It is an example of how solid survey results raise new research questions not otherwise apparent. The full write-up for this survey project, including data on earlier sites, should be among the most significant of the recent contributions from central Mexico.

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Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast

As early as the 1970s, Oaxaca surveyors moved beyond the original Nochixtlán and Oaxaca Valley surveys and into bordering high mountains and adjacent valleys. Since the initial regional studies from Spores (1972) and Blanton (1978; Blanton et al, 1999), a succession of related survey projects has encom- passed larger and larger areas of the Mixtee and Zapotec-speaking regions of Oaxaca. In fact, there has been as much terrain covered in the past 20 years as during the "Golden Age" of the 1960s and 1970s. This expanding coverage is important because it is now apparent that the minimal unit of analysis needed to understand ancient Oaxaca is much larger than any of its constituent valleys and approximates an area on the order of 10,000 km2 (Balkansky et al, 2000).

Oaxaca's core zone of emergent civilizations thus involves, minimally, the highland terrain stretching from Miahuatlán in the southeast to Huajuapan in the northwest. The Oaxaca surveys are now approaching full coverage at this scale, providing an ideal test case for macroregional approaches to social evolution. In what follows are brief sketches of the recent survey projects in Oaxaca (covering highland Zapotee regions, highland Mixtee regions, and finally the Oaxaca Coast), their specific research questions and results, and finally an assessment of the changed empirical landscape.

Highland Zapotee

The Ejutla Valley survey extended beyond the southern limit of the Valley of Oaxaca and was designed to test boundary relations and core/periphery inter- action over time (Feinman and Nicholas, 1988, 1990). Ejutla connects to the far larger Miahuatlán Valley and is one route from the highlands to the Pacific coast. Survey results showing distributions of decorated ceramics, site hierarchies, and monumental architecture suggest that Monte Alban controlled the region by the Terminal Formative, but any takeover would have "involved episodes of rebellion and co-option" over a long period (Feinman and Nicholas, 1990, p. 234). Settle- ment changes as well as follow-up excavations at the Classic period Ejutla town site demonstrate the significance of highland-coastal exchange networks and the local production of marine shell ornaments (Feinman and Nicholas, 1993). Monte Albán's Classic period collapse is mirrored in Ejutla's population crash before the region once again saw substantial growth in the Postclassic. This study is significant for its data on local-level contrasts with the Valley of Oaxaca and the long-term (though changing) ties that bound the two regions (also Feinman, 1998; Feinman and Nicholas, 1991, 1992).

The Guirún area was another mountain survey project at the easternmost limits of the Valley of Oaxaca (Feinman and Nicholas, 1996, 1999). This study measured economic interaction, Monte Albán's territorial growth, and changing

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boundaries on a political and ethnic frontier. The results clarify several issues stemming from the Valley of Oaxaca survey but are also "more informative (e.g., regarding boundaries, different regional settlement trends) because the area is embedded in a larger survey domain" (Feinman and Nicholas, 1999, p. 190). What is more, once enigmatic sites (Guirun, Hierve el Agua) are now better understood because of the regional settlement context.

The Sola Valley survey tested models for Monte Albán's Formative period expansion and changing territorial boundaries (Balkansky, 1997 'a, 1997b, 2002). Dating Sola's phase of initial colonization, finding the site-level and regional contexts for the region's famous carved stone tradition, and comparing regional trajectories were among the guiding research goals. Sola's colonization occurred during Monte Albán's initial territorial expansion in the Late Formative and repre- sents one of several possible local trajectories for regions in contact with the Valley Zapotee (differing in important ways from Cuicatlán, Ejutla, and the Oaxaca Coast among other regions). Sola's Classic period settlement shifts, new monumental building, and emergent writing tradition indicate ways in which local centers re- sponded to Monte Albán's political decline. The importance of Sola's location along the prehispanic transport route to the Oaxaca Coast remained a constant, despite changing settlement patterns over time.

A recent reconnaissance of the Sierra de Juárez focused on the late Post- classic trade route along the Rio Caxonos connecting the Valley of Oaxaca to the Gulf Coast, and passing through the Aztec-controlled trading center of Tuxtepec (Ortiz Diaz, in press). This project highlights the need for additional research on trade routes and expanded survey of mountainous regions bordering the Valley of Oaxaca (also Gutiérrez Mendoza et al, 2000).

Highland Mixtee

Several recent survey projects were located within the Nochixtlán Valley, while others pushed further into the central and western Mixteca Alta. Patricia Plunket (1983, 1990b) resurveyed an 80-km2 area around Yucuita in the Nochixtlán Valley that Spores (1972) had examined in the 1960s, using more intensive col- lection strategies paired with test excavations. The site maps and site descriptions in Plunket's (1983) dissertation are exemplary, and future doctoral students would be wise to review them before embarking on their own surveys. Yucuita was among the original Mixtee urban centers, and the regional composition of this early polity was Plunket's object of study. The two survey reports (Plunket, 1983; Spores, 1972) are in close agreement on the basic settlement data, though Plun- ket emphasizes external factors in Yucuita's rise while Spores emphasizes local cultural continuity.

Byland and Pohl's (1994) survey of the Jaltepec-Tilantongo sector of the Nochixtlán Valley collected place names through interviews with the modern

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inhabitants of the valley and analyses of the Mixtee codices and then compared these data to Postclassic period sites found on survey (also Pohl, 2004; Pohl and By land, 1990). So far, however, none of the basic site-by-site settlement data from the Jaltepec-Tilantongo survey are published. Parts of this region were resurveyed in 1999, and those data are now becoming available (Balkansky et al., 2000, 2004).

By land and Pohl's project builds on an earlier tradition of historical research (Jiménez Moreno, 1941) and has sparked a cottage industry of recent projects that match survey data with analyses of sixteenth-century maps and codices (e.g., Gutiérrez Mendoza, 2003; Whittington, 2003). These studies have the potential of bringing a native "ernie" perception of the settled landscape together with the "etic" analysis of settlement patterns. One of the challenges of this approach is to overcome the tendency to use survey data merely as affirmation of the author's particular reading of the document in question. The fact that a given hilltop has a Postclassic site does not by itself confirm one's interpretation of the codex or map, much less the more encompassing statements about Mesoamerican civilization that inevitably follow (e.g., Byland and Pohl, 1994). In many of these same regions it would be hard not to find Postclassic sites, given their near ubiquity. Meanwhile, the content and meaning of prehispanic documents is never self- evident and was much given to political myth making. Survey must therefore be balanced critically with the documents to arrive at interpretations that are fuller and more convincing than would be possible using either data set alone. Only then will the promise of matching sites to native documentary information be realized.

The mountains north of the Valley of Oaxaca were surveyed in the 1970s (Drennan, 1989), and survey of the Peñoles area pushed further into the high sierra. Finsten and Kowalewski's Peñoles survey covered 1000 km2 in the high mountains west of the Valley of Oaxaca, providing data on montane adapta- tions (Garvin, 1994) and Mixtee- Valley Zapotee boundary relationships (Fin- sten, 1996; Finsten et al, 1996). These data are not fully published, but the project is notable for its technical innovations and for the near pristine condi- tion of its sites. The Peñoles project set the gold standard for mountain sur- vey, making accessible the settlement history of a region that would otherwise be viewed as too difficult or not worth the trouble to survey. We now know that sites in the Peñoles area had dense stretches of residential terraces and public structures perched on narrow ridge tops (C. A. Smith, 1993) and occu- pations dating from Formative times through the Postclassic. The results from this project are too important to remain unpublished in a comprehensive survey report.

Survey of the Huamelulpan Valley (Balkansky, 1998b) examined the regional settlement history of an urban and state-level polity from its origins to collapse. Huamelulpan was one of Oaxaca's emergent cities whose antecedent sites are

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found on nearby valley floors, demonstrating a local population shift (and local cultural continuity) at the time of the urban transition. Urbanization was at once a local, regional, and macroregional phenomenon, shown by Oaxaca's multiple urban transitions during Late Formative times. Theorists of urbanization and state formation must accommodate themselves to this simple fact and abandon expla- nations based on only one site or region.

Laura Stiver (2001) surveyed the Teposcolula Valley, recording extremely high settlement densities during the Postclassic period when Teposcolula was one of the major Mixtee kingdoms. In large stretches of the Teposcolula Valley, Postclassic settlement is nearly continuous, with sites separated only by ancient agricultural terraces. This result raises the issue of where sites begin and end in this period and what spatial entity defined "the Mixtee community kingdom" originally described in Spores (1967). Stiver's survey is notable for being among the most intensive ever done on the large scale and is another example of a strong survey-based dissertation project.

Iván Rivera (1999, 2000) surveyed around his hometown of Tequixtepec, bringing regional survey to the Mixteca Baja. This area is especially compelling for its indigenous writing tradition during the Classic period, but virtually nothing was known of the regional constitution of Mixteca Baja cities before Rivera's study.

Kowalewski, Balkansky, and their colleagues completed the last highland survey of the 1990s, covering 10 valleys, 1000 sites, and 1343 km2 in the central Mixteca Alta (Balkansky et al, 2000). This project linked the previous Mixteca Alta surveys into a contiguous block and was designed to generate a supraregional database comparable to the Valley of Oaxaca. The Mixteca Alta's contiguous full-coverage surveys now exceed 3000 km2, an area equivalent to the Valley of Oaxaca and its satellite regions. Among the most surprising results was the density of occupation in preurban Formative times that was equal to or greater than any region in highland Mesoamerica (C. A. Smith, 2002), the simultaneous rise of Mixteca Alta cities and the degree to which they varied from one another (Balkansky et al, 2004), and the startling differences among the late prehispanic states (Balkansky et al, 2000).

The cumulative data from the Oaxaca surveys since the 1960s allow di- rect comparisons between the Mixtee and Zapotee civilizations, but from within a single universe of sites. There is no other world area where the long-term interactions among emergent pristine civilizations may be studied in this way. One fundamental conclusion from comparisons among Mixtee and Zapotee re- gions is that the major episodes of evolutionary change (from initial sedentism to state formation and collapse) occurred in several regions at about the same time, and that interaction on the macroregional scale was an essential part of these changes.

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Oaxaca Coast

Arthur Joyce and colleagues (Joyce et a/., 1998, 2001; Workinger, 2002) have surveyed in the Rio Verde Valley, focusing on Formative period occupations and examining the question of Monte Alban 's impact on the Oaxaca Coast (e.g., Zeitlin and Joyce, 1999). The current zone of full-coverage survey in coastal Oaxaca is about 150 km2 and includes the Postclassic imperial capital of Tututepec (Joyce et al, 2004; see also O'Mack, 1990). Although the size of the survey region is too small to say anything definitive about empire building, it is at least a starting point. As yet, however, no final survey report has been published for any period, making it difficult to evaluate claims based on the coastal survey data. The Rio Verde Valley surveys nonetheless fill gaps in our knowledge of the Oaxaca Coast and should provide one of the building blocks for future work in this critically important region.

The summary of the last 20 years of survey in Oaxaca indicates that the "Golden Age" of regional survey has continued unabated, but with what results? The first general observation is that system boundaries are never coterminous with single valleys but spill over into networks of interconnected settlement sys- tems. The second observation is the presence of multiple core regions in all periods. The third and most fundamental observation is the extreme variation in regional trajectories that will force a réévaluation of extant models. Oaxaca has become the primary test case for macroregional analysis and could pro- vide insights into the effects of large-scale interaction on the Mesoamerican scale.

West Mexico

Archaeological research in West Mexico has focused on the protohistoric Tarascan state and on earlier occupations near the lake basins of Michoacán and Jalisco (summarized in Pollard, 1997). One outcome of intensified research in West Mexico is the realization that this area constituted another Mesoamer- ican core (or constellation of core regions) and was not simply the product of central Mexican influences - whether it was Teotihuacan during the Classic period or the Triple Alliance empire during the Postclassic. Weigand (1996, p. 91) notes that significant occupations date from the Formative period and that "to deny the place of West Mexico as another hearth (among many) of overall Mesoamerican civilization raises more questions than it solves." This observa- tion fits the emerging pattern in Mesoamerican regional studies and suggests that scholars working elsewhere should pay more attention to the latest research from this area.

West Mexico has seen a miniboom in surface studies over the past 20 years. Absent from the West Mexican literature, however, are the large-scale regional

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studies using full-coverage methods that meet the standards of other highland regions in Mesoamerica. Those surveys that have been completed are also un- derreported in the published literature (but see Arnauld et al., 1993; Cabrera et al, 1988; Michelet, 1995). Recent studies, moreover, tend to focus on either the Classic or Postclassic period alone, at the expense of understanding long-term evolutionary issues pertinent to the development of an indigenous West Mexican civilization (e.g., Weigand, 1990). Some limited studies of otherwise unpublished regional data exist, though they are focused exclusively on the Classic period (see Ohnersorgen and Varíen, 1996).

Given the foregoing considerations (and Pollard's extensive review), a single recent example will suffice. Surveys in the western Mexican state of Jalisco have sought to elucidate the Teuchitlan tradition with its distinctive shaft tombs and circular civic-ceremonial architecture that dates to the Late Formative and Classic periods (Weigand, 1996). Beekman (1996a,b) surveyed the La Venta Corridor on the eastern boundary of the Teuchitlan Valley to test models of regional political structure during the Teuchitlan I phase (A.D. 400-700). Beekman also sought to evaluate the possible role of Teotihuacan in the rise of complex societies in West Mexico. This was a small-scale survey of 20 km2 but targeted the communication route between the Teuchitlan core and regions further east. Beekman concludes that during the Early to Middle Classic period (ca. A.D. 200-550 in the local sequence) the corridor was monitored and controlled from the Teuchitlan Valley, with sites in this region having a stronger administrative presence and strategic location than in other phases. This result could suggest that Teotihuacan's effect on this region in West Mexico was relatively indirect and mediated via local institutions.

The West Mexican surveys are difficult to evaluate since few descrip- tions of methods or full survey reports exist, but this author's impression is that the area is ideal for the regional and macroregional approaches seen else- where in highland Mexico. What is most urgently needed are published full- coverage surveys of 500-1000 km2 in size surrounding the Tarascan capital at Tzintzuntzan as well as the Teuchitlan Valley and adjacent regions. Given the rate of site destruction and looting near the expanding urban zone of Guadalajara (Jalisco), it is critical that systematic regional surveys be completed and their entire data sets published. Only then will our currently sketchy un- derstanding of long-term regional and macroregional issues concerning West Mexico be addressed, which will in turn lead toward productive new research directions.

Gulf Lowlands

Gulf Lowlands archaeology has changed fundamentally since the recent surveys in the lower Cotaxtla Basin (Daneels, 1991, 2002), the Mixtequilla area

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including the site of Cerro de las Mesas (Speaker, 2001; Stark, 1991; Stark and Curet, 1994; Stark and Showalter, 1990), the Tuxtla Mountains including the site of Matacapan (Santley and Arnold, 1996; Santley et al, 1987), and the Coatzacoalcos River Basin near the famous Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán (Kruger, 1996; Symonds and Lunagómez, 1997). The most recent regional survey in the Gulf Lowlands is Killion and Urcid's (2001) study of the Hueyapan region near the Tuxtla Mountains. These several projects, whose dates of initial fieldwork span the period 1982 (Matacapan and the Tuxtla Mountains) to 1998 (Hueyapan), indicate a seismic shift in the orientation of Gulf Lowlands research toward regional studies (Arnold, 1994; Stark and Arnold, 1997).

The empirical contribution on the regional level has entirely reoriented Mesoamerican archaeologists' perceptions of the settlement history of the Gulf Lowlands. Sanders' (1971) initial characterization of the area as being composed of small centers with low regional populations, dispersed rural settlement pat- terns, and the general absence of urbanism is no longer tenable. The change in Gulf Lowlands archaeology is comparable to the shift in Maya archaeology dur- ing the 1960s and 1970s when surface studies of Maya centers discovered higher than expected site and regional population densities. These results raised ques- tions about intensified food production, Maya social organization, and the nature of urbanism (Ashmore, 1981; Rice and Culbert, 1990; Sabloff, 1983). Stark and Arnold's ( 1997) edited volume, Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands, synthesizes the regional data including their own contributions and is one of the essential publications from the contemporary era. Gulf Lowland ar- chaeologists have not necessarily surveyed more than elsewhere, but, compared to the virtual absence of regional research before the 1980s, the impact of the current boom in regional studies cannot be overestimated.

The regional survey of 400 km2 in the Tuxtla Mountains was especially significant since it was the first large-scale, full-coverage regional survey in the Gulf Lowlands (Santley and Arnold, 1996). The Tuxtla Mountains intersect the otherwise low-lying Gulf coastal plain and were the source of the basalt used for the colossal Olmec heads. The Tuxtla Mountains were also a zone of ob- sidian production, especially during the Classic period, and a center of cotton and cacao production, suggesting an economic basis for settlement in the region. Surveys in the Tuxtlas were initiated to understand the Classic period center of Matacapan, its possible relationships to Teotihuacan, and the nature of economic interaction in the Gulf Lowlands (also Santley et al, 1987). This problem ori- entation brought renewed attention to periods other than the Formative and to topics other than the Olmec, though Formative period settlement patterns in the Tuxtlas (Arnold, 2000; Santley et al, 1997) are important for understanding vari- ation within the Olmec heartland (cf., Killion and Urcid, 2001). One result of the Tuxtlas survey was recognizing the strong degree of intraregional variation within

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the Gulf Lowlands and the differing settlement trajectories through time. Santley and colleagues also consider the impact of external forces, namely, lowland Maya and central Mexican, to have been but one factor among many that affected set- tlement patterns, stating that "political-economic dynamics within and between local systems probably played at least as large a role" (Santley and Arnold, 1996, p. 246).

Stark and colleagues surveyed 60 km2 of the Mixtequilla region of south- central Veracruz. This survey in the surrounds of the Classic period urban center of Cerro de las Mesas found nearly continuous occupation over the entire area, raising questions about definitions of site, urbanism, and social organization at Cerro de las Mesas, and regional settlement hierarchies during the Classic period in lowland Mesoamerica. Lowland centers are usually more dispersed than the densely nucleated sites of highland Mesoamerica, and this includes dispersion among architectural complexes. Stark (1999) offers a tentative model to account for these settlement patterns, describing Cerro de las Mesas as a "capital zone" of relatively concentrated occupation and monumental architecture within a larger area of mostly continuous settlement. It remains largely conjectural as to what lies beyond the "capital zone" in the Mixtequilla, but Stark's results establish a series of testable questions that can be resolved once survey coverage expands beyond the urban core.

One important theme of recent Gulf Lowlands archaeology is the discovered variation in regional trajectories and contrasting population densities in each period (Arnold and Stark, 1997). Another important theme is the use of survey results to generate regional economic analyses. The economic orientation of Gulf surveys is seen in the work of Santley, Stark, and their collaborators and could be compared with earlier regional economic studies in the Valley of Oaxaca (Blanton et al, 1993). Survey results also suggest that past culture change in the Gulf cannot be attributed to exogenous factors alone, and this is perhaps the essential contribution of the recent Gulf surveys. It is no longer possible to characterize the area simply by reference to Olmec centers in the Formative or to Teotihuacan's urban pattern in the Classic period. Multiple independent polities inhabited the Gulf Lowlands in prehispanic times, and the true nature of their interaction is only now becoming apparent in the wake of the recent surveys.

Results from the Gulf surveys are contributing data sets relevant to global debates over the varied patterns of urbanization and trajectories of social evolu- tion, as well as establishing long-term research agendas within particular regions. These studies also underscore an important theme of surveys everywhere: when there's a will, there's a way. Much of the Gulf Lowlands is covered with the same dense tropical vegetation as in the Maya area. This essential fact forces changes to data recovery methods but has not deterred scholars from gathering the re- gional data essential to any empirically based understanding of large-scale social evolution.

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Summary

The regional surveys of the past 20 years have tended toward the smaller scale and are often focused on single time periods or sites. Examples include the Postclassic settlement patterns of regions incorporated into the Aztec/Triple Alliance empire and the regional perspectives on the sites of Cerro de las Mesas and San Lorenzo in the Gulf Lowlands. This is not in itself a bad thing, especially when smaller, targeted survey areas. are attached to larger survey blocks, and likewise when there is a coherent long-term strategy for covering larger contiguous areas. In essence, there is a "value added" component when small surveys are attached to larger ones, increasing the analytical power of spatial data several times over. The Guirun area in Oaxaca is a prime example, but so too are virtually all surveys that have bordered the Valley of Oaxaca since 1980. Surveying in stages has also paid off. In the Mixteca Alta, distinct survey projects during the 1990s covered over 2600 km2. It should now be possible to synthesize the regional surveys of the 1980s and 1990s and indicate what has been learned about Mesoamerica via settlement patterns.

DISCUSSION

What have surveyors discovered about Mesoamerica during the current era of settlement pattern studies? One thing is certain: We know a good deal more about regions outside the home valleys of major centers such as Monte Alban and Teotihuacan. Feinman and Nicholas (1990, pp. 241-242) write, "The history of Prehispanic Ejutla cannot be retrodicted simply from knowledge about the larger adjacent Valley of Oaxaca or from the region's environmental context. Small and agriculturally marginal areas must be studied in their own right to be understood, and by so doing, new questions will be generated about the areas that they adjoin." This observation about Ejutla could be extended to virtually all surveys initiated since the early 1980s and by itself provides sufficient justification for the survey program to continue. Thus one fundamental conclusion from the recent surveys is that the region-centered paradigm is incomplete. It is simply not possible to project the settlement patterns from any given region onto another, even for adjacent survey regions.

The cumulative survey results bring attention to interaction on the macrore- gional to Middle American scale and its impact on culture change. The term "concordant change" is meant to describe an empirical reality in which settlement shifts over multiple regions occur simultaneously (and are linked historically) but with differing local outcomes. Oaxaca is the best Mesoamerican illustration of concordant change; the regional demographic profiles were often headed in opposite directions, yet each region's changes were tied to developments in one or more neighboring valleys (see Balkansky, 2002, pp. 87-93; Kowalewski, in

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press). If one accepts that social evolution operates on several spatial scales at once (Adams, 1977; Flannery, 1976; Spencer, 1997), then concordant change in settlement patterns means it is imperative that we understand the selective forces operating on the macroregional scale as well as the local scales typi- cally examined. This observation should surprise no one who has ever won- dered how events in the next valley affected a local cultural sequence. What has changed in the last 20 years is the accumulation of survey data demonstrating this fact.

The challenge for Mesoamerican archaeologists is to explain the variation in settlement patterns and regional trajectories, whether for specific instances of culture change or for understanding Mesoamerica as a whole. This is true whether one uses a region-centered paradigm such as cultural materialism or a macroregional paradigm such as the world system. Effective theory building now requires that we model the effects of not one but multiple interacting regions on local sequences. We also need to understand why the local settlement shifts are so different within interacting macroregions. The following section highlights emerging debates triggered by the new survey results and common theoretical assumptions that are in need of immediate revision. The region-centered ap- proach to settlement studies is breaking down in the face of new survey data on the macroregional scale. Our theories of culture change must account for the variation in settlement patterns over successively larger spatial scales or be discarded.

Emerging Debates

This section takes a "stratigraphie approach," working from the historic period baseline back in time to the earliest settled villages. Since many of the examples are taken from the author's own survey work, there is fre- quent reference ta the results of the 1999 survey project in the Mixteca Alta (Balkansky et al, 2000). The results of this project are a good illustration of the extent to which otherwise related settlement changes varied from region to region, and likewise the limitations of the region-centered approach to expla- nation. All of the case studies to follow concern concordant change, the new survey results, and new ways to view old questions from within a macroregional paradigm.

Cacicazgos

Surveyors in the 1960s and 1970s showed what written descriptions of the late prehispanic form of state called the "cacicazgo" or "señorío" looked like on the ground. Cacicazgos were the small states (some scholars consider them

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to be city-states) that arose after the collapse of Classic period centers such as Teotihuacan and Monte Alban (e.g., Hodge, 1984). The dispersed regional set- tlement patterns typical for cacicazgos were radically different from the discrete boundaries and buffer zones separating earlier sites and polities (see especially Kowalewski et al, 1989, Fig. 10.8; Sanders et al, 1979, pp. 161-176). Unfor- tunately, these initial observations have typecast the cacicazgo and resulted in the widespread but mistaken notion that all cacicazgos were more or less the same.

The new empirical reality is that cacicazgos, even in adjacent regions, var- ied greatly from one another in architectural layout, capital size and location, prior settlement history, and descriptions in historical documentation among other factors, such that no two were alike in every respect (Balkansky et al, 2000). This multidimensional variation must be accounted for in models of caci- cazgo origins and interactions (cf., Hare, 2001). The conclusions of scholars who reduce that variation to functional type (e.g., the commercial, religious, or political capital in Sanders and Webster, 1988) must be considered suspect, as are the results of studies that ignore the settlement pattern data altogether or examine only a single dimension of variability (e.g., Smith, in press). The familiar urban typologies are too reductive even for single centers, let alone the interacting sites within a macroregion. Archaeologists studying Postclas- sic settlement patterns must be mindful of keeping the continuous variation in the analysis as long as possible before trying to explain it. So far, how- ever, our analytical tool kits (including the author's) have proven inadequate for the job.

Classic Period Urban Forms

Teotihuacan is often viewed as the Classic period urban archetype, even though the site was one of the most unusual places in all of prehispanic Mesoamerica. There was no site of its time so large, monumental, commercialized, or demonstrably cosmopolitan (e.g., Millón, 1981). Stranger still was its regional configuration, with hyperurbanization at the capital and the relative absence of rural settlement (Sanders et al, 1979). Other Mesoamerican regions had vastly more complex central place hierarchies and relatively even population dispersal (e.g., the Valley of Oaxaca, discussed in Blanton, 1976a, 1983), indicating that complex societies could grow and evolve in diverse ways even within the same culture area.

One of the most intriguing results from the recent surveys is the growing range of variation in Classic period urban forms and regional settlement patterns. Classic period settlement in the Mixteca Alta (Balkansky et al, 2000) represents a third major regional variant (see especially Heredia, 2004), contrasting with both the Valley of Oaxaca and the Basin of Mexico. The Classic period Mixtee

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hilltowns occupied nearly every valley so far surveyed, with small but dense occupations (in terms of population, monumentality relative to size, and terracing) in extremely defensive hilltop positions. These sites appeared in the wake of the collapse of the first generation states in the Mixteca Alta, none of which seems to have controlled any territory beyond its immediate surroundings. Even within this general category, however, one sees important differences among sites. One of the main conclusions drawn from Heredia's (2004) surface study is that none of the sites was the same.

The near continuous occupations with dispersed monumental zones over tens of square kilometers in the Gulf Coast (Stark, 1999) and parts of West Mexico (Weigand, 1996) represent a fourth major variant during the Classic period. The Gulf Coast and West Mexican cases are even more compelling given their con- trasting environmental settings. These cases suggest that the traditional lowland- highland dichotomy in Mesoamerican settlement studies is too reductive (e.g., Sanders, 197 1 ) and that commonalities in the political-economic arena are a better explanation than the environment for dispersed settlement patterns (this view could support a world system model centering on Teotihuacan, though Stark and Weigand emphasize the political and economic autonomy of their regions). The challenge for current theory is to model Classic period societies in ways that account for local variation in the context of large-scale interaction and avoid the pitfalls of reducing that variation to the environment or unspecified "Teotihuacan influence."

Urbanization and State Formation

Oaxacan urbanization occurred at the end of the Middle Formative to Late Formative in several locations and culminated in the rise of states between 500 and 200 B.C. (e.g., Balkansky, 1998a; Blanton et al.9 1999; Marcus and Flannery, 1996; Spencer and Redmond, 2001b). Yet explanations for these developments continue to focus on Monte Alban and the Valley of Oaxaca as though it were the only urban center of its time. This approach is no longer defensible empirically because the relevant range of variation in urban forms involves at least a half- dozen interacting sites in the highlands (Balkansky et al., 2004) and might also include sites on the Oaxaca Coast (Joyce et ai, 1998; Workinger, 2002). Monte Albán-centered models also assume a "single-point-of-origin and spread" model of urbanism and the state, though the recent survey results and other theoretical considerations suggest that social evolution does not necessarily operate in this way (e.g., Flannery and Marcus, 2000).

Smith (2002, Table 7.1), in a quantitative analysis of settlement patterns from across highland Mesoamerica, finds that regional settlement densities in the Basin of Mexico, Valley of Oaxaca, and Mixteca Alta were equivalent at the time of urbanization and state formation. This is among the most surprising results from the recent surveys, especially given the longstanding assumptions about the

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primacy of Monte Alban in Oaxaca and Teotihuacan in Mesoamerica. Simply put, there was no demonstrable developmental lag in regions once assumed to have been secondary in the absence of systematic data at sufficiently large scales. No current model is equipped to handle the synchronicity of urbanization and state formation over large areas of Mesoamerica or the variation among these urban centers. This variation in urban forms should become a source for new model building and the rethinking of old assumptions.

Early Formative Complexity

Questions about the Olmec as the Mesoamerican "Mother Culture" will not go away no matter how many times someone puts a stake in that vampire (see overviews in Diehl, 2000; Grove, 1997). Diehl (2004, p. 12), writing in a recent volume on the Olmec, asserts that "the mounting evidence in favor of [the Mother Culture model] has convinced almost everyone but the most die-hard opponents." Those scholars sitting on the "convinced" side of the ledger view the Olmec as an urban civilization with elites controlling production and trade, and a state-level government. Urbanism and the state are fundamentally regional in nature, so it is worth considering the Olmec settlement patterns.

Survey in the Coatzacoalcos River Basin offers the first systematic regional perspective on a major Olmec center (Symonds, 1995; Symonds and Lunagómez, 1997). This was an important study in an area that has seen little or no system- atic regional survey, but unfortunately the controversy surrounding the site-size estimate for Early Formative (or Preclassic) San Lorenzo has dominated current debates over the emergence of complex societies. It is now an article of faith among Olmec enthusiasts that San Lorenzo measured at least 300 ha in size (and possibly twice that) during the Early Formative, making it far larger than any other Mesoamerican site of its time (e.g., Clark, 1997). It is likewise unquestioned that San Lorenzo sat atop a multitiered settlement hierarchy consistent with state emergence.

Although size alone does not equal complexity (or indicate the actual density of occupation), the San Lorenzo site-size estimate has been taken to mean that the Olmec formed a state-level society some 500-700 years earlier than other parts of Mesoamerica (e.g., Symonds, 2000; see critique in Flannery, 1998). Experienced surveyors, however, will wonder whether the dense ground cover that limits surface visibility in the lowlands makes the San Lorenzo site-size estimate more wishful thinking than proven fact. Having tightly knit settlement clusters is the typical highland pattern for the same period, except that individual site boundaries within the clusters are clearly demarcated (e.g., Balkansky et a/., 2000; Hirth, 1987). If surface visibility were poor, it would be easy to mistake outlying hamlets as constituting one supersite. The same point holds for efforts to construct a regional settlement hierarchy, critical to any study of regional political complexity.

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Site-size hierarchies must be demonstrated empirically, not constructed via site typologies laden with assumptions (see Spencer and Redmond, 2004, on this point). Lunagómez (1995, pp. 934-935), who surveyed San Lorenzo, describes the patchy and intermittent visibility of the ground surface in his site description (echoed repeatedly in Symonds, 1995, pp. 34-101, for the region as a whole). The diagnostic ceramics, moreover, "are ambiguous at best when one is trying to separate the Early from the Middle Preclassic" (Symonds, 1995, p. 562). Kruger (1996), surveying independently in the river channel levees and low hills near San Lorenzo, found no evidence for elite control of riverine resources that underlie arguments favoring an Olmec state.

Recent survey data from the Mixteca Alta (Balkansky et al, 2000) show that during the Early and Middle Formative periods sites in that area were more populous and had more intensive long-distance trade connections than scholars had realized (cf., Blomster, 1998). The Nochixtlán Valley alone had four separate large (though nonurban, nonstate) polities by the Early Formative, and along with Etla (the adjacent region in the Valley of Oaxaca) was one of Mesoamerica's demographic centers of gravity (Smith, 2002). Even more remarkable was that the wider Mixteca Alta had population densities far greater than any surveyed region in highland Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Formative periods (double the Basin of Mexico, and ranging from 1 1 to 18 times greater than the Valley of Oaxaca).

Do these settlement data mean that the Mixtee rather than the Olmec were Mesoamerica's "Mother Culture"? Of course not, but systematic regional compar- ison demonstrates that the local evolutionary trajectories varied and that indices of complexity likewise varied by region (Flannery and Marcus, 2000). The really interesting question about Early Formative complexity is not who came first but the far more challenging question about the simultaneous emergence of multiple "middle range" or chiefly societies across Mesoamerica.

Building Macroregional Theory

The general approaches from symbiotic region to world system that were discussed earlier each reflect part of the large-scale reality seen in the recent regional surveys, but not all of it. Many of the specific explanations for given periods and the regions reviewed above likewise do not withstand comparative scrutiny. Archaeologists (including the author) are still looking for ways to model large-scale interactions, despite the local differences (i.e., the variation in re- gional settlement patterns and regional evolutionary trajectories). The emerging macroregional paradigm has been building over several decades as successive models eventually failed to explain the existing ranges of variation in settle- ment patterns - this ongoing process includes the culture histories that surveyors helped bury with the discovered regional variation in the 1960s; the regional

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cultural ecology that has grown moribund since surveyors went macroregional in the late 1970s and 1980s. The same problem now confronts world system models (and the generic core/periphery approach) that have been continuously revamped in the face of actual data on peripheries in the 1990s. Mesoamericanists will be hard pressed to generate a convincing master framework, but the known variation among interacting regions will play a large role.

However, there are limitations to the macroregional approach. On a practical level, not all of the surveys reviewed in this article are truly comparable in terms of field methods, data recording, and publication standards. On an empirical level, the actual nature of integration among regions is a black box into which we see only slightly at present. On a theoretical level, none of our current approaches, whether imported from ethnology, historical sociology, biology, or geography has yet proven equal to the challenge of explaining culture change over the time/space parameters of archaeological settlement patterns. It is important that we realize why this is so: approaches imported from other disciplines cannot describe the variation inherent in archaeological settlement patterns because they were not designed to do so. Archaeologists ought to be using their regional data sets to contribute to broader social science theory, whether it is a modified world system perspective (as is currently being been done) or something altogether different.

New macroregional theory, whatever its source, must cover the nested struc- tures from household to macroregion within which humans organize themselves. So how can the macroregion become a viable unit of analysis? The key in- sights will arise from understanding the local differences that reflect, however paradoxically, the common underlying causal processes that are occurring over wider areas. That is the essence of concordant change. It is a humbling prospect, knowing that your views must be modified or discarded each and every time the next region on the horizon is surveyed. The Mesoamerican survey program is a multigenerational task, and today's challenge remains the same one that faced Sanders, Parsons, and Blanton, their colleagues, and now several gener- ations of intellectual offspring who first asked questions about long-term set- tlement patterns in the Basin of Mexico and then began the long walk across Mesoamerica.

CONCLUSION

In the past 20 years, systematic regional surveys have spilled over the bounds of the Basin of Mexico and Valley of Oaxaca, creating survey blocks thousands of square kilometers in size. However, studies of these macroregional data have few guidelines and an out-moded object language to describe their significance (Blanton et al, 1993, pp. 217-219). Extant models fail to capture the current empirical reality, as the regional studies have now outpaced our capacity to analyze and make sense of the cumulative variation in settlement patterns. Recent efforts

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at analyzing macroregions in Oaxaca (Balkansky, 2002), and at the still larger scale of highland Mexico (Smith, 2002), nonetheless suggest that the known variation in settlement patterns will be among the crucial building blocks of new theory.

In the next 20 years, our collective goal for regional survey ought to be simply that it continues. Surveys, more than any other research method, have set the current research agenda for Mesoamerican archaeologists (see Sabloff and Ashmore, 2001). No method has been more productive in generating new data and new hypotheses for further research. On another level entirely, the training of new generations of field archaeologists who know how to survey must continue or decades of accumulated experience will be lost. Lastly, we must build collectively toward a new body of theory, one that explains the conjoined interdependence and variation common to the evolution of all Mesoamerican civilization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge Patricia Plunket and the four other external reviewers, who along with George Cowgill and Barbara Stark wrote long responses to the original manuscript. There are numerous observations in this article that originate from the minds and worn boot soles of those persons who taught the author how to survey, so I am grateful to have surveyed alongside Gary Feinman, Steve Kowalewski, Linda Nicholas, and Everardo Olivera. Finally, I should note the passing of Gordon R. Willey, for whom all surveyors owe a debt of gratitude.

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