TY - JOUR
T1 - The archaeologically study of empires and imperialism in pre-hispanic central Mexico
AU - Smith, Michael E.
AU - Montiel, Lisa
N1 - Funding Information:
Much of our interest in the identification of central Mexican empires comes from our work with the Albany Yautepec project. The Yautepec excavations were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Heinz Foundation. The Yautepec survey was supported by the National Science Foundation (dissertation grants to Montiel and Timothy S. Hare), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Geographic Society, the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, and the University at Albany. We are grateful for help and support from offi- cials of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histo-ria, especially Norberto González Crespo, Hortensia de Vega Nova, Victor Hugo Valencia Valera, and Joaquín García-Bárcena. We would like to acknowledge the assistance and insights of our colleagues on the Yautepec project, especially Timothy S. Hare and Cynthia Heath-Smith. Smith would also like to thank the participants in two recent conferences for stimulating discussion on issues relating to our theme, “Imperial Designs: The Comparative Dynamics of Early Empires,” organized by Susan Alcock, Terence D’Altroy, Kathleen Morrison, and Carla Sinopoli in Mijas, Spain, in October, 1997, and “The Postclassic Mesoamerican World System,” organized by Smith and Frances F. Berdan in East Lansing in April, 1999 (both conferences were funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research). A preliminary version of some of the ideas discussed here was presented by Smith at the Texas Maya Symposium in Austin, TX, in March, 1998. We thank George Cowgill, Timothy Earle, Arthur Joyce, Jay Silverstein, Katharina Schreiber, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Cynthia Kristan-Graham for pointing out the El Cerrito sculptures to us and Timothy S. Hare for providing the Early Postclassic type counts from the Yautepec survey and for providing digital base maps of central Mexico.
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - The hegemonic-type empires of ancient Mesoamerica are difficult to study archaeologically because they left fewer material traces than more territorially organized empires such as the Inka or Roman cases. We present a material culture model for the identification of such empires using archaeological data. The model, based upon Michael Doyle's analytical approach to imperialism, is developed from historical and archaeological research on ancient empires from the Old World and South America. Empires can be identified from three types of evidence: characteristics of the capital city, evidence for varying types of political domination of provincial areas, and examples of the projection of influence in a larger, international context. We apply this model to archaeological data on three central Mexican cases- Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan, and Tula. The results suggest that both Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan ruled empires, whereas Tula did not.
AB - The hegemonic-type empires of ancient Mesoamerica are difficult to study archaeologically because they left fewer material traces than more territorially organized empires such as the Inka or Roman cases. We present a material culture model for the identification of such empires using archaeological data. The model, based upon Michael Doyle's analytical approach to imperialism, is developed from historical and archaeological research on ancient empires from the Old World and South America. Empires can be identified from three types of evidence: characteristics of the capital city, evidence for varying types of political domination of provincial areas, and examples of the projection of influence in a larger, international context. We apply this model to archaeological data on three central Mexican cases- Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan, and Tula. The results suggest that both Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan ruled empires, whereas Tula did not.
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U2 - 10.1006/jaar.2000.0372
DO - 10.1006/jaar.2000.0372
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0035192296
SN - 0278-4165
VL - 20
SP - 245
EP - 284
JO - Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
JF - Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
IS - 3
ER -