Political Economy in Neighborhood Public Space at Angamuco, Michoacan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ways to Do, Ways to Inhabit, Ways to Interact: An Archaeological View of Communities and Daily Life" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper looks at changes in the relationships between elites and commoners in neighborhood public spaces at the site of Angamuco, Michoacan, Mexico, drawing from a combination of Marxian political economy and collective action theory. The study uses a combination of viewshed analysis, agent-based modeling of accessibility, survey, and excavation to analyze how different groups interacted with neighborhood public spaces, centered around shrines or small temples in residential neighborhood plazas. It argues that earlier Classic and Epiclassic period occupations show more separation between elite spaces and commoner spaces, both geographically and in terms of spatial patterns. By contrast, Postclassic occupations constituting the bulk of the southern margin of the site show a mixing of these two patterns. It concludes that elites were actively colonizing commoner public spaces within urban neighborhoods, which likely created tensions around the role of secondary elites in the centuries leading up to the Late Postclassic imperial state. The later state likely sought to resolve these tensions through the creation of central bureaucratic institutions that undercut the authority of secondary elites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ways to Do, Ways to Inhabit, Ways to Interact: An Archaeological View of Communities and Daily Life   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38167.0