Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses of Obsidian Procurement in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca

Introduction

The Mixtec people achieved a remarkable cultural florescence in the half millennium prior to the Spanish invasion. Because so little is known of prior Mixtec cultural developments, this area often appears isolated from processes throughout Mesoamerica. Given the abundant evidence for interaction throughout the modern state of Oaxaca and Central México in the final centuries of prehispanic Mixtec culture, interregional interaction during the Formative period (approximately 1500 B.C.–A.D. 100) largely remains unsupported by firm data – such as those generated by compositional analysis of obsidian, a volcanic glass crucial in ancient Mesoamerica.

I directed a project to explore intra- and interregional interaction in two phases established by the Mixteca Alta ceramic sequence within the Formative period: (1) the Cruz B phase (1150–850 B.C.), a time when interaction among early villages intensifies throughout Mesoamerica and (2) the Yucuita phase (500–200 B.C.), encompassing the initial portion of the Late Formative, when the first urban settlements appear in both the Mixteca Alta and the adjacent Valley of Oaxaca. The goal of the project was to explore the participation of Formative period Mixtecs in larger Mesoamerican interaction and exchange networks through compositional analysis of obsidian. While the project focused on the Nochixtlán Valley site of Etlatongo, samples were analyzed from sites beyond this village to understand in which networks these villagers participated. With the aid of a grant from FAMSI, the project sourced 365 obsidian samples and provides new data to examine how this raw material moved throughout a region where it does not naturally occur. By analyzing samples from two different time periods, it is possible to determine diachronic changes in procurement patterns within the Mixteca Alta.

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