Abstract
In this paper, I examine how indigenous residents of the community of Achiutla—located in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, Mexico—utilized long-distance trade routes between central Mexico and the Pacific coast, spanning the Postclassic (900–1521 CE) and Early Colonial (1522–1650 CE) periods. The maintenance of prehispanic interregional trade connections by native peoples allowed them to both continue traditional industries like those involving obsidian, while also facilitating their adoption of new types of material culture introduced from Europe. Over the long term, however, I suggest that entanglements in these economic networks had unintended consequences, which possibly included the demise of the prehispanic obsidian industry.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the Consejo de Arqueología of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, as well as the municipal government of San Miguel Achiutla, who gave their permission for the fieldwork and laboratory analyses presented here to be carried out. Financial support for this research was provided by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (#1158651), the Waitt Foundation of National Geographic, and the Cynthia M. Schultz Named Grant, administered by the Graduate School at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Svenja Kerkhof and Tomas Luvit provided assistance with laboratory analyses of many of the artifacts discussed here. I received helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper when I presented it at a seminar for the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and I thank the seminar’s participants for their feedback, as well as Dan Richter for inviting me to take part. Marc Levine and Lori Daggar also provided constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, as did three anonymous reviewers. Any remaining errors are mine alone. Finally, I wish to express sincere gratitude to the people of San Miguel Achiutla who participated in and supported this project.
Abbreviations
AJT: Archivo Juridico de Teposcolula, Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico, Pe: “Penal” category, Pr: “Protocolos” category.
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The original version of this article was revised: occurrences of “Terrace 10” were written incorrectly as “Terrace ten” throughout the article.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0384-z.
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Forde, J.E. Volcanic Glass and Iron Nails: Networks of Exchange and Material Entanglements at Late Prehispanic and Early Colonial Achiutla, Oaxaca, Mexico. Int J Histor Archaeol 21, 485–511 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0368-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0368-z