OUTLINE OF CHAPTER SIX Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus’s “Actor-Centered” Story of Oaxacan Social Evolution: Charismatic Leadership and an Illusion of Control……….436 I. An “Action Theory” Approach: Reimagining Zapotecs as Rational, Pragmatic, Self-Serving “Social Actors”…………………………………………………..440 A. Mediating pre-Hispanic Oaxacans’ Strangeness and Familiarity: The Practicality of “the Ancient Zapotec Mind”…………………………………..443 B. Mediating Individual Initiative and Systemic Constraints: An Unprecedented Emphasis on Personal Leadership Choices.………………….446 II. A Guiding Narrative Theme: Illusions of Control via the Paradox of Thoughtful Decisions and Unintended Consequences…………………………………….448 A. Personal Initiative and Unpredicted Outcomes: Escaping from and Acquiescing to “the System”……………………………………………….…449 B. The Poignancy of Unpredictability: Specific Oaxacan Histories and Universalistic Perplexities…………………………………………………….451 III. The Sequence of Events: Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus’s Historical (Re)construction………………………………………….…………………...452 A. The Formative, Pre-Urban Era: Oaxaca in Advance of Monte Albán……………………………………………………………………….452 1. Long Before Monte Albán: Early Oaxacan Social Evolution via Deliberate Decisions and Unintended Consequences………………….455 2. Still Before Monte Albán: Charismatic Leadership, Inklings of Urbanism and Precedents to the Great Zapotec Capital……………...…458 3. Just Before Monte Albán: Increasing Greed, Selfishness, Contestation, Violence and Aggression……………………………………463 4. An Ongoing Pattern of Selfishness and Serendipity: Ever-Escalating Violence and the Inadvertent Creation of a “Buffer Zone”………………..468 B. The Early Period I Origins of Monte Albán: Unpredicted and Unprecedented Urbanism………………………………………………………….472 1. The Mechanism of Urban Origins: A Startling and Stupendous, but not Aberrant Instance of Synoikism…………………………………...472 2. Early Period I Events and Actors: Preemptive Diplomacy and a Strategic Migration from San José Mogote to Monte Albán…………….478 3. Two Narrative Adjustments: Similarly Astute but More Ruthless Rulers and More Ethnically Homogeneous Residents…………………….480 4. Yet Another Danzante Interpretation: Evidence of Single-Minded Militarism, Continuity with San José Mogote and Ethnic Homogeneity….484 C. The Late Period I Transition from Chiefdom toward State: Inadvertent Zapotec Ethnogenesis……………………………………………………………...486 1. Hawaiian-Oaxaca Parallels: Leadership Decisions, Manpower Advantages and a Not-Inevitable Transition to Statehood………………...488 2. Momentum toward Statehood: 400 Years of “Spectacular Demographic and Militaristic Expansion” ………………………………..491 3. Unintended Consequences of the “Piedmont Strategy”: Military Motives but Cultural, Artistic and Intellectual Ramifications……………..492 D. The Period II Transition from State toward Empire: Political Climax before Cultural Florescence………………………………………………………..496 1. A Surprising Pre-Classic Climax: Single-Minded Leaders, Spectacular Growth and Maximal Regional Influence…………………….498 2. Manufacturing Royal Lineages: Overbearing Leaders and/or Overbearing Applications of Action Theory………………………………502 3. Imagining Propagandistic Purposes at Every Turn: Ballcourts, Two-Room Temples and Building J……………………………………….506 4. Axiomatic Action Theory and Competitive Authoritarianisms: Cross-fertilizing Zapotec and Maya Leadership Styles……………………509 E. The Period III “Golden Age” of the Zapotecs: Growing City, Shrinking State……………………………………………………………………..511 1. Classic-Era Monte Albán: Considered Consolidation and Predictably Unpredictable Consequences………………………………….513 2. A Postclassic-like Classic Era: Generic Action Theory Leaders and Leadership Styles……………………………………………………...517 3. “Royal Propaganda”: More Intimidation, More Fabricated Semi-Divine Lineages, Same Old Priorities……………………………….519 4. Reassessing the Teotihuacan-Monte Albán Connection: “Skilled Diplomacy” and the Pretense of Support………………………...523 5. Transforming Obstacles into Opportunities: Cagey Oaxacan Rulers and Cagey Archaeologist-Authors…………………………………527 F. The Period IV & V Decline and Abandonment: Imagining an “Actor-Centered” Ending to the Zapotec Capital………………………………….529 1. Leadership Decisions and the Decline of Monte Albán: Outmaneuvered and/or Outmaneuvering Themselves……………………..530 2. Self-Deluding Propaganda: Monte Albán Rulers as Resources rather than Agents of Political Manipulation………………………………533 IV. Closing Thoughts: Three Leaderly Tensions of Specific and General Interest……………535 A. Compelling versus Despicable Leaders: Proposing Inspiring Models and/or Engendering Cynicism……………………………………………………..537 B. Religious versus Irreligious Leaders: Exemptions from and/or Investments in “the Ancient Zapotec Mind”………………………………………538 C. Commanding versus Unavailing Leaders: Deliberate Decisions, Unintended Consequences and the Illusion of Control……………………………543 CHAPTER SIX Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus’s “Actor-Centered” Story of Oaxacan Social Evolution: Charismatic Leadership and an Illusion of Control “What happened next was the least predictable event in the history of the Valley of Oaxaca… The great emergent novelty of 500-200 BC was urban society, something without precedent in Mesoamerica. As we have seen, however, the path taken by the founders of Monte Albán was not the only possible path to urbanism; it was the result of decisions made in the context of a specific cultural- historical setting.” Joyce Marcus and Kent V. Flannery, 19961 With work of Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, we return to the esteemed lineage in Oaxaca archaeology that runs from Alfonso Caso to Ignacio Bernal and John Paddock, Flannery’s teacher; and thus the threads, or better webs, that connect their renditions of ancient Oaxaca with previous (re)constructions are extensive and tangled. Though the co-authored text on which I concentrate in this chapter—Flannery and Marcus’s Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley (1996)—was produced considerably after Richard Blanton’s Monte Albán: Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Zapotec Capital (1978), Blanton was actually Flannery’s student, as was Marcus, whose first area of in-depth concern was the Maya. These three are, then, less successors than largely contemporaneous colleagues and collaborators, all of whom share many opinions, including, as we’ve seen, their discontent with much of Marcus Winter’s work. * Note that I have managed the footnotes in ways that respect “the first citation” (which is thus a full bibliographical citation) in this chapter, irrespective of whether that work was cited in a previous chapter. Also, to avoid confusion in this typescript, I have retained the quotation marks on all quotes, including those that are formatted as block quotations. 1 Joyce Marcus and Kent V. Flannery, Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 241. Chapter 6; Marcus & Flannery’s Story of Monte Albán; p. 437 Acknowledging his teacher in numerous prefaces, Blanton, for instance, credits Flannery “for instructing my colleagues and me in the essentials of Oaxaca archaeology;”2 and Flannery returns the compliment to his student-become-colleague with frequent references and appeals to Blanton’s work. As noted in chapter 4, Flannery’s Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca Project, which began in 1964, provided the impetus for Blanton’s Prehistoric Settlement Patterns of the Valley of Oaxaca Project, which started in 1971.3 The two major projects were, in other words, conceived and conducted as complementary. Joyce Marcus, an archaeologist with strong interests in Maya epigraphy (and Andean studies), shifted focus to Oaxaca and braced the collaboration especially in several major ways. In 1973, she joined Flannery as co- director of the Human Ecology Project; and also, beginning in 1971, she initiated a third complementary long-running project focused on the area’s carved monuments and hieroglyphs, entitled “Zapotec Monuments and Political History.” By the mid 1990s, Flannery and Marcus could reminisce that, “All three of these projects have worked in concert for more than two decades, yielding better results through the collaboration than they could have alone. To be sure, there are occasional conflicts between various sets of data... Despite these conflicts—inevitable when multiple lines of evidence are used to attack a common research problem—all three projects described above are in agreement 90 percent of the time.”4 Though that may be an over-generous estimate of the extent of consensus, all three have, then, worked in close collaboration in the Valley of Oaxaca since the 1970s and, as one reviewer notes, they “draw on a mutually accepted body of data, much of it acquired through their own research, and employ many of the same interpretive 2 Richard E. Blanton, Monte Albán: Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Zapotec Capital (New York: Academic Press, 1978; Clinton Corners, NY: Percheron Press, 2004), “Prologue to the Percheron Press Edition,” vi. 3 Regarding the different but interrelated agendas of the two projects, see, for instance, Marcus and Flannery, Zapotec Civilization, 29. 4 Marcus and Flannery, Zapotec Civilization, 29. Chapter 6; Marcus & Flannery’s Story of Monte Albán; p. 438 techniques.”5 Nonetheless, for present purposes, it is Flannery and Marcus’ differences with Blanton—differences that may qualify more as family squabbles than the sort of acrimonious exchanges they have had with Winter—that will be of greatest interest. Most