Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization · 2016. 9. 9. · 2007), domesticity (Plunket 2002), rubbish disposal (Hutson and Stanton 2007), politics (Joyce 2000), and identity

Ensoulment, Entrapment, andPolitical Centralization

A Comparative Study of Religion and Politicsin Later Formative Oaxaca

by Arthur A. Joyce and Sarah B. Barber

CA1 Online-Only Material: Supplement A

In this article, we examine the interplay of religion and politics during the later Formative period of Mesoamericathrough a comparison of two regions of southern Mexico: the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca.Archaeological evidence shows that these regions had dramatically different later Formative histories. In the lowerVerde, we find that religion constrained changes that could have stabilized political centralization. A crucial aspectlimiting the creation of multicommunity authority and identities was the physical entrapment of the bones ofancestors, offerings, and divine beings within public buildings in local communities. In contrast, in the Valley ofOaxaca, we find that religion fostered developments that would eventually give rise to a politically centralized polity,with its seat of government at the hilltop city of Monte Albán. Both regions show that religion was not necessarily aunifying factor in social change, as has often been assumed, but instead could be a crucible of tension and conflictthrough which political innovations were produced. This comparative study leads us to considerations of broaderhistorical factors that contribute to understandings of when religion can be constraining or enabling of politicalchange.

Archaeological research in Mesoamerica has typically exam-ined religion as a mechanism for the integration of complexsocieties and the legitimation of political hierarchies. Inte-gration and legitimation are often viewed as necessary ele-ments of general cultural evolutionary processes that resultin increased hierarchy and a greater scale of political con-trol. The role of religion in these scenarios is secondary towhat are considered ultimate causal factors driving the evo-lution of social complexity, such as warfare (e.g., Carneiro1970; Spencer 2010), the control of key resources (e.g., Lu-cero 2006), and the obligations and influence gained bystatus-seeking aggrandizers (e.g., Clark and Blake 1994). Anemphasis on the great tradition of elite religion has alsolimited consideration of the ways that political authority wasnegotiated and contested among diverse constituencies viareligious idioms (Lohse 2007; McAnany 1995). Only recently

have archaeologists begun to investigate the religious beliefsand practices of nonelites and to recognize religion as a so-cial field through which power was negotiated and societieswere transformed (e.g., Barber and Joyce 2007; Joyce 2000;McAnany 1995; Yaeger 2003; but see Coe 1981).

In this article, we use an approach based on theories of power,practice, and materiality to address the interplay of religionand politics during the later Formative period (700 BCE–250CE) through a comparison of two regions in Oaxaca, Mex-ico: the lower Río Verde Valley on the Pacific coast and thehighland Valley of Oaxaca (fig. 1; see also figs. A1–A28 in CA1online supplement A). We argue that in both regions, reli-gious belief, practice, and the material items and settings inwhich religion was enacted were crucial to the political changesof the period. Yet our two regions had dramatically divergentlater Formative histories that point to different outcomes inrelations between religion and political change. In the lowerVerde, religion constrained political centralization. In contrast,in the Valley of Oaxaca, we find that religion fostered socialchanges that would eventually give rise to a centralized polity,with its political seat at the city of Monte Albán. Both regionsalso show that religion was not necessarily a unifying factor insocial change, as has often been assumed, but instead could bea crucible of tension and conflict from which political inno-vations were derived.

Arthur A. Joyce is Professor in the Department of Anthropology atthe University of Colorado Boulder (Hale Science 350, 1350 Pleas-ant Street, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA [[email protected]]). Sarah B. Barber is Associate Professor in the Department ofAnthropology at the University of Central Florida (Howard PhillipsHall 309, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando, Florida 32816,USA). This paper was submitted 7 IX 14, accepted 24 I 15, and elec-tronically published 26 X 15.

q 2015 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2015/5606-0003$10.00. DOI:10.1086/683998

Current Anthropology Volume 56, Number 6, December 2015 819

Although our focus is on religion and political organiza-tion, we consider the ways in which these factors were en-meshed with a broader array of social, economic, material,and ideological conditions. This comparative study leads usto considerations of broader historical factors that contrib-ute to understandings of when religion can be constrainingor enabling of political change. We begin our examinationof later Formative Oaxaca through a discussion of the the-oretical perspective through which we approach religion andpolitics.

Theorizing Religion and Politics

Our focus is on the involvement of religion in politicalchange, but we take a more dynamic view of political pro-cesses consistent with the theories of power, practice, andmateriality on which we draw (e.g., Giddens 1984; Hodder2012; Olsen 2010; Pauketat 2012). Rather than treating re-ligion as a set of social and material relations that arise tostabilize developing political hierarchies, we view religion as

a fundamental component of the complex negotiations—si-multaneously social, material, and spiritual—from whichearly centralized polities developed (e.g., Barber, Workinger,and Joyce 2014; Joyce 2000). We define political centraliza-tion as the concentration of political authority in a set ofruling institutions that typically operate from one or a smallnumber of urban or suburban settlements, usually referred toas political centers. In addition, centralization involves ex-pansion in the scale and scope of political authority, as rulinginstitutions gain decision-making capacities over broad re-gions, large populations, and formerly locally administeredsocial phenomena. Such expansion generated large-scale so-cial identities through which people in multiple communitiesacknowledged shared social, economic, and political relation-ships. Participation in political relations, however, wouldhave differed substantially among polity members.

Although our approach acknowledges the importance ofreligion in social change, we agree with many scholars thatreligion is a difficult concept to define (e.g., Fogelin 2007;Fowles 2013; Insoll 2004:6–7). We reject universal defini-

Figure 1. Map of the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca showing sites mentioned in the text. Drawing by SarahBarber.

820 Current Anthropology Volume 56, Number 6, December 2015

tions, instead asserting that religion must be addressed inparticular historical and cultural settings. In prehispanic andearly Colonial period Mesoamerica, religion involved a seriesof sacred propositions that delineated the relationship be-tween people and the other-than-human and divine worldof deities and ancestors (e.g., López Austin 1989; Sahagún1950–1982). Yet religious belief, experience, and practicewere enmeshed with most aspects of daily life, includingagriculture (Monaghan 1990), trade and exchange (Foias2007), domesticity (Plunket 2002), rubbish disposal (Hutsonand Stanton 2007), politics (Joyce 2000), and identity (Hen-don 2000). This entanglement of religion with other di-mensions of social and material life can be linked to therelational ontologies of Native Americans (Viveiros de Cas-tro 2004; Zedeño 2009), which blur the boundaries betweenthe natural, cultural, material, and divine worlds in ways thatcontrast significantly from modern, Western worldviews.Therefore, we cannot effectively address prehispanic religionwithout considering the entangled and often diffuse net-works of religious belief and practice as well as the placesand things that both carried sacred meanings and were fun-damental to religious practice.

In contrast to many archaeologists who dichotomize re-ligion as either belief or ritual action (Fogelin 2007), we viewreligious belief, practice, and the material settings in whichreligion was enacted as inseparable (e.g., Bell 1992; Insoll2004; Keane 2007; Pauketat 2012). Because religion was em-bedded within broader cultural logics in ancient Mesoamer-ica, belief informed and shaped action (Hutson and Stanton2007). Religion must, therefore, be considered through net-works of belief, practice, and the places and things that bothcarried and generated sacred meanings. Fortunately, Meso-america has a rich corpus of prehispanic texts and earlycolonial documents, most of which focus on aspects of po-litical history and religion (e.g., Jansen and Pérez 2007;Sahagún 1950–1982). These documents can be used to de-velop analogies with which to infer meaning from the ar-chaeological record (Wylie 1985).

Although we are interested in tracing the relationship be-tween religion, identity, and political institutions and au-thority, we wish to avoid reifying these concepts by detailingtheir involvement with the material world and human-thingentanglements (Hodder 2012; Latour 2005; Olsen 2010; Pau-ketat 2012). Material things play an indispensable role in theconstitution, stabilization, and transformation of social lifeand, hence, are inextricably caught up in the kind of politicaltransitions we address here. In ancient Mesoamerica, com-plex societies were coproduced and given a degree of stabilityand persistence through the work of many things linked toreligion, such as public plazas and buildings, inscribed sur-faces, burials, bloodletters, divinities, and musical instru-ments (e.g., Barber and Olvera Sánchez 2012; Inomata 2006;Joyce 2009; Joyce et al. 1991; Love 1999). While many of theseitems represented social distinctions and the many institutionsthat were fundamental to the constitution of society, things

were more than simply reflections of a preexisting social re-ality. Instead, things coproduced society through their entan-glements with people (Latour 2005). It is through such human-material enmeshment that larger-scale social identities definingancient polities came to be, along with changes in the politicalinstitutions and authority structures that resulted in politicalcentralization.

By terms like entanglement, enmeshment, assemblage,and network, we mean that social life derives from enablingand constraining relations among people and things (e.g.,Hodder 2012; Latour 2005; Olsen 2010). In certain instances,people and things become so tightly intertwined that thepossibilities for social change are severely limited unlessthere is a dramatic unraveling of these relations: a conditionthat Hodder (2012:103–104) terms entrapment. In contrast,entanglements can also foster creativity and innovation be-cause things have spatial and temporal properties that makethem unpredictable and unstable. Rather than assuming thatearly polities were highly integrated political formations, weexplore how assemblages through which political authorityand power were constituted may have been multiple, over-lapping, and potentially in conflict. We begin by consideringthe development and collapse of an incipient regional polityin the lower Río Verde Valley on Oaxaca’s Pacific coastallowlands.

Río Viejo: Religion and the Entrapmentof Political Authority

The lower Río Verde Valley consists of a broad coastal plainand surrounding piedmont where the Verde River meets thePacific. By at least the Late Formative period (400–150 BCE),public buildings were central to the constitution of com-munities in the region (Joyce, Winter, and Mueller 1998).Communal practices associated with public buildings, in-cluding ritual feasting, cemetery burial, and collective laborprojects, defined local groups consisting of multiple house-holds and perhaps entire communities. The evidence forcommunal rituals and labor projects and the lack of indi-cations of a strong social hierarchy suggests that authoritywas distributed and corporate and that local communitieswere an important modality of social identity at this time(Joyce 2010:181–186).

Political developments culminated during the TerminalFormative (150 BCE–250 CE) with the emergence of an urbancenter at Río Viejo that reached 225 ha (Joyce 2010:186–195,2013). Increased inequality is evident in mortuary offerings,domestic architecture, ceremonial caches, and monumentalbuildings (Barber 2013; Joyce 2010:186–195; Joyce, Levine,and Barber 2013). During the Terminal Formative, collectivelabor projects and public rituals continued to be a focus ofsocial identity (Barber, Workinger, and Joyce 2014). Monu-mental buildings were constructed at Río Viejo and at leastnine other sites. The most impressive public building was theacropolis at Río Viejo (fig. 2), which was one of the largest

Joyce and Barber Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization 821

Figure 2. Acropolis of Río Viejo: topographic map showing locations of excavations (a; after Joyce 2005, fig. 6) and photo (b; afterJoyce, Winter, and Mueller 1998, lámina 4.5).

buildings ever constructed in prehispanic Oaxaca (Joyce,Levine, and Barber 2013).

At outlying sites such as Cerro de la Virgen, Yugüe, andSan Francisco de Arriba, communal ceremonies associatedwith monumental public buildings and spaces continued andexpanded in scale from the Late Formative, including mor-tuary rituals in cemeteries, feasting, and the ceremonial em-placement of communal offerings. For example, at Yugüe,feasting is indicated by cooking features and nondomesticmiddens (Barber 2013). Several ritual offerings were sequen-tially emplaced within a public building at Yugüe (Substruc-ture 1), with the largest consisting of 50 cylindrical vessels(fig. 3a). Communal cemeteries have been excavated inpublic buildings at Yugüe and Charco Redondo (Barber et al.2013). At San Francisco de Arriba, people left ritual cachesin the fill of different building phases of the site’s acropo-lis (Workinger 2002:185–214). The most impressive cacheconsisted of nearly 500 beads, mostly made of greenstone,along with greenstone and rock crystal pendants, fragmentsof iron ore, and locally produced miniature jars. At Cerrode la Virgen, evidence of both feasting and caching cere-monies were associated with the site’s public plaza (Joyceet al. 2015). An offering along the northeast edge of theplaza there covered 62 m2 and included 260 ceramic vesselsplaced in granite-slab compartments (fig. 3b).

Overall, the evidence from outlying sites in the lowerVerde demonstrates that there was significant social andmaterial investment in communal labor projects and cere-monies at public buildings during the Terminal Formative(Barber 2013; Joyce et al. 2015). As early as the Late For-mative, if not before, public buildings at sites like Yugüe, SanFrancisco de Arriba, Cerro de la Virgen, Charco Redondo,and Cerro de la Cruz were focal nodes in entanglements in-volving communal labor, ritual feasting, ceremonial caches,and the bodies of the dead, through which local communities

were constituted. In order to contextualize these entangle-ments more fully, in the next section we explore the meaningof the things, people, and ideas that intersected on publicbuildings through a consideration of prehispanic religionand ontology.

Contextualizing Community through Religion and Ontology

Ancient Mesoamerican peoples, as well as many NativeAmerican groups in the present day, embraced a relationalontology that recognized the social and agential potentialof human and other-than-human beings (e.g., Barber andOlvera Sánchez 2012; Zedeño 2009). Reality is viewed as anindivisible whole animated with a sacred life force mani-fested in the form of various deities and natural phenomena.This existential unity means that numerous other-than-humansoul-bearing beings were of relevance to human affairs, suchas earth, rain, maize, ancestors, mountains, animals, time, and,most importantly for our discussion, buildings.

In the case of Terminal Formative entanglements con-sisting of public buildings and the people and things as-sembled with them, another important aspect of indigenousontologies is that animate beings go through a life cycle(Stross 1998). Like people, important transformations in thelives of many other-than-human animate beings were markedby ritual acts, and this is especially true of buildings (Mock1998; Stanton, Brown, and Pagliaro 2008). Birth and deathrites, usually conceptualized as rituals of ensoulment and ter-mination, respectively, are carried out today in houses by manyindigenous Mesoamerican groups, and archaeological evidencedemonstrates that similar practices were carried out in the pre-hispanic past (Greenberg 1981:82–98; Mock 1998; Vogt 1969).Temples were considered Sacred Houses or God Houses in theprehispanic and early colonial period (Terraciano 2001:354)and were often associated with particular deities and divineforces. It is not surprising, therefore, that they were also alocus of rituals of ensoulment and termination often in-volving the emplacement of objects such as ceramic vessels,greenstone, and mosaic masks (Mock 1998). Another act some-times associated with animate beings like public buildings isthe act of “feeding,” or giving sustenance, to maintain the an-imateness of things (Stross 1998:33). In practice, feeding andensoulment may not be significantly different in that both con-tribute to maintaining or reactivating animacy. Monaghan(1995) argues that eating and feeding are fundamental prac-tices through which social relationships are instantiated withinthe household and the community.Taking this view of indigenous ontology into account, we

argue that many of the communal ceremonies we have doc-umented for the later Formative should be understood fromthe perspective of religious rituals designed to ensoul andsustain public buildings as animate beings and as commu-nity members. In this sense, offerings such as ceramic vesselsand their contents acted as index objects (Zedeño 2009) thatactivated and contributed to the animacy of these buildings.

Figure 3. Terminal Formative–period ritual offerings in publicbuildings: cache of cylindrical vessels at Yugüe (a; after Barber2005, fig. 6.12) and part of the offering at Cerro de la Virgenshowing ceramic vessels and vertical stone slabs (b; photocourtesy of Jeff Brzezinski).


Several of the offerings we have discovered, including the largecache at San Francisco de Arriba, were emplaced during theinitial construction or sequential remodeling of public build-ings and may be considered the result of acts of ensoulment.Many of the most impressive caches found in public build-ings, however, were sequentially emplaced over long periodsof time independent of episodes of building remodeling. Weinterpret these offerings as acts of feeding and nurturing build-ings and associated divinities (Barber 2005:215–216).

We view the cemeteries located in public buildings in theregion much like the offerings. In the cemeteries at Cerrode la Cruz, Yugüe, and Charco Redondo, the interment ofbodies occurred over a period of at least several generations(Barber et al. 2013; Joyce, Winter, and Mueller 1998:65). In-deed, caching and burial share a number of characteristicsthat have led Mesoamerican archaeologists to see parallelsbetween the two ritual practices (Becker 1992; Hendon 2000).Considered in the context of animate buildings, the inter-ment of the dead in public spaces may represent a sharing ortransference of souls between different kinds of communitymembers: the living, the dead, and other-than-human ani-mate spaces. These spaces, therefore, were a kind of “morallycharged” receptacle for the things buried there because theyembodied and encapsulated the social ties constituting localcommunities (Hendon 2000:42, 46).

Through collective interment of human bodies and otherthings, local social relationships were laden with funda-mental sacred principles. Acts of interment were also formsof sacrifice through which people negotiated their relation-ships with divinities and other universal forces. In Meso-american creation stories, the current world was the resultof a sacred covenant between humans and the divine, oftenforged through warfare, whereby people petitioned deitiesfor agricultural fertility and prosperity in return for sacrifi-cial offerings (Hamann 2002; Joyce 2000; Monaghan 1990).As argued by Monaghan (1990), death itself was a sacrificialact through which people fed the divine, although it is pos-sible that different forms of death (e.g., ritual killing versusa natural death) may have affected precisely how divinitiesinteracted with the dead. The sacred covenant, therefore,establishes the fundamental relationship between people andthe divine and creates relations of debt and merit betweenhumans and the gods. Communal acts of sacrifice like burialand caching were cosmogenic in that they reenacted thecosmic creation and renewed the world.

Religion and the Constitution of Outlying Communities

Taking into account this view of indigenous ontology, weargue that the community in later Formative coastal Oaxacawas not simply a collection of humans but an entanglementof complex hybrid relations that was dependent on livingpeople, ancestors, ensouled buildings, deities, and ceramicvessels, among varied other things. The assemblages of living

people and things that constituted and distinguished com-munity came together in public buildings. For example, theconstruction and use of public buildings created sharedconnections to a physical place on the landscape, which wasviewed by pre-Columbian people as a living, divine beingthat required sustenance in the form of the dead and otheritems such as ceramic vessels. The interment of human bod-ies in public buildings in turn linked these structures to thehouseholds and families from which the deceased originated.The interment of locally made pottery linked public build-ings to the varied producers and production loci of the ves-sels, while imported items like greenstone created ties to thepeople and places from which these things were obtained,some undoubtedly distant, powerful, and sacred. Feasts in-stantiated community in commensalism, creating bonds andobligations much like modern, indigenous fiestas do inMesoamerica (Greenberg 1981; Monaghan 1995). In feast-ing, people shared in the sustenance provided by deities inreturn for acts of sacrifice as defined in the sacred covenant.

Time and history also came together in public buildingsin ways that constituted community. For example, publicbuildings at Yugüe, Cerro de la Virgen, and San Francisco deArriba were the product of hundreds of years of collectivelabor (Barber 2013; Workinger 2002). Even after their com-pletion, public buildings made of earthen architecture re-quired continuous physical maintenance in the face of theelements. Public buildings also required spiritual mainte-nance in the form of acts of feeding with the bodies of thedead and with offerings. The bones of ancestors and itemsinterred as offerings exposed during subsequent ceremoniesindexed collective rituals carried out in the past. These in-terred materials referenced the history of human devotion tothe divine and its importance for renewing community andcosmos. Evidence that interred items were viewed duringsubsequent ceremonies is clear. All three of the later For-mative cemeteries that have been investigated were charac-terized by frequent instances of later burials disturbing ear-lier ones (Barber et al. 2013; Joyce, Winter, and Mueller1998:65), and there is evidence of the disturbance of earlierofferings by later ones in larger, sequential caches, such asthose at Cerro de la Virgen, Yugüe, and the acropolis at SanFrancisco de Arriba (Barber, Workinger, and Joyce 2014;Joyce et al. 2015).

Overall, local communities were instantiated in collectivelabor projects and religious ceremonies focused on publicbuildings. Although the focus of community actions surelywas not restricted entirely to public settings, we have foundlittle evidence for other practices such as large-scale agri-cultural systems, regional markets, or craft specialization insupradomestic groups that would have brought communi-ties together. Our evidence also suggests that while the kindsof entanglements that defined communities across the regionwere generally consistent, variation in building orientations,construction techniques, and types of objects used in cachesindicates a pattern of regional idiosyncrasy in the specific


materials and practices through which community identitywas constituted (Joyce et al. 2015).

Political Authority, Polity, and the Constraints of Community

Excavations in outlying communities indicate that the au-thority of local leaders during the Terminal Formative de-pended in part on specialized religious knowledge, abilities,and implements (Joyce 2010:192–193). For example, the mostelaborate burial yet discovered in the region was that of anadolescent male from Yugüe who was interred wearing aniron-ore pectoral and holding an incised flute made from adeer femur (fig. 4). This individual enjoyed better healththan others interred in the cemetery, and he did not engagein the kinds of repetitive physical labor that was typical ofthis population (Mayes and Barber 2008). These data indi-cate that this individual was likely a local elite and a ritualspecialist with the ability to contact divinities and otheranimate beings (Barber and Olvera Sánchez 2012). A gray-ware vessel fragment from an offering in Substructure 2 atYugüe depicts a regional variant of the Zapotec Xicani or theMixtec Yahui, a high-status sacrificial specialist who wears amask with a long, upturned snout. Evidence that elites had spe-cialized ritual roles also comes from a cache in Structure 1 atCerro de la Virgen, a small public building reached by a stair-way ascending the low hilltop east of the plaza (Joyce et al.2015), which included a stone mask depicting a rain deityand two miniature stone thrones (fig. 5). A high-status houseexcavated at Cerro de la Virgen was spatially associated withthe site’s ceremonial complex (Barber 2013:178–181).

The production of elite bodies, in part through adornmentand prestigious objects, at Yugüe and the elaborate archi-tecture and special setting of the high-status house at Cerrode la Virgen demonstrate the increasing visibility of highstatus among local elites. The interment of prestige goods incommunal burials and offerings in public buildings, how-ever, were practices that transformed hierarchy into ex-pressions of traditional communal principles because thesevalued, animate things became collective resources (Barber,Workinger, and Joyce 2014). Likewise, the interment of elitesin community cemeteries upon death simultaneously high-lighted their difference from nonelites and their membershipin a local collectivity. By obtaining the most powerful itemsthrough which communities met their obligations to thedivine, local nobles would have become powerful actorswithin entanglements that constituted community. Never-theless, it appears to us that political authority and expres-sions of high status were constrained by their dependence onthe obligations of elites to their communities. Although theposition of local elites seems to have been enhanced duringthe Terminal Formative, contradictions and tensions be-tween community and authority were more acute at the re-gional level.

During the Terminal Formative, the construction of RíoViejo’s massive acropolis required labor mobilized from be-

yond the city, suggesting that the influence of its rulers ex-tended to surrounding settlements. The new ceremonialcenter consisted of a platform rising at least 6 m above thefloodplain and supporting two large substructures (Struc-tures 1 and 2, respectively), both of which stood at least 16 mhigh. The stratigraphy exposed by the excavations indicatesthat the acropolis was raised by a small number of massivefill deposits, likely emplaced over a relatively brief periodof time (Joyce, Levine, and Barber 2013). The fill depositsrevealed unexpectedly diverse and labor-intensive construc-tion techniques, including unconsolidated basket loads ofsediment, rammed earth, puddled adobe, and two types offill utilizing adobe blocks. The variability in fill constructionis mirrored in more formal architectural features, especiallyretaining walls, which were made from both adobe blocksand stone masonry. An adobe retaining wall exposed on thewestern end of the acropolis contained bricks made fromthree different clay sources that varied in shape and size andwere emplaced both horizontally and vertically. We havefound no architectural explanation for the diversity of con-struction techniques present on the acropolis. Instead, thevariability in construction fill and retaining walls suggests tous that there were at least five distinct work groups involvedin building the acropolis (e.g., Hastings and Moseley 1975).Although we have found similar construction techniquesat public buildings in outlying sites, the diversity of tech-niques on the acropolis exceeds that of other sites. We ar-gue that this diversity was the result of a labor pool drawnfrom multiple communities. Our estimated total volume forMound 1 is 560,050 m3, which is about half the volume ofthe Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan. Our conservative estimateof the volume of the Terminal Formative version of theacropolis is 455,050 m3 (Joyce, Levine, and Barber 2013:149–157). Estimates of the considerable labor needed to constructthe acropolis indicate that those who organized its con-struction had at least short-term success in establishing al-liances and gaining adherents from communities beyond RíoViejo.

Despite clear evidence for multicommunity labor, thereare only limited indications that the power of the assembledhumans, buildings, and spaces was sufficient to draw largenumbers of people to Río Viejo after the acropolis was built.Despite four major field seasons, including the excavation oftransects and block excavations throughout the acropolis(fig. 2), the only ceremonial practices that are clearly visibleare those related to ritual feasting (Joyce et al. 2015). Ex-cavations have revealed 10 nondomestic middens and a largeearth oven, indicating an increase in the scale of feastingrelative to those at public buildings in outlying communities.The two largest middens were found in pits more than 1.5 mdeep, and one was more than 4 m in diameter. The size andcontents of the middens—including ceramic assemblages,fauna, and macrobotanical remains—suggest that both large-scale and repeated food consumption was taking place on theacropolis and that the feasts were not restricted to the elite


(Lucido 2015). Refuse from the oven covered an area of at least10 m in diameter and included burned rock and sherds usedto retain heat. Despite its large size, it is unlikely that the ovenwas sufficient to cook all foods used in feasting. The Río Viejo

middens also have a disproportionately low number of foodpreparation vessels compared to a contemporary nondomes-tic midden from Yugüe. It thus appears that prepared foodswere being brought to the acropolis by people attending feasts.

Figure 4. High-status burial from Yugüe: photo of burial (top; after Barber 2005, fig. 6.20) and drawing of carved bone flute foundwith the burial (bottom; from Barber and Olvera Sánchez 2012, fig. 6a, q Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission).


Ritual feasting would have drawn people away from cere-monial activities in their home communities. The increase inobligations of feast participants at both the local and regionallevel could have taxed people’s abilities to generate surplusesand led to social tensions and conflicts, just as feasting cando in modern Mixtec communities in Oaxaca (Monaghan1995:167–189).

The lack of human interments and offerings in the acrop-olis highlights a surprising difference between the acropolisand the public buildings we have examined at other sites.The ceremonial objects and human remains that fed andanimated public buildings and that embedded history andcommunity in place elsewhere in the region were not con-tained on the acropolis. These sacred objects were alreadyentrapped within public buildings in local communities andcould not simply be appropriated by the rulers of Río Viejo.The persistence and durability of things like monumentalbuildings, bones of ancestors, and offerings at outlying sitesconstrained the ability of the acropolis and its rulers to su-persede the local community and become focal nodes in en-tanglements that could have created a regional polity. An-other difference between the acropolis and public buildingsat outlying sites is the absence of direct evidence for rulersand nonroyal nobility at Río Viejo’s ceremonial center. Wehave yet to find a noble residence on the acropolis, and thereare no stone monuments with the portraits of rulers orelaborate tombs at this time, as have been recorded in otherregions of Mesoamerica. We have investigated at least oneelaborate and spatially restricted ceremonial space on Struc-ture 2 of the acropolis, access to which presumably indicated

a degree of exclusivity and marked status distinctions (Joyce,Levine, and Barber 2013:142–147). Yet there are fewer directindications of elites on the acropolis than at many of thepublic buildings we have excavated elsewhere in the region.Instead, we see evidence for regional political authority inthe distribution of the population, in the coordination re-quired to underwrite monument construction, and in thesponsorship of large-scale feasts and possibly other rituals onthe acropolis.

The evidence from the lower Verde, therefore, suggests tous that religious belief and practice were central to the po-litical changes of the later Formative. At this time, localauthority and community identity were constituted throughassemblages involving living people, ancestors, ensouledbuildings, deities, and ceremonial offerings. By the TerminalFormative, people from different communities in the regionparticipated in the construction and ritual use of the acrop-olis, and rulers of Río Viejo gained some degree of politicalinfluence over multiple communities. At the same time, thesacred and material obligations people had in their localcommunities to sustain divine beings in the form of pub-lic buildings plus their obligations to other people createdthrough ritual feasting together countered incentives to es-tablish ties to regional rulers and places. The acropolis at RíoViejo and the public buildings at outlying sites must havebecome sites of struggle and negotiation. Points of tensionlikely surrounded issues such as participation in ritual feasts,the means through which divine and ancestral forces wereinvoked; the centrality of regional rulers versus local com-munities in important ceremonies; and the power and in-

Figure 5. Rain deity mask from an offering at Cerro de la Cruz. Photo courtesy of Jeff Brzezinski.


fluence of local leaders relative to regional elites. The resultof these social tensions surrounding religion, community,and polity was that multicommunity links were impeded tothe degree that Terminal Formative Río Viejo challenges thelimits of what might be defined as a polity. A crucial aspectconstraining the creation of multicommunity authority andidentities was the physical entrapment of the bones of an-cestors, offerings, and divine beings within public buildingsin local communities. The entrapment of these sacred objectsrigidly tied networks of people, ritual practices, belief, an-cestry, and history to public buildings at local communities.

The collapse of the Río Viejo polity around 250 CE showsthat Terminal Formative authority was indeed tenuous andshort-lived (Joyce 2010:195–196). The archaeological recordfrom that time indicates a dramatic unraveling of entan-glements that were central to polity and community in thelater Formative. Río Viejo declined in size, the acropolis wasabandoned, construction of monumental buildings ceased,and a period of political fragmentation began.

Monte Albán: Religion as a Catalystof Political Centralization

The Valley of Oaxaca is the largest highland valley insouthern Mexico. Archaeological research shows that by theLate Formative, a centralized polity had emerged there, withits political seat at the city of Monte Albán (Joyce 2010;Marcus and Flannery 1996). As in the lower Verde, religionplayed an important role in initial political centralization inthe Oaxaca Valley. Although public buildings afforded apoint of reference through which local and multicommunityaffiliations were defined, unlike in the lower Verde, theywere also enmeshed in a broader process by which access tothe sacred increasingly became mediated by polity rulers.

Religion and Community Prior to the Foundingof Monte Albán

The origins of the region’s first centralized polity can betraced to developments at the earlier site of San José Mogote.Although San José Mogote was the largest community in thevalley during the Early Formative (1800–850 BCE), by thelate Middle Formative (700–500 BCE), the site experienced ademographic decline, decreasing in size from 70 to 34 ha(Kowalewski et al. 1989:72–77). A possible cause for thedecrease in population was competition for political influ-ence among communities in the valley, which likely includedsome form of low-intensity warfare (Joyce 2000:77–78;Marcus and Flannery 1996:124–130). The Middle Formativeceremonial center at San José Mogote was located on a largeplatform built over a natural hill (Marcus and Flannery1996:126–128). Known as Mound 1, the platform rose 15 mhigh and faced a large open plaza (fig. 6). On the summit ofMound 1, a number of public buildings were constructed,although access to ceremonies performed there would have

been restricted relative to those in the plaza below. Unlikepublic buildings in the lower Verde, those in the OaxacaValley were not locations of communal cemeteries. Instead,people were interred in their residences, which means thatrituals designed to contact ancestors via their remains werespatially and conceptually disbursed—unlike the communalpattern seen in the lower Verde. The modest nature of thededicatory offerings associated with Mound 1 suggests thatrituals of ensoulment may have been restricted to a smallnumber of participants in contrast to similar rituals in thelower Verde (Fernández 1996; Marcus and Flannery 1996:127).

At about 600 BCE, events centered on Mound 1 acceler-ated social changes and contributed to the beginnings ofhereditary status distinctions and perhaps, ultimately, thefounding of Monte Albán (Joyce 2000). At this time, a tem-ple on Mound 1 (Structure 28) was burned to the ground.Marcus and Flannery (1996:129) argue that the destructionof the building was the result of intercommunity conflict,which would indicate that the most restricted and religiouslyimportant part of the site was penetrated by a raiding party.Other causes such as a natural fire or the ritual closure ofthe structure cannot be eliminated, although burning doesnot seem to have been a routine practice in building ter-mination rituals in the Oaxaca Valley. Since the temples onMound 1 were undoubtedly important religious structures,the sudden destruction of Structure 28 could have triggereda crisis for the entire community by interfering with peo-ple’s access to the divine. Following the destruction of thetemple, major changes are evident in the use of Mound 1,probably initiated by the leading families in the community.We view the destruction of the temple as a moment thatcatalyzed the unraveling of religiously focused entangle-ments among community members, buildings, and the di-vine, which altered the relationship of religion to social sta-tus and political authority.

Immediately after the destruction of Structure 28, ar-chaeological evidence shows that rather than rebuilding thetemple, a series of architecturally elaborate high-status resi-dences were constructed over the ruins (Flannery and Mar-cus 1983a). The orientation of buildings was shifted from 87west of north to 37–67 east of north, which would soon be-come the dominant orientation of public buildings at MonteAlbán. In prehispanic Mesoamerica, there was a close asso-ciation between site orientations and layouts, the movementof celestial bodies/deities, and conceptions of time. Anothernovel feature of these residences was the region’s first formalstone masonry tombs, which shows that prominent peoplewere now buried in special locations that differentiated themfrom nontomb interments (Fernández 1996; Marcus andFlannery 1996:133). We know from later times that thebones of ancestors buried in tombs were directly consultedby their living descendants through tomb-reopening cere-monies (Lind and Urcid 1983). Tombs made the bones ofancestors more durable and accessible than those of people


interred in the ground and created memory and historythrough repeated access for performance of tomb rituals.Tombs afforded the ancestors greater salience to the livingboth as divine beings and because their bones became ac-cessible and potent ritual objects. Given the location of theresidences atop the site’s preeminent structure, its close as-sociation with public buildings, and the presence of the re-gion’s first stone masonry tombs as well as exotic religiousobjects (see below), we believe that Mound 1 was where SanJosé Mogote’s ruling family resided.

A potentially more significant object from Mound 1 isMonument 3 (Marcus and Flannery 1996:129–130), whichwas discovered in a corridor between two public buildings.Monument 3 depicts a naked sacrificial victim with eyesclosed and with blood emanating from the trilobe heart glyphon his chest. The individual’s calendrical name or the nameof his captor is also shown. If the radiocarbon dates reportedby Flannery and Marcus (2003) correctly date the monu-ment, then it would belong to this period and represent theearliest evidence in Oaxaca for human sacrifice, writing, andcalendrics (however see Cahn and Winter 1993).

The evidence from Mound 1 indicates the emergence ofthe first hereditary nobles in the region and reveals that

status was strongly associated with religion (Blanton et al.1999:45–46; Joyce 2010:125–128). After 600 BCE, elite iden-tity and status were defined in part by the association thatpeople of high status had with sacred buildings, which bythis time may have been viewed as living, ensouled beings,based on subfloor offerings in Structure 28 (Marcus andFlannery 1996:127). Social distinction was thus created notonly episodically during public ceremonies, as it had been inearlier eras, but instead continuously through the quotidianpractices of dwelling. The discovery of ritual paraphernaliain the residence, including obsidian bloodletters and an an-thropomorphic effigy brazier, along with evidence for newforms of religious practice such as tomb rituals and perhapshuman sacrifice (Marcus and Flannery 1996:126–134) sug-gest that the inhabitants may have included ritual specialists.These are the first indications that through their roles asritual specialists as well as through the sacred affordances ofspecial religious implements, rulers were becoming media-tors between people and the divine. Entanglements thatdefined the San José Mogote community were reorderedsuch that elites, their houses, ancestors, and ritual items weremore central to the networks through which the communityand perhaps a broader polity were constituted.

Figure 6. Mound 1 at San José Mogote. Photo by Arthur Joyce.


San José Mogote, however, did not continue as a focalpoint in the innovations in religion and politics that werecatalyzed by the destruction of the temple. At about 500BCE, people from San José Mogote and nearby communi-ties founded a new political and religious center at MonteAlbán (Flannery and Marcus 1983b). The movement of peo-ple from their home communities to Monte Albán wouldhave further unraveled entanglements involving people, land,ancestry, and history, opening up additional potential forchange.

Religion and Political Centralization at Monte Albán

Monte Albán is located on several hills in the center of theOaxaca Valley. Following its founding, the site rapidly grewinto the region’s largest community, reaching 442 ha, withan estimated population of 10,200–20,400 by the Late For-mative (Blanton 1978:44). One of the earliest activities at thesite was construction of the site’s ceremonial center locatedon the Main Plaza precinct, which was an unprecedentedlabor project (fig. 7). The initial version of the ceremonialcenter consisted of the plaza, measuring roughly 300 # 150 m,along with the western row of buildings and much of theeastern half of the massive North Platform (Joyce 2010:133–134; Winter 2011:402–403). The scale, accessibility, open-ness, and symbolism of the Main Plaza indicate that it wasconstructed as an arena where thousands of people couldhave participated in public rituals. Many public buildings onthe plaza were ensouled with offerings, including humanburials and ceramic vessels, although most were modest inscale, suggesting restricted ceremonies similar to those at SanJosé Mogote (Martínez López 2002:250–255). Since MonteAlbán’s Main Plaza was built on the top of an imposing moun-tain, it is likely that Zapotecs considered the entire ceremo-nial precinct as a sacred mountain of creation and suste-nance.

The archaeological and iconographic (or, more accurately,semasiographic) evidence indicates that human and auto-sacrifice as well as ancestor veneration, divination, feasting,and ritual preparations for warfare were carried out on theplaza (Blanton et al. 1999:105–107; Joyce 2000; Urcid 2011;Urcid and Joyce 2014). The southern end of the plaza con-tained references to sacrifice, warfare, ancestors, and theunderworld, as represented by two inscribed programs. Thefirst was located in Building L-sub, which contained nearly400 carved orthostats. Although these are traditionally in-terpreted as victims of human sacrifice (e.g., Marcus andFlannery 1996:151–154), Urcid (2011) has recently used pan-Mesoamerican contextual comparisons to reinterpret theprogram as a warrior sodality carrying out autosacrificial rit-uals to invoke the ancestors as oracular conduits in prepa-ration for battle (fig. 8a–8d ). The cornerstones of the pro-gram contained short hieroglyphic texts that refer to at leastthree rulers, their enthronements, genealogical statements,and the defeat and decapitation of an enemy (fig. 8e). The

second iconographic program consisted of approximately50 finely incised slabs that may refer to revered ancestors(fig. 9a; Urcid and Joyce 2014:157–164). Their original lo-cation is not precisely known, although most were later resetconsecutively in three construction phases of Building J. Apossible cornerstone from the program (Monument J-41)depicts the only portrait of a ruler known for this period.He is shown performing human sacrifice through decapita-tion while dressed in the guise of the rain deity (fig. 9b). Incontrast to depictions at the southern end of the plaza, afrieze on the North Platform (fig. 10) included graphic ref-erences to aquatic themes including shells, bands of flowingwater, and rain (Urcid 1994:64–65). Although the uppersection of the frieze was destroyed in antiquity, the remain-ing portion includes what Acosta (1965:816) described asserpentine imagery, which may represent Cocijo, the Zapo-tec rain deity (Orr 1994). The symbolism and spatial ar-rangement of architecture and iconography raises the pos-sibility that during the Late Formative, the Main Plaza mayhave resembled ceremonial centers at other Mesoamericancities where the cosmos was rotated onto the surface of thesite such that north represented the celestial realm and souththe earth or underworld (Joyce 2000). If this hypothesis iscorrect, cosmogenic ceremonies like human and autosacri-fice would have been carried out in a place that encapsulatedthe Zapotec cosmos.

By the Late Formative, the Main Plaza was assembling aradically transformed imbroglio of people and divinities thatfar exceeded in reach and complexity anything seen earlier inthe Oaxaca Valley. As a place of cosmic creation and renewalwhere the planes of earth, sky, and underworld intersected,the Main Plaza was an axis mundi and a powerful divineentity in its own right (Joyce 2009). In particular, the ritualinnovation of human sacrifice was a potent means throughwhich the sacred covenant was activated to petition divini-ties for fertility and prosperity on behalf of the community.Through calendrical and cosmogenic ceremonies, the MainPlaza would have also gathered cyclical notions of time andhistory with place that together were central to indigenousMesoamerican worldviews (Broda and Báez-Jorge 2001; Ha-mann 2002). Ritual specialists who organized and led cere-monies on the plaza would likely have been equated withimportant actors in creation narratives, especially the raindeity (Sellen 2002). New religious beliefs and practices areindicted by the first occurrence of effigy vessels depictingdeities like Cocijo, the Old God, and the Wide-Billed Bird.

The archaeological evidence raises the possibility that thefounding and early development of Monte Albán was relatedto a new political and religious movement that began duringthe Middle Formative at San José Mogote. The impetus forthis religious movement probably included political devel-opments both local and macroregional. Innovations in reli-gious belief and practice may have been one means throughwhich people responded to the declining fortunes of San JoséMogote. Similarities in the organization of ceremonial space,


religious symbolism, and hieroglyphic writing suggest thatpeople at Monte Albán appropriated religious ideas and prac-tices from earlier political centers such as La Venta in theGulf Coast, Chalcatzingo in Central Mexico, and Chiapa deCorzo in the Chiapas Central Depression (Clark 2001; Winter2011:401–403). The decline of many of these political centerstoward the end of the Middle Formative may have reshuffledfar-reaching relationships involving the movement of goods,people, and ideas. The situation was fraught with potential forinnovation because the unraveling of historically important so-cial and material relations demanded management and sta-bilization. What resulted was a new city, founded on an un-inhabited hilltop completely dissociated from earlier spatialand social relations. In this new and very compelling locationfor human-divine engagement, there was both physical andconceptual space to create novel institutions and large-scalesocial affiliations.

The social identities of people living in and around MonteAlbán were no longer defined just by affiliations with theirfamilies and communities but were increasingly enmeshedwith the political and religious actors, institutions, and im-plements at Monte Albán, especially its Main Plaza complex(Joyce 2010:141). Yet the networks that converged on theplaza do not seem to have extended throughout the Valley ofOaxaca as a whole. Differences in ceramic styles and mon-umental architecture suggest that the sites of El Mogote andYegüih were centers of independent polities (Redmond andSpencer 2006:347–350). Evidence also indicates that MonteAlbán periodically attacked El Mogote and the nearby site ofEl Palenque.

The Main Plaza was therefore a focal node in entangle-ments that brought together the inhabitants of the city, sur-rounding communities, and, to a lesser extent, significantplaces more distant in space and time. Religion was central

Figure 7. Main Plaza of Monte Albán showing locations of architectural features mentioned in the text (after Joyce 2000, fig. 7.4).


to these assemblages, although archaeologists have proposedother forms of engagement that may have brought togetherpeople from Monte Albán and nearby communities. For ex-ample, entanglements that linked surrounding communitiesto Monte Albán and its leaders may have also involved themobilization of agricultural produce, tribute acquired throughconquest, and the control of long-distance trade. Agriculturalproductivity at Monte Albán was probably insufficient to pro-vision the city, necessitating the taxation of farmers in com-munities outside the city (Kowalewski et al. 1989:123–126).The scale of agricultural resources mobilized to provision thecity and the degree to which elites controlled and benefitedfrom such transactions remains unclear. Several archaeolo-gists have argued that the rulers of Monte Albán mobilizedlarge armies for military conquest (Redmond and Spencer2006), although we view conflict at this time as much smallerin scale (Joyce 2014; Zeitlin and Joyce 1999). Although someresources were probably acquired by Monte Albán’s rulersthrough the establishment of tributary relationships with con-quered communities, the evidence for tribute extraction isminimal (e.g., Spencer 1982:246–250). Nobles had preferential

access to imported prestige goods such as nonlocal potteryand greenstone ornaments, which could have been used toestablish debts and obligations with other elites in the valley(Winter 1984). The data do not suggest that rulers directly

Figure 9. Carved stones reset in Building J: slab depicting pos-sible revered ancestor (a; after Caso 1947, fig. 41) and Monu-ment J-41 (b; after Joyce 2010, fig. 5.6d). Both redrawn withpermission from Javier Urcid.

Figure 8. Carved stone monuments from Building L-sub (not to scale): elder with beard from the upper rank (a; after Joyce 2010,fig. 5.5b), rain god impersonator from the upper rank (b; after Joyce 2010, fig. 5.5d ), young adult from the first rank in the lower rowof Building L-sub (c; after Joyce 2010, fig. 5.5c), ancestor invoked through autosacrifice (d ), cornerstones with hieroglyphicinscriptions (e; after Joyce 2010, fig. 5.5f ). All redrawn with permission from Javier Urcid.


controlled key utilitarian resources such as land or the pro-duction of pottery and stone tools (Fargher 2007; Parry 1987:111;Whalen 1988).

Religion and the Negotiation of Political Authority

The changes in religion and politics during the early yearsof Monte Albán benefited the nobility and contributed torising inequality and separation of noble and commoneridentities (Joyce 2010:141–146). Archaeological evidence in-dicates, however, that both newer forms of hierarchical au-thority and more traditional forms of communal leadershipvied for political influence (Joyce 2000, 2010:155–159; Urcid2011; Urcid and Joyce 2014). For example, the Late For-mative iconography and spatial organization of the MainPlaza downplayed the political authority and ritual role ofrulers. Although nobles lived near the ceremonial precinctand directed public rituals, there were few overt represen-tations of rulers, and there were no high-status residencesdirectly facing the plaza. Other than the portrait on Monu-ment J-41, rulers were represented solely in the hieroglyphicinscriptions on the cornerstones of the Building L-sub pro-gram, which were probably understandable only to the lit-erate nobility. Instead of the authority of rulers, the plazaemphasized public buildings, public spaces, and cosmic sym-bolism, including images depicting sacrifice, divination, an-cestors, deities, and warfare-related rituals. Communal au-thority was represented by members of the warrior sodalityshown performing autosacrifice on Building L-sub, whichUrcid (2011) argues were arranged according to age andachieved status, with higher-ranking members, includingbearded elders and rain god impersonators, located on top ofthe platform and lower-status members placed in the lowerlevels close to the plaza surface (fig. 8a–8c). The Main Plaza,therefore, would have constrained the ability of rulers tomonopolize religious and political authority.

The two potentially competing forms of authority—com-munal and noble—carried inherent contradictions and latentpoints of tension. Powerful nobles threatened the traditionalauthority of communal institutions, while the latter con-strained the power of the nobility. Although only rulers wereclearly associated with human sacrifice, commoners wereshown performing autosacrifice and invoking ancestors. Ifthe rain god impersonators from Building L-sub were non-nobles, as argued by Urcid (2011), then influential common-

ers, nobles, and rulers were able to embody the deity. In ad-dition, while the most elaborate stone masonry tombs wererestricted to the nobility, adobe tombs have been excavated inthe residences of commoners (Joyce 2010:142–143). Promi-nent commoners, not just nobles, were therefore interred inways that facilitated communication with the dead. These datasuggest that the settings in which hereditary nobles and com-munal organizations negotiated and contested political au-thority probably included public rituals, tomb ceremonies,access to special ceremonial roles like rain god impersona-tor, and activities related to the preparation for and conductof warfare.

By the Terminal Formative, however, the rulers of MonteAlbán were increasingly gaining authority in the interrelatedfields of religion, politics, and economics. The constructionof the South Platform and the eastern row of buildings ef-fectively closed off the plaza (Joyce 2004:205–207). Theconstruction of the first high-status houses directly on theplaza and on the North Platform would have strengthenedelite oversight of the ceremonial center (Barber and Joyce2006:228–229). At the same time, the rulers of Monte Albánincreasingly forged political and economic ties with othercommunities in the valley through coercion and the controlof social valuables. The conquest of El Palenque suggests thatMonte Albán’s rulers used coercion to force communitiesinto compliance (Redmond and Spencer 2006). Evidence in-dicates that the rulers of Monte Albán increasingly con-trolled the manufacture of social valuables like fancy cream-ware ceramics and shell ornaments that were used to createdebts and obligations with people in outlying communities(Elson and Sherman 2007; Martínez López and Markens2004). Both creamware ceramics and coercive force were alsoenmeshed with religion. Fancy creamwares often exhibiteddesigns symbolizing the rain deity, and warfare was at leastin part motivated by the need to obtain captives for humansacrifice.

By the end of the Terminal Formative, tensions betweencommunal and hierarchical forms of authority may haveerupted in a political upheaval at Monte Albán (Joyce2010:155–159). At this time, both of the major iconographicprograms on the Main Plaza were dismantled, and somemonuments were defaced and buried under new buildings.Since these iconographic programs probably representedcommunal forms of leadership, their dismantling, and de-struction may indicate the suppression of communal au-

Figure 10. North Platform Frieze with rain and rain deity imagery (after Urcid 1994, fig. 7).


thority. A temple on the North Platform was also burned(Winter 1994:15), and a wall for defense and/or monitoringof access was built around parts of the site (O’Brien et al.1982:207). A building on the northwest corner of the MainPlaza may have served as a control point; the recovery of27 projectile points there suggests that coercive force mayhave been involved (Martínez López and Markens 2004). Bythe Terminal Formative, the rulers of Monte Albán had ex-panded their influence beyond the central Oaxaca Valleythrough a combination of alliance, religious persuasion, andmilitary conquest, although the nature and extent of theirpolitical control is unclear. By the Early Classic, more exclu-sionary and hierarchical forms of authority gained promi-nence over competing forms of leadership (Joyce 2010).

Conclusions

In this article, we have considered the role of religion inlater-Formative-period political changes in the lower Verdeand the Valley of Oaxaca. Rather than viewing religion assecondary to what are typically seen as causally primaryeconomic and political factors, we argue that in both regions,religion was at the core of the entanglements through whichcommunity, polity, and political authority were negotiated,contested, and transformed. These entanglements were fo-cused on public buildings and spaces and assembled peoplefrom different communities and varying statuses along withentities such as ancestors, deities, offerings, sacrificial victims,burials, and feasting foods. Yet these cases demonstrate dra-matically divergent outcomes in the intersection of religionand politics deriving from culturally and historically con-tingent circumstances. We are not arguing that religion alonewas the prime factor driving political centralization. The en-tanglements that we have considered in later Formative Oaxacaalso included warfare; exchange, both local and interregional;alliance, tension, and conflict between political centers and out-lying communities; labor mobilization and the production ofresource surpluses; the control of craft production; and com-peting forms of political authority; among others. The point isthat the networks in which religious belief, practice, and ob-jects participated were far-reaching and central to the workingout of political relationships.

In the lower Río Verde Valley, we argue that religion con-strained innovations that might have led to greater politicalcentralization. As early as the Late Formative, public build-ings were a focal node in the networks that constituted com-munities. The construction of the acropolis engaged peoplefrom multiple communities in a large-scale collective worksproject and created the potential for reorganizing and ex-panding the scale of entanglements that could have stabilizeda politically centralized polity. At the same time, the per-sistence and durability of the bones of ancestors and cer-emonial offerings emplaced within public buildings at out-lying sites created conditions of entrapment. People were

tightly bound to the remains of their ancestors and theofferings that they had ritually emplaced in public buildings.These ties were likely deep, emotional, and not easily su-perseded. The construction and use of the acropolis coupledwith the physical entrapment of the bones of ancestors, of-ferings, and divine beings within public buildings at outly-ing communities created sites of tension and conflict be-tween local and regional collectivities and authorities. Theoutcome was that the multicommunity links and centralizedpolitical authority that could have come to define a politywere fleeting and unstable. Río Viejo probably collapsedwithin only a few generations of its emergence as a politicalcenter.

In the Valley of Oaxaca, we also found that religion andespecially public facilities were central to assemblages thatconstituted community and political authority. In contrast tothe lower Verde, however, we find religion in the OaxacaValley was less constraining and instead fostered politicalchange. This openness to innovation can be traced back tothe assemblages that constituted community during the Mid-dle Formative. People came together to build and participatein rituals in public settings like Mound 1 at San José Mo-gote, but there were fewer intimate and enduring materialconnections between people and these places relative to thelower Verde. In particular, in contrast to the lower Verde,the bones of ancestors were distributed in family residencesrather than entrapped within public buildings, and rituals ofensoulment did not engage large numbers of people. Theburning of the temple at San José Mogote and the broadercrisis catalyzed an unraveling of religiously focused entan-glements among community members, buildings, and the di-vine. These events were probably catalytic because they threat-ened and challenged existing relations among people anddivinities (Joyce 2000, 2010:120–125).

The innovations that followed at San José Mogote in-cluded the appropriation of Mound 1 by community leaders,the interment of elites in tombs, the increasing role of eliteritual specialists as mediators between people and the divine,and the reorientation of the site to a new sacred axis. Theresult was that elites as well as their houses, ancestors, andritual implements came to be more central to the entan-glements that constituted the San José Mogote community.These innovations were also the means through which he-reditary status was institutionalized for the first time, settingthe stage for the emergence of powerful regional rulers (Blan-ton et al. 1999:46; Joyce 2010:110–117).

This process of innovation and reordering of entangle-ments continued and accelerated with the founding ofMonte Albán. The Main Plaza was constructed and ensouledas an axis mundi and mountain of creation where public rit-uals could be performed that reenacted the cosmic creation.The plaza brought together people from Monte Albán andsurrounding communities for the enactment of establishedceremonies, such as ancestor veneration and feasting, alongwith new rituals such as human sacrifice. At the same time,


political and religious leadership were increasingly linkedsuch that the entanglements constituting political authorityand institutions, both communal and hierarchical, mediatedbetween people and the divine. What resulted was a cen-tralized polity, with Monte Albán as its political seat. MonteAlbán provides a clear contrast to Río Viejo in that cen-tralized political authority and multicommunity political re-lations and identities were far more tenuous in the lowerVerde. Like at Río Viejo, however, newer forms of hierar-chical authority at Monte Albán were in dynamic tensionwith more traditional forms of communal leadership. Dur-ing the Late Formative, these tensions were successfully ne-gotiated by downplaying the political authority and ritualrole of hierarchical rulers, while foregrounding a regional po-litical identity and communal forms of authority. By theTerminal Formative, the political, religious, and economicreach of the rulers of Monte Albán expanded through theirincreasing domination of the Main Plaza, military coercion,and the control of prestige goods. Another catalytic eventseems to have occurred toward the end of the Terminal For-mative when tensions between communal and hierarchicalforms of authority erupted in conflict. Unlike at Río Viejo,hierarchical authority at Monte Albán triumphed.

More broadly, our analysis suggests new avenues of in-quiry into the relationships between religion and politicalchange in ancient societies. The reasons why religion couldbe so constraining in the lower Verde but leave openings forchange in the Oaxaca Valley have to do with historicallycontingent factors involving the ensoulment of public build-ings, the storage of the remains of ancestors, and the cen-trality of rulers in relation to the divine as well as the un-folding of catalytic events such as the burning of the templeat San José Mogote. Our case studies, however, provide someclues to the kinds of assemblages that may be more bindingof political innovation. In the lower Verde, the most con-straining factors in the creation of regional identities andauthority appear to have been the salient material and divineconnections between people and their local communities,taking the form of the remains of ancestors and offeringsritually emplaced in public buildings. The bones of ancestorsand communal offerings in public buildings materially an-chored social memories and collectivities in ways that weredifficult, if not impossible, to unseat. In the Valley of Oaxaca,we do not see the same degree of enduring material con-nections between people and local places. At San JoséMogote and Monte Albán, there were certainly material em-bodiments of community in the form of public facilities, butthese were linked to people largely through periodic ex-periences such as the construction of monumental buildingsor participation in public ceremonies. On the other hand,what may have made the events at San José Mogote so cat-alytic was the dramatic and unexpected destruction of thetemple on Mound 1: a highly visible and seemingly dura-ble material entity that was central to the entanglementsthat constituted community at the time. Finally, data from

both regions demonstrates that religion could generate ten-sion and conflict rather than the cohesion so often assumedin models of early complexity. Our results suggest that itmay be productive in cases of early political centralization toconsider whether religion is, in fact, a source of conflict to beovercome rather than a unifying ideology.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the people of the lower Río VerdeValley for their friendship and assistance as well as theConsejo de Arqueología and Centro INAH Oaxaca of theInstituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Funding forour research has been provided by the Historical Society(Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs Grant, withsupport from the Templeton Foundation), National ScienceFoundation (BNS-8716332, BCS-0096012, BCS-0202624,BCS-1123388, and BCS-1123377), Foundation for the Ad-vancement of Mesoamerican Studies (99012), National Geo-graphic Society (3767-88), Wenner-Gren Foundation (GR.4988), University of Colorado at Boulder (CARTSS, CRCW,Norton Anthropology Fund, and Dean’s Fund for Excel-lence), University of Central Florida Office of Research andCommercialization’s in-house grant and start-up fund,Vanderbilt University Research Council and Mellon Fund,Fulbright Foundation, H. John Heinz III Charitable Trust,Explorers Club, Sigma Xi, Association for Women in Sci-ence, Women’s Forum Foundation of Colorado, ColoradoArchaeological Society, and Rutgers University. We alsothank Scott Hutson, Carla Jones, Stacie King, George Lau,Tim Pauketat, Javier Urcid, and Tim Webmoor for provid-ing us with helpful input on this article.

CommentsManuel A. Hermann LejarazuCentro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en AntropologíaSocial, Juarez 87, Tlalpan Centro, C. P. 14000, Mexico, DistritoFederal ([email protected]). 24 IV 15

In an original view on the role of religion in early societiesof the Mesoamerican world, Joyce and Barber propose thatreligion can be a point of conflict and tension between mem-bers of a community and not necessarily a unifying factor insocial and political change. In my opinion, the key to un-derstanding why religion can play such a dual role is becausethe members of a community are involved in organizingannual festivals and ceremonies to different degrees. That is,even if community members share a belief system or agreewith the spread of religion, there may be groups that feelexcluded by low or no participation in collective ceremonies


or do not sufficiently identify with the spaces, objects, orforms of worship that express collective religious belief. Inmy view, the comparative study of these authors in late For-mative Oaxaca meets these conditions.

Joyce and Barber point out that religion in the lower RíoVerde Valley constrained the emergence of political central-ization displayed in a durable polity because social union wasmore important than a division between nobility and thecommon people. In contrast, in the Valley of Oaxaca, religionfostered political change, manifested in the construction ofelite buildings, the interment of elites in stonemasonry tombs,and the increasing role of elite ritual specialists.

In my opinion, this article presents a very innovativeanalysis based on archaeological evidence that explains whythe regions’ histories diverged. Although I agree with thedevelopment of ideas presented throughout the text, I dohave some doubts regarding the degree of community par-ticipation in the festivities and ceremonies at the acropolis ofRío Viejo or in public spaces such as Yugüe or Cerro de laVirgen. Based on the considerations outlined above, I agreewith Joyce and Barber that the elite of the lower Río VerdeValley had considerable power, but such authority was re-stricted, in part, by the will of ordinary people; in order toprevent widespread discontent, political centralization wascreated through practical and common symbols that helpedbring people together, such as the physical entrapment of thebones of ancestors, offerings, and divine beings within publicbuildings in local communities or in the acropolis in RíoViejo.

However, I wonder what happened to those sectors of thecommunity not involved in organizing festivities or cere-monies dedicated to the dead ancestors buried in publicbuildings. Did the whole community really identify withthose objects, spaces, or symbols created by elites to sharethese common elements? Does the strategy employed by theelites truly avoid widespread discontent or rebellion? Thefact that Río Viejo collapsed as a major center in TerminalFormative shows that elite strategies were not so convincingor effective at preventing widespread discontent. I think itis important to consider the involvement of other actors insocial change that might not necessarily have participated insocial or community ceremonies orchestrated by elite groups.If religion can become a crucible of tensions and conflictsenabling policy innovations, I think there is no better exam-ple of crisis than when the official cult does not meet the ex-pectations of a society as a whole.

The deeds in lower Río Verde can better explain why theceremonial center of Mound 1 at San José Mogote duringthe Middle Formative changed dramatically by becoming theresidence of privileged groups who took control of authority.It seems clear that a section of the community that felt ex-cluded from public ceremonies had the strength to becomethe first hereditary nobility of the region and built up the cultof their own family ancestors as the key point of the religion.In short, although the evidence in Río Verde brings to mind

a negotiation between elites and community groups, I think,after all, this was not very different from the situation at SanJosé Mogote. In fact, the reaction of certain sectors facingtimes of crisis was what launched the changes in the centralvalleys and the null performance of elites in Río Viejo.

Scott R. HutsonDepartment of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington,Kentucky 40506, USA ([email protected]). 25 IV 15

Arthur Joyce’s 30-year (and counting!) commitment to thelower Río Verde Valley and the work of dozens of studentsand professionals from multiple disciplines have made thisvalley one of Mexico’s premier research venues. This workhas advanced several anthropological themes, such as struc-turation, human ecology, and political economy. The currentpaper by Joyce and Barber advances discussions of how re-ligion and the ontology of nonhuman beings influence his-torical processes. Joyce and Barber could not have writtenthis paper without extensive excavations at the regional cap-ital as well as several smaller centers, confirming once againthe value of a truly long-term commitment to a small region.Rather than noting flaws, my comment asks questions forsubsequent research. In particular, I focus on the first twoterms of Joyce and Barber’s title: ensoulment and entrap-ment.

Regarding entrapment, Joyce and Barber provide an ex-citing example of how the deep intertwining of people andthings creates an inertia that resists social change. Theirexample contains a welcome insight about matter and time.The materials of the past—local monuments suffused withthe bones of the community—swell into the present, dis-rupting the success of the regional polity at Río Viejo (Olsen2010:119–120). People had the option of realigning with theregional polity—bundled burials in Mesoamerica suggest aprecedent for exhuming one’s ancestors and moving themelsewhere—but they chose to keep themselves locally rooted.I agree that points of tension existed between rulers whowanted to strengthen subjects’ ties with the regional centerand people who felt strong entanglements with their ownlocal monuments. At the same time, the construction of theRío Viejo acropolis—one of the largest structures ever builtin Oaxaca—suggests that at some point, people extricatedthemselves from their local entrapments long enough toconstruct an unprecedentedly massive monument. Does thissuggest that after the Río Viejo acropolis was built, it mayhave been appropriated in ways that the people who laboredto build it did not intend (cf. McAnany 2010, chapter 5;Pauketat 2000), perhaps making their local monumentsseem more attractive once again? Does the capacity of reli-gion as a constraint, as a trap, wax and wane and wax againover time?


I invite the reader to look at entrapment quite physically,which is to look at the bulkiness and durability of the publicmonuments that both manifest and entrap the community.Gell (1996) has argued that traps are models of their de-signers as well as their victims. As an example, the Anga ofNew Guinea, as reported by Pierre Lemmonier (cited in Gell1996), build eel-shaped eel traps that are much more sturdythan necessary because the Anga see the eel as extremelypowerful. The trap models the eel as well as the Anga’sperceptions of the eel. Do burial mounds as traps also modeltheir designers and victims? The people buried in moundswere likely perceived as people of renown and thus buriedin a mound that was overbuilt: mounds outlast the com-munity that used them, often surviving thousands of years.The mounds persevere in a way that people do not. Does theway in which mounds were purposefully overbuilt modelfor us the esteem in which the community held its dead andthe desire to memorialize them across time?

Regarding ensoulment, I would like to know more aboutsouls and animacy. Joyce and Barber state that religiousofferings “ensoul and sustain public buildings as animatebeings and as community members.” What was a soul inancient Oaxaca? Citing birth rites, feedings, and death ritesperformed for buildings, Joyce and Barber conclude thatbuildings have life cycles. Since buildings are alive, they arealso animate, which Joyce and Barber gloss elsewhere ashaving a “sacred life force.” Across indigenous Mesoamerica,having a soul often involves a connection with a spirit ani-mal, and having a destiny is determined in part by the omensof one’s day of birth (Gossen 1994). Did buildings have asoul in this sense? Can a building be animate without havingthis kind of soul? In other words, are some animate entitiesdrastically different from others? Are nonhuman animatebeings symmetrical to humans? Do they have the samepowers? How does a Zapotec or Mixtec or Chatino sense ofanimacy differ from Amazonian (Descola 2013) or Scandi-navian (Ingold 2000:89–110) genres of animacy? I strugglewith similar questions in the Maya area (see also Houston2013:75–77) and look forward to working with the authorsas we face these themes in future forums.

Takeshi InomataSchool of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona85721, USA ([email protected]). 29 VI 15

Joyce and Barber make an important contribution throughthis article. I strongly agree with their central proposal thatreligion was not only a unifying factor in social process butalso a field of tension and conflict. The different social tra-jectories of the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley ofOaxaca present fascinating examples through which to ex-plore this issue.

At the same time, I think that some aspects of the con-ceptualization of religion may deserve further discussion. Asthe authors note, a universal definition of religion is im-possible, but we still need to recognize that processes ofsocial integration and division are conditioned by the com-mon characteristic that religions of various cultural tradi-tions share, that is, the general framework of standardizationand normalization. What we call religion always demandscertain levels of conformity to sets of ideas, narratives, andpractices among its practitioners. This tendency toward stan-dardization, however, does not preclude the existence of flex-ibilities, inconsistencies, and dissents, or of the coexistenceof competing ideas and narratives. Integrative and divisiveprocesses in society are affected significantly by this forceof standardization and resistance to it, although the levels ofconformity and inconsistency vary considerably from onehistorical context to another.

I also think that we need to critically evaluate a widelyassumed commonality of religion, that is, the notion of the“sacred.” Joyce and Barber view the sacred as the core ofOaxacan religion, which becomes “entangled” with and re-lated to other social domains. I am concerned with this em-phasis on the sacred, as this conceptualization is an impor-tant issue when we try to understand related social processes.Joyce and Barber are correct in stressing the diffused natureof Mesoamerican religions, permeating through daily livesand mundane practices. But if subtle utterances and prac-tices during the mundane course of daily life are significantcomponents of Mesoamerican religions, we probably need toquestion the very notion of sacredness that is privilegedabove other domains of indigenous experiences and prac-tices. We also need to question the assumption that the con-sciously understood sacred propositions motivated and ex-plained religious practices. As many scholars have pointedout, these assumptions may have been strongly influencedby our own experience in the modern world, particularly bythe explanatory form of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradi-tion. As Talal Asad and others have argued, even within thistradition, the perception of compartmentalized sets of sacredpropositions dictating religious practices and experiencesmay have been a modern phenomenon.

Among various other religious traditions of the world,which may be loosely characterized as polytheic or animistic,the opposition between the sacred and the mundane maybe considerably fuzzier, and the force of fixed narratives toshape religious practices may be far weaker. For example,most of my Q’eqchi’Maya workers could not explain specificmeanings of their Deer Dances and told me that they dothem because that is the way they have always done. Thisdoes not mean the absence of privileged narratives that ex-plain the ritual, which may be held by certain members ofthe society. In this regard, we need to be cautious in pro-jecting the modern ethnographically observed patterns to theprehispanic period. By this, I do not intend to de-emphasizecertain continuities in Mesoamerican religious ideas. We,


however, need to consider the possibility that the degreesof internalization of these religious ideas by diverse socialmembers during the prehispanic period may have been quitedifferent from those after the Spanish conquest, when a starkopposition to Christianity and the colonial regime forcedindigenous agents to consciously commit themselves to cer-tain versions of religious propositions. We need to considerthe possibility that meanings of religious acts in prehispanicMesoamerica may have been highly fluid, diverse, incoher-ent, and polysemic. I do agree that different narratives andpractices in the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley ofOaxaca that Joyce and Barber discuss are important factorsaffecting the divergent trajectories of these regions. But at thesame time, I suspect that the degree and way of standardi-zation and the coexisting diversity and incoherence withinindividual communities may be equally important aspectsthat conditioned courses of social change. This nature ofstandardization and diversity deserves further inquiry.

I would like to add that the Terminal Formative was atime of significant social change not only in Oaxaca but alsoin other parts of Mesoamerica. At the onset of this period,Teotihuacan became a powerful center in central Mexico,and in southern Mesoamerica, many centers, including ElMirador, Kaminaljuyu, and Takalik Abaj, accelerated theprocess of political centralization. The end of the TerminalFormative was marked by political disintegration, as Joyceand Barber describe for the lower Río Verde Valley. WhileTeotihuacan and Monte Albán continued to prosper, manycenters in southern Mesoamerica, such as El Mirador andKaminaljuyu, collapsed. We need to examine whether sharedreligious or other social practices affected these patterns orwhether external factors, such as climate change, played amore important role.

Our understanding of Mesoamerican religions is still lim-ited, and their diverse aspects and their relations to socialprocesses need to be further examined. This stimulating ar-ticle by Joyce and Barber represents an important step in thisregard and encourages us to explore this critical issue.

Stacie M. King

Department of Anthropology, Glenn A. Black Laboratory forArchaeology, and Mathers Museum of World Cultures, IndianaUniversity, Student Building 130, Bloomington, Indiana 47405,USA ([email protected]). 22 V 15

Religious Practice in the Ancient Americasand the Ontological Turn

In this article, Joyce and Barber make the argument thatlong-standing religious practice in ancient Oaxaca, Mexico,both constrained and entailed particular social and politi-cal transformations during key moments in the histories of

coastal Oaxaca and the Valley of Oaxaca. Both regions havebeen well documented by long-term archaeological researchand offer ample excavated archaeological contexts to provideevidentiary depth. The theoretical basis for the argumentskillfully grafts together contemporary anthropological the-ories on relational ontologies, inscription, materiality, andresidential burial, which allows the authors to explain pro-cesses of change in varying contexts. As such, Joyce andBarber present a model that could be applied to other placesand other parts of the world. Importantly, religion plays acentral role in both creating opportunities for action andlimiting choices.

The archaeological data detailed in this article are derivedfrom excavations undertaken by Joyce and Barber (andothers) in coastal Oaxaca during the past three decades andthen paired with reinterpretations of archaeological datafrom Valley of Oaxaca sites excavated by various archaeol-ogists since the 1930s. The Valley of Oaxaca case study is anoutgrowth of arguments that were first published in thisjournal by Joyce and Winter (1996), which Joyce has sinceelaborated (Joyce 2000, 2004; Urcid and Joyce 2014). In thisargument, following a “crisis” and power vacuum at San JoséMogote, Monte Albán elites established a new political cap-ital at Monte Albán, which took advantage of Monte Albán’simportance as a sacred place. They erected sculptural pro-grams along an open plaza that emphasized communal re-ligious practices, feasting, warfare, and sacrifice. Throughtime, communal participation eroded as Monte Albán noblesgained power within and beyond the valley.

In the current article, the Valley of Oaxaca phenomena arecompared to those of the lower Río Verde to show how thereligious institutions and sudden events in the Lat

Documents

Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization · 2016. 9. 9. · 2007), domesticity (Plunket 2002), rubbish disposal (Hutson and Stanton 2007), politics (Joyce 2000), and identity