Abstract
In a recent article, Richard Blanton and Gary Feinman (1984) argue that pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was a kind of world system. Following the lead of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), they suggest that the relative wealth and power of different parts of Mesoamerica were due principally to the ability to manipulate flows of material, energy, and people at the macroregional scale through the establishment of ties of superordinance and dependency. In their view, positions of power and authority at the time of the Spanish conquest were based on the ruling elite “maintaining control of the flow of ‘luxury’ goods, which were ... important in attracting and materially rewarding the cadre of soldiers and officials that were the lifeblood of the state” (Blanton and Feinman 1984:676). Although nearby areas often paid tribute in foodstuffs, fuel, and other bulk items, “controlling the flow of [preciosities] was so important that it provided the major motivation for external conquest” (Blanton and Feinman 1984:677).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adams, R., 1981, Heartland of Cities: Survey of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Adams, R., and H. Nissen, 1972, The Uruk Countryside. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Barroll, M., 1980, Toward a General Theory of Imperialism. Journal of Anthropoligical Research 36: 174–195.
Bedoian, W., 1973, Oro y Maiz: The Economic Structure of the Mexica Empire and its Effects on Social Stratification and Political Power. Unpublished master’s thesis, Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Berdan, F., 1982, The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Berdan, F., 1986, Enterprise and Empire in Colonial Mexico. In Economic Aspects of Prehispanic Highland Mexico (ed. B. Isaac). (Research in Economic Anthropology, Supplement 2 ). JAI Press, Greenwich, pp. 281–302.
Berry, B., 1961, City Size Distributions and Economic Development. Economic Development and Culture Change9: 573–587.
Bittman, B., and T. Sullivan, 1978, The Pochteca. In Mesoamerican Communication Routes and Cultural Contacts (ed. T. Lee, Jr., and C. Navarrete). Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation 40. Brigham Young University, Provo, pp. 211–218.
Blanton, R., 1976, Anthropological Studies of Cities. Annual Review of Anthropology 5:249–264.
Blanton, R., and G. Feinman, 1984, The Mesoamerican World-System: A Comparative Perspective.AmericanAnthropologist 86:673–682.
Boone, J., III, 1986, Parental Investment and Elite Family Structure in Preindustrial States: A Case Study of Late Medieval-Early Modern Portuguese Genealogies. American Anthropologist 88: 859–878.
Bourne, F., 1966, A History of the Romans. D.C. Heath, Boston.
Brumfiel, E., and T. Earle (eds.), 1987, Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Burghardt, A., 1971, A Hypothesis about Gateway Cities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61: 269–285.
Carrasco, P., 1978, La Economia del México Prehispdnico. In Economia, Politica, y Ideologia en el
México Prehispúnico (ed. P. Carrasco and J. Broda). Imagen, Mexico City, pp. 13–76. Casson, L., 1971, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Casson, L., 1974, Travel in the Ancient World. George Allen and Unwin, London.
Claessen, H., and P. Skalnik (eds.), 1978, The Early State. Mouton, The Hague.
Clarkson, L., 1971, The Pre-Industrial Economy in England 1500–1750. B. T. Batsford, London. Clay, C., 1984, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700: Vol. II. Industry, Trade, and Government. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Contenau, G., 1966, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria. W. W. Norton, New York.
Curtin, P., 1984, Cross-Cultural Trade in World Prehistory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Davies, N., 1973, The Aztecs: A History. Macmillan, New York.
Duncan-Jones, R., 1974, The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Eisenstadt, S., 1963, The Political Systems of Empires. Frée Press of Glencoe, London.
English, P., 1966, City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Finley, M., 1973, The Ancient Economy. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Gibson, C., 1964, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico 1519–1810. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Greene, K., 1986, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy. B. T. Batsford, London.
Hassig, R., 1985, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Hill, C., 1949, The English Revolution and the State. The Modern Quarterly 4: 110–128.
Hill, C., 1967, Reformation to Industrial Revolution. In The Making of English Society, Vol. 1. Pantheon Press, New York.
Hindess, B., and P. Hirst, 1975, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Jacobs, J., 1969, The Economy of Cities. Vintage Books, New York.
Johnson, E., 1970, The Organization of Space in Developing Countries. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Johnson, G., 1981, Monitoring Complex System Integration and Boundary Phenomena with Settlement Size Data. In Archaeological Approaches to the Study of Complexity (ed. S. van der Leeuw ). Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, pp. 144–188.
Kelley, K., 1976, Dendritic Central-Place Systems and the Regional Organization of Navaho Trading Posts. In Regional Analysis: Vol. 1 Economic Systems (ed. C. Smith ). Academic Press, New York, pp. 219–254.
Kurtz, D., 1987, The Economics of Urbanization and State Formation at Teotihuacan. Current Anthropology 28: 329–353.
Liebschuetz, W., 1980, The Early Roman Empire. In Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations (ed. Arthur Cotterell ). Mayflower Books, New York, pp. 253–260.
Luttwak, E., 1976, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Lynch, J., 1981, Spain under the Hapsburgs. Blackwell, Oxford.
McAlister, L., 1984, Spain and Portugal in the New World 1492–1700. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Mintz, S., 1960, A Tentative Typology of Eight Haitian Marketplaces. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 4: 15–58.
Oates, J., 1986, Babylon. Thames and Hudson, London.
Ogilvie, R., 1980, Republican Rome. In Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations (ed. A. Cotterell ). Mayflower Books, New York, pp. 248–252.
Olmstead, A., 1948, History of the Persian Empire. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Oppenheim, A., 1954, The Seafaring Merchants of Ur. Journal of the American Oriental Society 74: 6–17.
Parker, A., 1990, Classical Antiquity: The Maritime Dimension. Antiquity 64: 335–346.
Parry, J., 1966, The Establishment of the European Hegemony 1415–1715: Trade and Exploration in the Age of the Renaissance. Harper Torchbooks/Harper and Row, New York.
Parsons, J., 1976, The Role of Chinampa Agriculture in the Food Supply of Aztec Tenochtitlan. In Culture Change and Continuity: Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin (ed. C. Cleland ). Academic Press, New York, pp. 233–263.
Paynter, R., 1981, Social Complexity in Peripheries: Problems and Models. In ArchaeologicalApproaches to the Study of Complexity (ed. S. van der Leeuw ). Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, pp. 118–141.
Pomey, P., and A. Tchernia, 1978, Le Tonnage Maximum des Navires de Commerce Romains. Archaeonautica 2: 233–251.
Price, B., 1978, Secondary State Formation: An Explanatory Model. In Origins of the State (ed. R.Cohen and E. Service ). Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Philadelphia, pp. 161–186.
Raish, C., 1988, Domestic Animals and Stability in Pre-State Farming Societies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
Redman, C., 1978, The Rise of Civilization: From Early Farmers to Urban Society in the Ancient Near East. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.
Reed, C., 1969, The Pattern of Animal Domestication in the prehistoric Near East. In The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (ed. P. Ucko and G. Dimbleby ). Aldine, Chicago, pp. 361–380.
Rich, E., 1959, History of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Hudson’s Bay Record Society, London. Ringrose, D., 1970, Transportation and Economic Stagnation in Spain, 1750–1850. Duke University Press, Durham.
Ringrose, D., 1983, Madrid and the Spanish Economy, 1560–1850. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Roux, G., 1980, Ancient Iraq. Penguin Books, New York.
Sanders, W., and R. Santley, 1983, A Tale of Three Cities: Energetics and Urbanization in Prehispanic Central Mexico. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns: Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey (ed. E. Vogt and R. Leventhal ). University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 243–291.
Sanders, W., and D. Webster, 1988, The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition. American Anthropologist 90: 521–546.
Sanders, W., J. Parsons, and R. Santley, 1979, The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization. Academic Press, New York.
Santley, R., 1984a, Chalcatzingo, the Olmec Heartland, and the Gateway Community Hypothesis. Journal of Anthropological Research 40: 603–607.
Santley, R., 1984b, Obsidian Exchange, Economic Stratification, and the Evolution of Complex Society in the Basin of Mexico. In Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica (ed. K. Hirth ). University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, pp. 43–86.
Schneider, J., 1977, Was There a Pre-capitalist World System? Peasant Studies 6:20–29. Schneider, J., and E. Hansen, 1972, Modernization and Development: The Role of Regional Elites and Noncorporate Gro ups in the European Mediterranean. Comparative Studies in Society and History 14: 328–350.
Sherratt, A., 1981, Plough and Pastoralism: Aspects of the Secondary Products Revolution. In Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke (ed. I. Hodder, G. Isaac, and N. Hammond ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 261–305.
Smith, C., 1976, Exchange Systems and the Spatial Distribution of Elites: The Organization of Stratification in Agrarian Societies. In Regional Analysis: Vol. 2. Social Systems. (ed. C. Smith ). Academic Press, New York, pp. 390–474.
Smith, M., 1979, The Aztec Marketing System and Settlement Pattern in the Valley of Mexico: A Central Place Analysis. American Antiquity 44: 110–125.
Vance, J., 1970, The Merchant’s World. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
Wallerstein, I., 1974, The Modern World-System: Vol. 1. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Academic Press, New York.
Wolf, E., 1966, Peasants. Prentice-Hall, New York.
Wolf, E., 1982, Europe and the People without History. University of California Press, Berkeley. Yoffee, N., 1979, The Decline and Rise of Mesopotamian Civilization: An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective on the Evolution of Social Complexity. American Antiquity 44: 5–35.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Santley, R.S., Alexander, R.T. (1992). The Political Economy of Core-Periphery Systems. In: Schortman, E.M., Urban, P.A. (eds) Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6416-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6416-1_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3220-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6416-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive