Tarascan Kingship: the Production of Hierarchy in the Prehispanic Patzcuaro Basin, Mexico
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TARASCAN KINGSHIP: THE PRODUCTION OF HIERARCHY IN THE PREHISPANIC PATZCUARO BASIN, MEXICO By DAVID LOUIS HASKELL A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 © 2008 David Louis Haskell 2 To the memory of my mother, Connie. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Most prominently I thank a trio of people without whose patience and support I could not have written this dissertation. In keeping with a theme in the dissertation, any one of them could claim to be the primary agent most responsible for this work if they so desired. The first is my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Susan Gillespie, for always taking the time to help me along the way. At every step in my graduate career, Dr. Gillespie had the uncanny ability to lead me to consider topics that I had never considered or did not know how to approach yet had always wanted to tackle. The second is Dr. Helen Pollard, who was gracious enough to introduce me to Michoacán archaeology, provided much needed assistance and advice in the field, and has always made time for me whenever I needed to pick her brain or go through her collection of sources. Surely Dr. Pollard has forgotten more about Michoacán than I will ever know, and I say that with all seriousness. The third is my wife Emmy, whose love and support made it possible for me to pursue graduate school and my doctorate in the first place. I thank the members of my doctoral committee, including Doctors Gillespie and Pollard but also including Dr. David Grove, Dr. Michael Heckenberger, and Dr. Murdo MacLeod. They have my extreme gratitude for their efforts and advice in the production of this dissertation and their constructive criticisms on how to build on it in the future. I also thank my father, who always delighted in the fact that I was a black sheep in a family of engineers, and I am grateful for his help and support as I wrote this dissertation while raising my son. In that regard, the help of my wife’s parents is also greatly appreciated. I thank Karin Rebnegger for her tremendous help in the field in 2005 and helping me to understand the significance of the lithic artifacts from Erongarícuaro. She also generously shared some of her data, and I eagerly anticipate her own dissertation on lithic production in the Tarascan core. I also thank Dr. Amy Hirshman for helping me understand the nature of the data relating to 4 sourcing ceramic pastes in the Pátzcuaro Basin. I thank the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia for permission to conduct research at Erongarícuaro. I thank the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. for the financial support (Grant number 05036) that made the 2005 field season possible. The Wenner-Gren Foundation also provided financial support (Grant number 7308) that made the radiocarbon dating of samples and chemical characterization of obsidian samples from the 2005 field season possible. In the field, I thank Aida Castilleja of Erongarícuaro and INAH for her help in obtaining permits from INAH and advice concerning the local political landscape. I thank the many people of Erongarícuaro who made my time spent there over the years quite enjoyable, and particularly the workmen of the town who were always happy to work and just as importantly happy to discuss their thoughts on their world. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF TABLES.........................................................................................................................10 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................11 ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER AS ENCOMPASSMENT IN THE TARASCAN KINGDOM.............................................................................................................................16 Introduction.............................................................................................................................16 Location and Historical Development of the Tarascan Kingdom ..........................................20 Encompassment of Subordinates in the Tarascan Core..........................................................25 Organization of the Presentation ............................................................................................27 2 ETHNOHISTORIC AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES AND DATA........................36 Introduction.............................................................................................................................36 Ethnohistoric Evidence...........................................................................................................37 Relación de Michoacán ...................................................................................................37 Other Primary Sources ....................................................................................................42 Secondary Sources...........................................................................................................43 Archaeological Evidence........................................................................................................46 Urichu..............................................................................................................................46 Erongarícuaro ..................................................................................................................50 Ceramic data from Erongarícuaro............................................................................63 Obsidian data from Erongarícuaro ...........................................................................67 Mortuary Data from Tzintzuntzan..........................................................................................68 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................69 3 INVESTIGATING AND THEORIZING THE TARASCAN KINGDOM...........................71 Introduction.............................................................................................................................71 Ethnohistoric and Archaeological Investigations of the Tarascan Kingdom .........................72 Kingly Control over People: the Tarascan Bureaucracy .................................................73 State Control Over Resources .........................................................................................77 Archaeological Studies of Kingly Power and Control ....................................................79 Models of State Formation: the Origins and Causes of Kingly Control .........................82 Critique of Models of State Formation and Kingly Control in the Tarascan Kingdom .........84 Circularities in Marxist Models.......................................................................................85 Ecological and Settlement Approaches in the Pátzcuaro Basin ......................................88 6 Political Power and the Prestige Reward Model .............................................................91 Legitimacy, Order, and Methodological Relationism .....................................................96 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................97 4 ENCOMPASSING OTHERS: CONSTRUCTING SAMENESS OVER DIFFERENCE THROUGH SOCIAL INTERACTION ...............................................................................100 Introduction...........................................................................................................................100 Relationality, Personhood, and Agency................................................................................103 Hierarchy and/as Encompassment........................................................................................106 Dumont’s Original Formulation....................................................................................108 Critique and Reformulation...........................................................................................110 Agency, Abduction, and Replication: Encompassment Through Social Action..................119 Gell’s Definition of Agency and the Role of the Index.................................................121 Primary Agents, Secondary Agents, and Causative Chains..........................................122 Abduction from Indexes and Human Secondary Agents ..............................................124 Encompassment Through the Abduction of Replication...............................................131 Encompassment and/as Tarascan Political Theory .......................................................136 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................137 5 METHODS FOR THE ETHNOHISTORIC AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF ENCOMPASSMENT.....................................................................................................140 Introduction...........................................................................................................................140 Identifying Meaningful Actions and