Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Household Intensification and Agrarian States: Excavation of a House and Terraced Field in a Mixtec Cacicazgo

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support Ms. Veronica Perez Rodriguez will conduct archaeological and ethnohistorical research in the Mixteca Alta region, Oaxaca, Mexico. The Mixteca Alta is a mountainous region in southern Mexico, known for its late prehispanic cacicazgos or kingdoms. This project will study economy, social stratification, and agricultural intensification in Postclassic Mixtec society (AD 800-1521). The ancient Mixtec adapted to their mountainous environment by building terraces and intensifying agricultural production in ways that were sustainable over many centuries; historical accounts suggest that the commoners worked these terraces, but little else is known about their lives or roles in intensive agricultural production. Scholars usually explain agricultural intensification as a response to population growth, or the demands of elites and the state. Ms. Perez Rodriguez's study takes a "bottom up" perspective by looking at the food-producing commoner households and their role in the system of intensive agricultural production. Mixtec dynastic history contains accounts of political rises and falls. But what actually supported Mixtec society over the long term was the stable agricultural production of commoner households. How was Mixtec agricultural production organized and sustained over centuries? How did food-producing commoner households contribute to the system of intensive agricultural production? What lessons are there for today's issues of population growth and environmental degradation? This study will investigate the proposition that food-producing commoner households could have self-directed the Mixtec system of intensive agricultural production. Ms. Perez Rodriguez will map, survey, and excavate a Postclassic Mixtec site-Nicayuhu-a densely populated hilltop terraced site surrounded by still-standing prehispanic agricultural terraces. Mapping and survey data will be used to identify commoner residential occupations and other areas for excavation. Excavations in residential and agricultural terraces will provide information on terrace construction and will determine whether commoners lived on or had usufruct rights over these terraces. Continuity of occupation in the excavated residential area would support the hypothesis that commoner households could have created and self-directed intensive agricultural production. Agricultural terrace construction that was consistent with gradual accretion by household labor (i.e., households secured their tenure rights through occupation and use of agricultural terraces and associated residential areas) would lend further support. Ms. Perez Rodriguez will study Colonial documents at State and National archives in Mexico City to derive an ethnohistorical model of prehispanic agricultural production, land use, and land tenure that will be used to interpret the excavation results. This research is important because it will provide data on the role of the state in the creation and implementation of intensive agricultural production. It will explore the possibility that sustainable intensive agricultural systems may have originated from household-level initiatives and decision-making that can only come from very intimate knowledge of the local environment. This study would be the first systematic excavation of Postclassic commoner households and nearby agricultural terraces in the state of Oaxaca. The results will provide a time-depth perspective to measure terracing sustainability and erosion control; and will generate data on the social organization of agricultural intensification and the food-producing class.