RANKED SOCIETIES AND THE ESCALATION OF WARFARE

During the Middle Formative (700–300 BC) chiefdoms in the southern lowlands likely varied greatly in population and in their degree of complexity.

In the Mixteca Alta, the site of Tayata in the Huamenlupan Valley is known from both survey and excavation. Tayata is first occupied in the Early Formative. Two burial contexts dating to around 1000 BC may suggest the emergence of ranking. Each contained an individual who had been cremated. The burials were associated with a high-status residence with evidence for feasting and craft production. The individuals were interred with figurines, shells, and dogs (possibly consumed during mortuary rituals). Ethnohistoric documents and pictorial codices record the cremation of nobles in the Mixteca region from about 1000 AD. The discovery of this very early context may indicate that cremation is specific elite cultural practice with a very deep history (Duncan et al. 2008). In the Middle Formative Tayata emerges as a regional center at the head of a two-tier settlement hierarchy. It is outfitted with public architecture including a large platform and a 90-meterlong plaza that could have accommodated 4,000 persons, likely the entire occupation of the valley (Balkansky 1998b).

In the Oaxaca Valley during the Rosario phase (700–500 BC) there is strong evidence for ranked societies that exhibit a hierarchy of three levels. Eventually chiefly centers appear in Etla (San José Mogote), Valle Grande (San Martin Tilcajete), and Tlacolula (Yegüih). Etla is the valley’s demographic center, with eighteen to twenty-three out of seventy to eightyfive total villages. There is discussion about population estimates for Etla and for San José Mogote. Rosario phase population estimates are derived from counts of diagnostic sherds gathered in surface collections. Some consider that San José Mogote suffered a demographic decline in the Rosario period (Kowalewski et al. 1989: 72–77). Others point to an overreliance on elite wares in interpreting the Rosario population and suggest that when low-status households are proportionally represented the population does not decline and could be estimated at some 1,000 people (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 122–123).

The Middle Formative is notable for an escalation in competition and warfare among chiefly polities, suggesting the establishment of a pattern of raiding, temple burning, and capture for sacrifice. Regional evidence for conflict includes elevated counts in surface collections of burned clay daub from structures and the appearance of an uninhabited buffer zone at the center of the valley where the three branches meet (Flannery and Marcus 2003; Kowalewski et al. 1989: 70; Spencer 2003). Excavations at San José Mogote show the site was outfitted with a wattle-and-clay daub temple sitting on a lime-plastered platform. Over generations the temple was enlarged to reach 21.7 by 28.5 meters. At one point in its life span, the temple was burned in a fire so intense as to turn the clay daub into “masses of grayish, glassy cinders.” A carved-stone monument dated to about 600 BC found near the temple shows a named person (“One Earthquake”) who was a victim of heart sacrifice (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 124–130).

Scholars who posit that hereditary inequality emerged after 700 BC tie its development to a hypothesis suggesting political upheaval in the Oaxaca Valley resulting from a disruption of long-standing trade networks and interactions linking Mesoamerica. This view supports a demographic decline during the Rosario phase and the idea that San José Mogote lost population and influence to other chiefly centers in the valley. The town’s burned temple represents a “stark demonstration of a profound political and religious crisis.” In this environment, some elites gained control over sacred knowledge and authority, which facilitated the establishment of hereditary status distinctions (Joyce 2010: 121–124).

San José Mogote’s burned temple was replaced by a stone masonry residence and tomb. The complement of goods recovered from the residence and tomb—serving bowls, anthropomorphic braziers, jade, whistles, and obsidian blood-letting tools and projectile points—shows the elites were well on their way to fulfilling roles as leaders in feasting, warfare, communicating with ancestors, and bloodletting ceremonies propitiating supernatural forces (Marcus 1989; Marcus and Flannery 1996: 131–134).