Archaeologists focus on interregional interaction because of its visibility, methodological innovations that identify foreign objects’ sources, and its role in the sociocultural dynamics of ancient societies. This new volume, edited by Joshua D. Englehardt and Michael D. Carrasco, brings together scholars from various academic disciplines to explore the nature of interaction across time and space in Mesoamerica. Proving that interaction occurred represents just the first stage in a larger interpretive process about the nature of contact and the relationships between different groups. Through 10 data-rich chapters, bookended by four framing essays, the editors charge their authors to focus on the kinds of cultural innovations that these contacts may have catalyzed and their impact on sociocultural complexity and economic systems. A focus on local agency—a mantra in all chapters—unites the authors, whereas individual chapters diverge in how much influence they attribute to the foreign.
In their introduction, the editors contextualize decades of research on this topic, providing cogent critiques of four approaches: causal-functional, trade-based models, world system theory, and social network analysis. Given their frequent critiques of the overly economic focus of these approaches, it would have proven useful to include more recent approaches, such as community of practice or Mary Helms's acquisition, that challenge formalist exchange models. Wisely eschewing one particular epistemology, the editors adopt a “conjunctive approach” that “juxtaposes distinct contexts, disciplinary perspectives, and methodologies” (p. 6). Not further explicated, the term may prove infelicitous given its association with W. W. Taylor, the inspiration for the more materialist aims of the processualists. The editors establish interaction as part of larger sociocultural processes and higher-order dynamics, in some instances generative of institutions and systems. In his conclusion, David Freidel constructively critiques each chapter, echoing the editors’ interest in less of an economic focus on interaction. In terms of local agency, Freidel considers choices exercised by individuals regarding how much sociocultural “baggage” remained attached to the objects brought into communities through interaction.
Chapters 1 and 12 provide processual approaches to interaction. In the first chapter, Gary M. Feinman usefully explores systematic approaches to documenting interaction. His explicitly formalist economic emphasis rejects the possible importance of symbols and expansive religions, a position contradicted by several subsequent chapters. Joyce Marcus in Chapter 12 finds local competitive interaction more transformative than interregional interaction, which she mischaracterizes as inevitably “peaceful” and “friendly.” Marcus asserts that rival villages challenged San José Mogote, leading ultimately to the emergence of the Monte Albán state. Her scenario of chiefly realms neatly occupying each of Oaxaca's three subvalleys remains unsupported by clear evidence for competition and conflict between them, as well as recent discoveries of contemporaneous occupations in the supposed “buffer zone” separating them. Responding to Marcus's assertion that Calakmul was the latest of four rivals taking their turn as the dominant center during a millennium of competition in the El Mirador region, Freidel cites new discoveries that make her conclusions untenable and proposes a more cooperative-based model. Although local competition may certainly be an important factor in social change, Marcus's own case studies do not support her long-standing efforts to elevate it as a prime mover.
Guy David Hepp in Chapter 2 analyzes the Early Formative site of La Consentida on the Oaxacan coast. Based on a series of early radiocarbon dates, Hepp establishes the Tlacuache phase (1950–1500 cal BCE) as an early variant of the Red-on-Buff ceramic horizon, although lacking some decorations associated with highland Oaxacan iterations. He interprets “sunburst” designs as evincing a closer connection to the Capacha phase of West Mexico, with La Consentida part of a proposed Pacific coastal interaction network that linked West Mexico to distant areas such as South America. His pre-Capacha phase dates from La Consentida complicate this scenario, as does the lack of obsidian from West Mexican sources, suggesting the numerous networks with which La Consentida engaged.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the movement of text and language. Englehardt and Carrasco affirm that interaction involves the exchange of intangible ideas, crucial in the development of Middle to Late Formative scripts. Outlining an intriguing linguistic approach to explore how specific signs enter different systems with subsequent changes in meaning and form, the authors suggest that exchanged icons may have initially maintained associated meanings, which were then transformed as visual signs were reinterpreted linguistically. Engaging with the complex relationship between local agency and foreign symbols, the authors indicate that an iconographic system's spread may reproduce a dominant discourse, even when incorporated into a local stylistic canon. Their Middle Formative Olmec art example would benefit from additional attention to the temporality of Early and Middle Formative icons. Kerry M. Hull explores social and linguistic interactions and influences on each other in different Mayan languages. Hull establishes “hieroglyphic Ch'olan” as the language of the Maya script, with its frequency as a donor of loanwords to other languages linked to its prestige. Hull attributes most of the linguistic sharing to trade, again reinforcing the notion that exchange involved more than material goods.
Local engagements with Teotihuacan remain contested, as evinced by Chapters 5–8. D. Bryan Schaeffer focuses on the appearance at Maya sites of one object type that references Teotihuacan aesthetic tropes: the ceramic tripod vessel. Concentrating on Maya innovations to these vessels, he argues that Early Classic Maya artisans adapted this form, creating a hybrid aesthetic that fused stylistic and iconographic elements of both civilizations; this autochthonizing process reflected distant Teotihuacan associations, enhancing the local Maya ruler's prestige. Jesper Nielsen, Elizabeth Jiménez García, and Iván Rivera analyze an impressive corpus of carved stone monuments from Guerrero. Although they acknowledge Teotihuacan's militarism, materialized as Teotihuacan “imperial iconography,” they interpret these stones as part of vibrant, local sculptural traditions, the products of “peripheral centers” contrasting with art from undiscovered “provincial centers,” which would adhere more closely to Teotihuacan aesthetics. Philip J. Arnold III and Lourdes Budar reject significant highland interaction within the Tuxtlas region of the Gulf Coast and instead examine interaction with the lowland Maya, especially through maritime travel. Three datasets exhibit these Gulf Coast contacts: the Stela-Base-Throne complex, fine paste pottery, and mold-made figurines. The authors conclude that these substantial connections united the southern Gulf lowlands with the coastal Maya region. Charles L. F. Knight focuses on Cantona, second in population in the Classic central highlands only to Teotihuacan. Similar to Teotihuacan's monopoly over Pachuca obsidian, Cantona controlled the Zaragoza-Oyameles source. In his survey around that source, Knight found only 15 projectile points that resemble two Teotihuacan-associated types. Knight argues for Cantona production of these points not only because of their use of local obsidian but also due to the contrasting flaking technology between these two cities, an important insight with much potential in its application to lithic assemblages. Knight concludes that Cantona operated its own independent exchange networks for provisioning eastern Mesoamerica with obsidian.
Chapters 9–11 span the Classic to Postclassic periods. José Luis Punzo Díaz provides a comprehensive overview of the Chalchihuites culture of northwest Mexico. Rather than a “frontier,” he posits it as a zone of interaction and cultural contact that both produced and used objects representing broader pan-Mesoamerican traditions, with such materials serving as prestige goods displayed by local elites. To understand long-term continuity in Cholula, Timothy J. Knab and John M. D. Pohl advance the concept of rotating power structures as both more stable and common than the Aztec imperial model. The authors compare the maintenance of barrios that extend back at least to the sixteenth century with partnerships in long-distance exchange, asserting that both flourished because of the greater number of participants and amount of social capital. Tracing the sponsorship of competitive feasts in return for positions of civic power back to the establishment of the Quetzalcoatl cult during Toltec times, the authors conclude that Cholula promoted a centralizing ideology without military dominance, which bound ethnically diverse groups together throughout central and southern highland Mexico. Niklas Schulze and Blanca E. Maldonado provide a fascinating overview of the movement of metal objects in Late Postclassic Mexico, where metal's value as a material was symbolic and aesthetic rather than economic. Focusing on formal homogeneity and unique alloys of copper bells excavated at the Aztec Templo Mayor, they conclude the bells were redistributed and reworked by local artisans, probably in state-run workshops.
I congratulate the editors for assembling such an informative series of essays. The strength of this book is the empirical data, and I encourage colleagues to take the plunge and explore these richly presented analyses of sites and their materials.
