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Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the "Mother Culture"

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Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, 1–37 (2000) doi:10.1006/jaar.1999.0359, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the “Mother Culture” Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079 Most scholars agree that the urban states of Classic Mexico developed from Formative chiefdoms which preceded them. They disagree over whether that development (1) took place over the whole area from the Basin of Mexico to Chiapas, or (2) emanated entirely from one unique culture on the Gulf Coast. Recently Diehl and Coe (1996) put forth 11 assertions in defense of the second scenario, which assumes an Olmec “Mother Culture.” This paper disputes those assertions. It suggests that a model for rapid evolution, originally presented by biologist Sewall Wright, provides a better explanation for the explosive development of For- mative Mexican society. © 2000 Academic Press INTRODUCTION to be civilized. Five decades of subsequent excavation have shown the situation to be On occasion, archaeologists revive ideas more complex than that, but old ideas die so anachronistic as to have been declared hard. dead. The most recent attempt came when In “Olmec Archaeology” (hereafter ab- Richard Diehl and Michael Coe (1996) breviated OA), Diehl and Coe (1996:11) parted the icy lips of the Olmec “Mother propose that there are two contrasting Culture” and gave it mouth-to-mouth re- “schools of thought” on the relationship 1 suscitation. between the Olmec and the rest of Me- The notion that the Olmec of the Gulf soamerica. In the Olmec-centric school they Coast were the mother of all Mesoameri- place themselves, John Clark, Beatriz de la can civilizations goes back more than half Fuente, Paul Tolstoy, and the late Alfonso a century (Covarrubias 1944), to a time Caso, Ignacio Bernal, Miguel Covarrubias, when Formative archaeology was in its Matthew Stirling, and George Vaillant. infancy. Scholars of the 1940s saw general This group, they allege, agrees with them stylistic similarities between the Gulf that the Olmec were different from their Coast and the Mexican highlands; since contemporaries in kind rather than de- Olmec centers had stone monuments and gree, creating the entire symbolic system the highlands generally did not, it was of 1150–500 b.c.2 and becoming the assumed that the Gulf Coast was in the Mother Culture of later Mesoamerican forefront and the highlands were begging civilization. In the primus inter pares school they place William R. Coe, Arthur Demar- 1 While Diehl is given as the co-author of the 1996 est, John Graham, David Grove, Norman resuscitation, he and Coe are not always in full Hammond, Flannery and Marcus, Robert agreement. For example, Diehl believes (as do we) Stuckenrath, Jr., and the late Sir Eric that the Olmec were a set of chiefdoms; Coe does not (Coe and Diehl 1980b:147). Coe believes that the Thompson. They describe this school as Olmec site of San Lorenzo is a gigantic bird effigy; believing that the Olmec were “no more Diehl (personal communication, 1990) does not. We advanced than any other” Formative cul- thus feel uncomfortable including Diehl in our re- buttal of what are largely Coe’s views. Our compro- mise is simply to refer to the Diehl and Coe (1996) 2 In this paper, lowercase “b.c.” is used for uncali- paper by its title, “Olmec Archaeology.” brated radiocarbon years before the Christian era. 1 0278-4165/00 $35.00 Copyright © 2000 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 2 FLANNERY AND MARCUS ture and contributed “little if anything to communities. Chiefdoms are not a mono- later [Mesoamerican] civilization.” lithic category; they come in many differ- Our school would be happy to chal- ent types. Some, like those of Panama’s lenge the Olmec-centrists to a tug-of-war, Azuero Peninsula, were sedentary and since half the members of their team are flamboyant (Lothrop 1937; Linares 1977; dead. However, their portrayal of our po- Helms 1979). Others, like those of Iran’s sition is not accurate—a familiar problem Zagros Mountains, were pastoral and when one is being used as a straw man. non-flamboyant (Barth 1964; Flannery in We would not describe the Olmec as “no press). Within Polynesia alone, Goldman more advanced” or “contributing little.” (1970) has classified some chiefdoms as Their contribution has simply been exag- “traditional” (based more on sacred au- gerated by Olmec-centrists, who credit thority), others as “open” (based more on the Olmec with many things their neigh- secular power), and still others as “strati- bors did earlier or better. fied” (large, with a combination of sacred OA presents 11 “traits” which allegedly authority and secular power). Nowadays show the Olmecs’ maternal role in Me- the term “paramount” often substitutes soamerica’s genealogy (Diehl and Coe for Goldman’s “stratified.” While rank in 1996:23). We find those traits unconvinc- traditional chiefdoms usually took the ing and suggest that there are better form of a continuum from higher to lower frameworks than the Mother Culture status, a few paramount chiefdoms—like model, which we do not find appropriate those in Hawai’i (Kirch 1984: Fig. 85)— for any world region. One alternative is a achieved stratification by cutting lower- model for the conditions leading to rapid status families out of the genealogy, re- evolution, presented by the distinguished ducing them to a commoner class. biologist Sewall Wright (1939). Even be- In some parts of the ancient world, fore refuting the 11 traits, however, we chiefdoms persisted for centuries. Re- must modify the authors’ caricature of our search in such regions has defined a long- position. term process called “chiefly cycling” (H. Wright 1984; Anderson 1994). In this pro- PRIMUS INTER PARES: A cess, paramount chiefdoms rose, peaked, CLARIFICATION then collapsed amid a regional landscape of smaller traditional or open chiefdoms. Any model for the Olmec and their It is increasingly clear that paramount neighbors must be based on our current chiefdoms formed by taking over their understanding of complex societies, weaker neighbors (Carneiro 1981, 1991). which is far greater now than in Vaillant’s Their collapses resulted from such factors or Covarrubias’s day (Anderson 1994; as competition between chiefly families or Carneiro 1981, 1991; Drennan and Uribe factions, endemic raiding, agricultural 1987; Earle 1991a, b, 1997; Flannery 1995, failure, or demographic imbalance, and 1999; Goldman 1970; Johnson 1987; Kirch usually took the form of fragmentation 1984; Kirch and Green 1987; Marcus 1989, back into the smaller units from which 1992; Marcus and Flannery 1996; Spencer they had been created. We view the 1993, 1998; H. Wright 1984, 1986). Olmec as one more set of paramount Among the most interesting societies in chiefdoms that rose, peaked, and eventu- the ethnographic and archaeological ally collapsed in a landscape of traditional records are chiefdoms—societies based on and open chiefdoms. hereditary differences in rank, in which A rare paramount chiefdom might suc- the chief’s authority extends to satellite ceed in subduing and incorporating other MEXICAN CHIEFDOMS AND MOTHER CULTURE 3 large chiefdoms, creating a polity so great shell, iron ore mirrors, and the like (Pires- that it could no longer be administered as Ferreira 1975). Tlapacoya in the Basin of a chiefdom (Spencer 1998). This is how Mexico sent Paloma Negative and Cesto indigenous states formed in Madagascar White pottery to San Jose´ Mogote in the (Dewar and Wright 1993) and among the Valley of Oaxaca; Oaxaca sent Leandro Zulu, Ashanti, Hunza, and Hawai’ians Gray and Delfina Fine Gray pottery to (Flannery 1999). It is becoming increas- Tlapacoya and to San Lorenzo, Veracruz ingly clear that the first states in south- (Marcus 1989:192; Flannery and Marcus west Iran, Egypt, Peru, Oaxaca, and the 1994:259–263, 286). San Jose´ Mogote re- Maya region also formed this way (H. ceived turtle shell drums and pearly Wright 1986; Flannery 1995; Marcus 1992, freshwater mussels from the San Lorenzo 1993, 1998a; Marcus and Flannery 1996). It region; it also received Guamuchal makes the study of chiefdoms all the more Brushed pottery from Chiapas (Flannery interesting to discover that, on at least and Marcus 1994:286). Magnetite from some occasions, they became the “precur- Oaxaca reached San Pablo in Morelos and sors” of states (Carneiro 1981; H. Wright San Lorenzo in Veracruz (Pires-Ferreira 1984). 1975). It took more than 1000 years for Mexi- There are two reasons why such ex- co’s Formative societies to become com- changes of goods should not surprise us. plex enough to serve as precursors for The first is that intersite distances were states. By the middle of the second mil- not great. Given foot travel estimates of lennium b.c., agricultural villages were 4.5 km per h (Morley 1938:234) or 32 km spread over the whole area from the Basin per day (Hammond 1978), even a trip from of Mexico to the Pacific Coast of Chiapas. the Basin of Mexico to the Chiapas Coast Some, but not all, of these village societies would take less than a month. The second had been reorganized into states by the reason is that chiefly elites are always ea- beginning of the Christian era. ger for prestigious gifts from other chiefly We know less about this transitional pe- elites. riod than we should, since some archae- ologists assume that their sites belong to THE OLMEC IN WIDER CONTEXT chiefdoms without producing evidence of the requisite sociopolitical institutions. Let us now look at the Olmec in the Elsewhere we have suggested that as context of chiefdoms worldwide.
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