Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Formative Oaxaca and the Zapotec Cosmos: The interactions of ritual and human ecology
are traced in this interpretation of a prehistoric settlement in highland Mexico
Author(s): Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus
Source: American Scientist, Vol. 64, No. 4 (July-August 1976), pp. 374-383
Published by: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27847341
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Kent V. Flannery
Joyce Marcus
One of the most ancient civilizations
of pre-Columbian America was that
of the Zapotec of southern Mexico.
Although less intensively studied
than the Aztec or Maya, the Zapotec
were among the first Mesoamerican
Indians to construct public buildings,
carve hieroglyphic inscriptions, and
achieve true urban status.
It now seems likely that the cradle of
Zapotec civilization was the Valley of
Oaxaca, which lies in the southern
highlands of Mexico at an elevation of
1,500 m (Fig. 1). Here the Rio Atoyac
and its tributary, the Rio Salado, have
combined to produce a Y-shaped
valley with 700 km2 of flat land, sur
rounded by forested mountains which
rise to 3,000 m. The climate is tem
perate and semiarid, with 500-700
mm of annual rainfall concentrated
mainly in the period between May
and November. In the words of ge
ographer Anne Kirkby (1974, p. 119),
parts of the Valley of Oaxaca are so mar
Kent V. Flannery is a curator in the Museum
of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
After a period of graduate work in zoology, he
transferred to anthropology and received his
doctorate from the University of Chicago.
Since 1966 he has been directing an interdis
ciplinary archaeological project, supported by
the National Science Foundation, entitled
"The Prehistoric Human Ecology of the Valley
of Oaxaca." Joyce Marcus is an assistant
professor in the Department of Anthropology,
University of Michigan. She received herB.A.
from Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Harvard
University, where she studied anthropology
and specialized in the analysis of Maya
hieroglyphs. In 1974 she received a grant from
the National Endowment for the Humanities
to conduct an analysis of Zapotec hieroglyphic
writing. The authors wish to thank Jane
Mariouw for her line drawings and Robert and
Judith Zeitlin for constructive criticism. Ad
dress: Museum of Anthropology, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
374 American Scientist, Volume 64
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Formative Oaxaca and the Zapotec
Cosmos
The interactions of ritual and human ecology are
traced in this interpretation of a prehistoric
settlement in highland Mexico
ginal for agriculture that the number of
years in which harvests fail outnumber
those in which they succeed. In an average
year, it is an area of permanent drought,
defined by Thornthwaite (1963) as an
area where precipitation throughout the
year is less than potential ?vapotranspi
ration. Despite this, agriculture is today
the principal means of livelihood, and in
the past the valley formed one of the
earliest centers of agriculture in Meso
america, supporting one of the greatest
pre-conquest civilizations in Mexico.
A major problem for the archaeolog
ist, therefore, is to explain how such
an area could have produced such a
civilization. Fortunately, there are
three major sources of data on the
Zapotec. The first is the archaeologi
cal sequence in the Oaxaca region,
which goes back more than 10,000
years. The second is a series of docu
ments written by the Spaniards who
conquered the Zapotec during the
sixteenth century, when the latter
numbered in the millions. The third
is the estimated 200,000-300,000 In
dians in the Valley of Oaxaca, the
nearby Sierra, and the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec who still speak Zapotec
today.
One of the most popular explanatory
frameworks for archaeologists of the
last two decades has been provided by
the study of prehistoric human ecol
ogy. In this approach, culture is
viewed as an extrasomatic means of
adaptation by which prehistoric
populations adjusted to their envi
ronment?sometimes achieving ho
meostasis, sometimes becoming ex
tinct, and sometimes increasing in
population and socioeconomic com
plexity to the level of civilization.
Ecological frameworks have been of
fered for the origins of agriculture
(MacNeish 1964), the establishment
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of sedentary life (Flannery 1972a),
and the rise of such great pre-Co
lumbian cities as Teotihuac?n in the
Valley of Mexico (Sanders and Price
1968). Food production and distri
bution, irrigation and its manage
ment, population pressure, trade, and
economic symbiosis have all been
singled out as causal factors in early
civilization.
A growing number of anthropologists,
however, maintain that such frame
works explain no more than 50 per
cent of prehistoric man's behavior. In
the past few years, such former ad
vocates as Marshall Sahlins have
abandoned ecology for a model which
gives more weight to human ideology;
archaeologists such as Robert Hall
and John Fritz now list "cognitive
archaeology" among their interests.
Even the powerfully argued ecological
framework for Teotihuac?n present
ed by Sanders and Price has been
challenged by Ren? Millon (1973, pp.
48-49):
The early Teotihuacanos were confronted
by a great potential in the setting they had
come to occupy. It is abundantly clear
that the potential was brilliantly ex
ploited. At the same time it is beyond
question that the realization of this po
tential cannot be understood mainly in
ecological terms. Any attempt to do so
does a disservice to the ecological ap
proach, for it claims too much. One has
only to look at the great size of Teoti
huac?n in relation to its valley to realize
that the rise of Teotihuac?n, the economic
center, cannot be understood without
reference to the simultaneous rise of
Teotihuac?n, the sacred center.
Flannery (1972b) has argued that
such criticism should be leveled not at
ecology but at its recent practitioners.
Human ecosystems are characterized
by exchanges of matter, energy, and
information among their compo within an ecologically adaptive "goal and provided the context in which
nents, but most "paleoecological" range" (Rappaport 1971b). Moreover, primitive agriculture began. Desic
studies deal only with the exchanges since ritual must be performed in cated plant remains from archaeolo
of matter and energy. This is partic order to exist, it should survive in the gical deposits in dry caves indicate
ularly distressing because it is the archaeological record as patterned that pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo) may
information exchanges which regulate behavior (Flannery 1976b). have been cultivated in Oaxaca as far
many of the matter-energy transac back as 7800 B.C.; pollen grains from
tions. However, prehistoric informa In this paper, we will take our first similar deposits suggest that teosinte
tion exchange is a Pandora's box hesitant steps toward incorporating (Zea mexicana), a close relative of
which most "hard-nosed" ar ritual and other forms of information maize, may already have been part of
chaeologists are unwilling to touch exchange into the study of prehistoric the diet between 7400 and 6700 B.C.
with a ten-foot pole: it involves phe matter-energy transactions. The Za (Flannery 1973). However, this was a
nomena such as ritual, religion, cos potec are an appropriate group for time of low population density and
mology, and iconography for which this approach because of their in meager material culture from which
there are no agreed-upon analytical credible 3,000-year continuity and the one could scarcely have predicted the
procedures and which are normally excellent sixteenth-century descrip later rise of the Zapotec.
the province of the ethnologist. tions of their cosmology. As anthro
pologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff The second stage was a period of
In particular, the work of anthro recently argued (1975), this is a good sedentary agricultural village cultures
pologist Roy Rappaport (1971a) starting place because "cosmology is which began around 1500 B.C. and
shows that human ritual transmits primitive man's own way of doing a ended around 500 B.C. This period,
information 4 6 in an atmosphere of systems analysis of his world." known as the "Formative," witnessed
unquestioned truth." By dancing at explosive population growth and an
a neighboring village's ritual, visiting Developmental stages of intensification of agriculture, as well
as the evolution of many of the at
tribesmen may communicate not only
their demographic strength but also
the Zapotec tributes of the historic Zapotec. By
their willingness to assist their One can view the prehistory of the 1000 B.C., there were more than a
neighbors in warfare. Other rituals Valley of Oaxaca in terms of four dozen villages in the Valley of Oaxaca
can be shown to regulate the dispersal general developmental stages. The growing maize, teosinte, pumpkins,
of human populations, preserve the first of these was a long period of chile peppers, and avocados; hunting
balance between farmed and fallowed seminomadic hunting and gathering deer, peccary, and rabbit; and har
land, and keep domestic animal herds which began in the late Pleistocene vesting a variety of wild products like
acorns, hackberries, black walnuts,
mesquite beans, prickly pear cactus
fruit, and agave or century plant.
Many of the villages founded during
this period?among them Mitla,
Gulf
of Mexico
Huitzo, Zaachila, Cuilapan, and
Huitzo Abasolo?are still inhabited today. In
their early stages, almost all these
A Mexico Citye Veracruz villages were small, covering only 1-2
Puebla@0
hectares and occupied by perhaps no
more than 10-12 families (Marcus
A San Jos6 Mogote Area of map
A Tehuantepec 1976a). A notable exception was San
Jos? Mogote, a very large Formative
village on the Atoyac River (Flannery
Tierras LargasA ' xaca City 1970).
Monte Alben A a
A Tomaltepec
The third developmental stage began
Cuilapa A Abasolo around 500 B.C. with the founding of
Monte Alban, the city which was to
become the focal point of Zapotec
civilization for more than 1,000 years.
Monte Alban was spectacularly con
Hierve el Agua A toured to a mountaintop rising 400 m
above the Atoyac at the point where
all three arms of the Y-shaped valley
c C Modern City
come together. Tourists who visit the
ruins of Monte Alban each year see
S A Archaeological site
only a fraction of the 8-km2 complex

0 5 10 15
kmn Figure 1. The center of Zapotec civilization was
the Valley of Oaxaca, in the highlands of
southern Mexico. The map shows the location
of archaeological sites mentioned in the text.

1976 July-August 375

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of temples, tombs, palaces, ballcourts,
residential terraces, defensive walls,
and roads which made up the Zapotec Like many Indian groups of southern
capital (Blanton and Kowalewski Mexico, the Zapotec conceived of
1976). It was during this stage that themselves as living in a universe with
true urban civilization was achieved four world quarters and a center, each
in Oaxaca.
With the decline of Monte Alban
around A.D. 700, the Zapotec entered
into their fourth developmental stage:
a period of highly competitive and
militaristic "city states" which lasted
until the Spanish conquest of the
1520s. The Zapotec royalty spent a
great deal of this period expanding
eastward into the Tehuantepec re
gion, defending themselves from the
incursions of the Aztec, and alter
nately fighting and arranging royal
marriage alliances with their neigh
bors, the Mixtec (Paddock 1966).
It was during this period of royal
power politics that the Spanish ar
rived in Mexico and proceeded to give
us our first written records of the
Oaxaca Indians. In these early
Spanish documents, the Zapotec
emerge as a highly stratified society
with a professional ruling class at
whose head was a coquitao or "great
lord." The lord resided in a palace
(quihuitao) where much of his gov
ernmental business was conducted,
and there were also temples staffed
by full-time priests {bigana) who di
rected religious affairs. Church and
state were only partially separate,
since the priests were recruited from
the sons of Zapotec nobility, and the
lord himself underwent a year of re
ligious training before taking office.
The common people lived in small,
endogamous communities, each
overseen by a coqui or nobleman ap
pointed by the great lord. Goods and
services which supported the aris
tocracy came from several sources. On
a local level, they were collected from
each village by a golaba or "lord's
solicitor"; on the periphery of the
Zapotec region, they were paid as
tribute by a whole series of conquered
towns belonging to different ethnic
groups. This conquest was accom
plished by a military organization
composed of professional officers and
civilian conscripts who fought with
spears, arrows, dart-throwers, and
broadswords with obsidian blades.
Tribute could be paid in subsistence
goods such as maize, deer, and salt; in
raw materials such as cotton; in lux
ury items such as macaw feathers and
gold dust; or in human slaves.
376 American Scientist, Volume 64
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Zapotec cosmology
associated with a particular color and
a set of supernatural attributes
(Marcus, MS in prep. b). They rec
ognized a supreme being who was
without beginning or end, "who
created everything but was not him
self created," a being so infinite and
incorporeal that no images were ever
made of him and no mortal came in
direct contact with him. Man did
come in contact with a wide variety of
natural and supernatural phenome
na, all equally "real" to the Zapotec.
How one dealt with those phenomena
depended on whether or not they
possessed something called p? (writ
ten p?e by the sixteenth-century
Spaniards and pronounced b? by to
day's Mitla Zapotec, whose version
will hereafter be given in brackets).
Variously translated as "wind,"
"breath," or "spirit," p? was the vital
force that made all living things move,
thereby distinguishing them from
nonliving matter. So basic is this
concept that most sixteenth-century
Zapotec nouns for animals (pichina,
deer; piguini, bird) and man (peni)
began with a pi or pe sound. Any
creature that moved and was alive
deserved respect; thus, the Zapotec
hunter apologized to the deer for the
necessity of killing him, and offered
the heart to the great natural forces to
whom the deer belonged. The heart
was an especially appropriate object
of sacrifice: because it often continued
to beat after most other organs were
stilled, it was thought to be a major
locus for p?.
Deserving of even greater respect
were a series of great natural forces
that moved and were therefore alive;
apart from the wind itself, these in
cluded clouds (Zaa), earthquakes
(Xoo), and lightning (Cosijo). The
Zapotec believed they had descended
from the clouds, and referred to
themselves as Peni-zaa [Ben-zaa],
"Cloud People." Cosijo was impor
tant because, among other things, he
had the power to cause thunder and
rain. The Zapotec thus prayed and
sacrificed to him, addressing him as
Pitao Cosijo?an expression the six
teenth-century Spanish erroneously
interpreted as "the God of Rain." In
fact, Pitao is p? + augmentative, and
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Pitao Cosijo might be more properly
translated "Great Spirit within the
Lightning."
The Zapotec's relationship to the
cosmos was quite different from that
of a farmer in the post-Renaissance
West. He sought to remain in harm
ony with his environment rather than
to conquer it; in his dealings with
nature he sought only to make it more
predictable. Inanimate objects,
lacking p?, could be manipulated by
Zapotec science and technology.
Great natural forces could be ap
proached only through ritual and re
ligion. Like the Pueblo Indians ana
lyzed by anthropologist Richard Ford
(1968 Ph.D. diss.), the Zapotec strove
to "arrange the world through ritual
practices so that it was patterned
rather than chaotic"?not so much to
prevent natural events as to make
them predictable, regular, and an
nually repetitive. Thus Zapotec ritual
is the archaeologist's clue to the way
the ecosystem was "supposed" to
behave.
The Zapotec, like so many Meso
american Indians, believed that time
was cyclic rather than linear, and that
important events should recur at
predictable intervals. To keep track
of the cycle, they had two calendars?
one solar, one ritual. The solar year
had 18 "months" of 20 days, plus 5
extra days to bring it to 365. The rit
ual calendar was composed of 20
hieroglyphs or "day signs" which
combined with 13 numbers to pro
duce a cycle of 260 days (Marcus, MS
in prep. a). As its name?pi je or
piye?suggests, the ritual calendar
had p?; sacred time moved and was
alive. Both economic and ceremonial
events were keyed to these calendars,
and children were named for the day
of the ritual calendar on which they
were born; thus names like "1 Tiger"
or "8 Deer" are common on prehis
toric monuments.
Zapotec agriculture
In Zapotec agriculture, one can see
the complex interaction of ritual and
farming technology. Today, nearly
500 years after the Spanish conquest,
the Zapotec still have such reverence
for maize that it remains the pre
ferred cultivar on rich alluvium and
marginal piedmont alike, even where
the economic advantages of another
crop can be shown (Kirkby 1973).
Indeed, the traditional Zapotec
 tax
- .- - ---- -t -
-
IVI-
V -A
loklm
4K r- #Y
farmer seeks not to "maximize" his
annual crop but engages in what
Kirkby (1974) interprets as "satis
fizing"?growing enough to meet the
subsistence and ceremonial needs of
his family, but no more. In part, this
reflects a widespread peasant belief
that, since there is a limited amount
of good fortune in the world, one
person's success partially depletes
another's. In the case of the Zapotec,
however, it also reflects an ancient
cosmology in which wet years and dry
years were cyclic; in which man could
manipulate only those things which
lacked p?; and in which rain was the
result of a pact between man and the
supernatural. In such a world, the
farmer's task becomes the ritual and
technological evening out of the ef
fects of good and bad years, a task
which might better be called "har
monizing" than "satisfizing."
The prehistoric Zapotec had correctly
noted an association between clouds,
thunder, lightning, and rain. Since
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--- 9
t -
." -0
- ;7"
--
- .,, ., . - -.elnr..~
Figure 2. wereZapotec served
most clearly
have
sands of travertine.
square
lightning (Cosijo) could be observed
to move, it clearly had p? and was
therefore alive; on the other hand,
rain was simply a form of niqa [nis],
"water," a familiar substance which
plants and humans required. Man
could manipulate water technologi
cally once it had reached the ground,
but he could not bring it down from
the sky. That was the prerogative of
Cosijo, a powerful supernatural who
could only be approached through
ritual. Man's relationship to Cosijo
was reciprocal; to ask for more rain,
one offered drops of his own blood,
drawing them from his tongue, ear
lobes, or sexual organs with a fish
spine, stingray spine, agave thorn, or
obsidian lancet. In addition to this
autosacrifice, the Zapotec offered
Cosijo quail, turkey, dogs, human
infants, or captives taken in war, de
pending on the severity of their need
(Marcus, MS in prep. b).
As early as 1000 B.C., Oaxacan villag
ers imported large marine fish spines
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~A W*n
. - , .n
irri
at Hier
turned
meter
from coastal areas 200 km distant. An
analysis of the contexts in which they
are recovered archaeologically
(Flannery 1976b) suggests that (1)
spines often arrived in the valley still
attached to the vertebral centra; (2)
they were kept in the house until
used; (3) the spine was trimmed off,
and the centra and other parts dis
carded, in and around one's residence;
and (4) spines were often taken to
public buildings to be used and were
eventually discarded there. The fact
that the bloodletting ritual was public
underscores its latent function in
transmitting information?in this
case, perhaps the performer's level of
need or his role in some life-crisis
situation.
The Zapotec recognized several
classes of fields, both irrigable (qu?ela
huizoa) and nonirrigable (qu?ela pi
chijta). On land where the water
table lies only 3 m below the surface,
they still draw water from shallow
wells to irrigate vegetables by hand.
1976 July-August 377
 We have found prehistoric wells of far as 1000 B.C. (Winter 1976). Per of 3, 4, 5, or 7 years. This pattern is
this type in archaeological deposits not borne out by local climatic rec
haps the most spectacular example of
dating to 1000 B.C., and by 600 B.C. Zapotec hydraulic expertise is the ords, and Kirkby feels it is partly a
there were specialized jars that may prehistoric site of Hierve el Agua, function of the way the Zapotec per
have served for such irrigation which lies in the mountains to the ceive and remember rainy years; it
(Flannery 1970). Pot-irrigation is a east of the Valley of Oaxaca (Fig. 2). also reflects a cosmology in which
labor-intensive farming technique, Here excavations by James Neely natural events are cyclic.
and one in which children can play an (1967) revealed 0.5 km2 of artificially
important role. More than half the terraced hillside, served by a complex Perhaps the most important predic
watering in pot-irrigation villages like series of canals which led from a tor used by the Zapotec is the pattern
Abasolo today is done by boys be group of permanent springs. The of observed rainfall in the months
tween 8 and 18 years old. Once pot quantity of calcium carbonate in the immediately preceding the true rainy
irrigation had begun, therefore, there water is so great that the canals have season, and in this they are supported
may have been increased selective literally turned to stone from traver by local meteorological records. Ac
advantage for families with large tine deposition, thereby "fossilizing" cording to Kirkby, if spring rainfall is
numbers of children; this in turn may an irrigation system used between 400 greater than 80 mm, there is an 80
have been one factor contributing to B.C. and A.D. 1300. percent chance that growing-season
the explosive growth of population precipitation will be above 600 mm; if
during the Early and Middle Forma Zapotec manipulation of surface and spring rainfall is between 20-40 mm,
tive periods (1500-300 B.C.). subsurface water further increases the there is a 50 percent chance that the
difference between prime and mar crops will receive less than 420 mm.
Still another form of irrigation is to ginal fields, but "water is actually "By June reliability has increased so
draw water from streams by means of applied to less than 20 percent of the that if June rainfall is more than 150
brush diversion dams and carry it to cultivated land" (Kirkby 1974, p. millimeters . . . then rainfall
the fields in small gravity-flow canals. 121). The way today's Zapotec bal throughout the growing season has an
Such canal systems can be securely ance intensively used and marginal 85 percent chance of being above av
demonstrated by 400 B.C. (Blanton lands depends on certain predictions erage" (Kirkby 1974, p. 123).
and Kowalewski 1976), and village based on their perception of rainfall.
rain-runoff canals which may have The Zapotec believe they can detect When May-June rainfall indicates a
served as their prototypes go back as cycles of greater rainfall at intervals wet year, the Zapotec response is not
what a Western agronomist might
expect, but it is consistent with their
"harmonizing" ethic. Predicting that
^^^^^^^yt!!?nby PuttteM^ Coastalvillages yields will be higher than average, the
Indian actually reduces his maize
planting in the continuously culti
vated main agricultural zone of the
valley; in the much larger and only
sporadically cultivated marginal
zones, he will gamble on his predic
tion of a rainy year and increase his
/ j'j ! ^ V Farmer's perception / planting. In addition to reducing the
' A of rainfall Ritual use| / { : - of spines I ja J* differences in yield between wet and

Figure 3. Simplified model for the matter

energy transactions (solid arrows) and infor
: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Household jl^T n mation transactions (dashed arrows) con
nected with prehistoric Zapotec agriculture.
The farmer interprets his observations of
^^1^^^^^ Labor stingray spines spring rainfall in the light of a cyclic view of
natural events and makes predictions about the
\ Storage pits \t adequacy of the year's precipitation. If he
predicts inadequacy, the farmer offers his own
blood to Cosijo at a public building or shrine,
asking that lightning split the clouds (Zaa) to
produce more rain; he also increases the culti
vation of irrigated land (qu?ela huizoa) served
by wells and canals. Predictions of adequate
rainfall lead to both less autosacrifice and less
irrigation, as well as to a gamble on dry-farmed
land (qu?ela pichijta). A farmer with plenty of
maize may be called upon to share with a rela
tive whose deficit leads him to repeated public
autosacrifice. The fish and stingray spines
imported for bloodletting were obtained
(probably in reciprocal exchange for highland
products) from coastal villages whose rainfall
Qu?ela pichijta Qu?efa huizoa regime was different.

378 American Scientist, Volume 64

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All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
dry years, this strategy has a latent
adaptive function detected by Kirk
by: long-cultivated, underfallowed
alluvium is allowed to rest during
years when some yield can be ex
pected from the long-fallowed, un
derused piedmont. ;0-: :-2::~~~
-1. ~~ .......-.. ..-.,....:

As Kirkby points out, even today's

Zapotec farmers "seek to modify the . ~ ~~~ -.. ..:;-: . :....- .

causal system through the power of .-M - x --. .

prayer." Such prayer was relied on

still more heavily at the time of the
Spanish conquest; indeed, it is un
-. .. ..:... -- -. . s

...... ..s. -. .... ... -.....-- -..- ..

!~~~_ .. . . . .. . . ... -...-.... .- -s:
- -
likely that Zapotec farmers would
-.. -..- .--...------.

have gambled on their rainfall pre x ; --- - .. . . -

dictions if they were not convinced of .... - ----....

the efficacy of their ritual. We can
therefore present, in Figure 3, a model
for matter and information exchanges
which is consistent with Zapotec the
Figure 4. Structure 6, a public building small
used by building, which was composed of
cosmology and with the context and the village of San Jos? Mogote at about wooden posts, clay daub, and lime plaster. The
1350
distribution of archaeological features B.C. Workmen are shown constructing a pro
circular storage pit in the center was filled with
and artifacts at San Jos? Mogote and powdered
tective stone wall around the fragile remains oflime of the type used for stucco.
neighboring sites.

Evolution of village
ceremonialism
During the Early and Middle For
mative periods (1500-300 B.C.), the were locally made?costume parts (e.g. pottery
Figure 5. Simplified model for the circulation
masks)
Oaxacanand musical instruments (antler
occupants of the Valley of Oaxaca of ritual paraphernalia in a Formative
village. Conch-shell trumpets imported drumstick,
from scapula rasp), while turtle-shell
began to display many of the patterns the coast were used at public buildings,drums were
after a another item imported from the
of settlement, social inequality, and lowlands.
brief trip to a shell-worker's house to be carved. Eventually, all these costumes and
ceremonialism which characterized Costume components imported from musical instruments were taken to the public
other
the historic Zapotec. By 1300 B.C. environmental zones were found in building
houses orto be used in dances and other rituals.
there were at least a dozen com nearby storage pits. Also stored in the home
munities in the valley, most of them
hamlets of less than 2 hectares in size
and occupied by at most 8-10 fami
lies. The basic unit of residence was
the nuclear family, usually mani
fested archaeologically by the re
mains of a 3 X 5-m house of pine
posts, cane walls daubed with clay,
and a thatched roof. Houses were

^jj^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
usually accompanied by a cluster of
features outside, such as dooryards,
lean-tos, subterranean storage pits, Pottery Cane / A
earth ovens, garbage middens, areas \mask flute . I
of craft activity, and sometimes bur
ials (Winter 1976). Each household
within a hamlet was separated from
its nearest neighbor by 30-40 m of
open space, and each hamlet was in
turn separated from other hamlets by
approximately 5 km (Flannery
1976a). In this milieu of small, egali
tarian communities, one village stood
out as atypical: San Jos? Mogote, a
3-ha village of perhaps 20-30 families,
^^S**^ P ^"^*^^^Macawfeathers
y. ArmadilloVshell | \
located near the Atoyac River some ^1 Crocodile mandible I \
15 km north of Oaxaca City. San Jos?
Mogote is unique in that some 300 m2
of the village was set aside for the Coastal
construction of public buildings, the areas

1976 July-August 379

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earliest known so far from Mesoam and deer-scapula rasps, also used at
erica (Flannery and Marcus 1976). public buildings, are found in house
hold storage pits as well. Presumably
Typical of the early public buildings some were played by "dance sodali
at San Jos? Mogote was Structure 6, ties," whose existence is suggested by
radiocarbon-dated to ca. 1350 B.C. pottery masks, figurines of masked
(Fig. 4). Structure 6 was 4.4 X 5.4 m in dancers, and costume components
size, rectangular, and oriented 8? west which include armadillo shell, croco
of true north, an alignment that dile mandible, and macaw wing bones
characterized all public buildings in from which the plumes had been
Oaxaca prior to 500 B.C. Its walls had trimmed (Fig. 5). The interregional
a core of pine posts and its floor was circulation of much of this ritual
built up over a bed of crushed bed paraphernalia probably contributed
rock, clay, and sand. Both walls and to the establishment of trade net
floor were daubed with clay and then works and eventual economic sym
stuccoed repeatedly with white lime biosis between regions (Sanders and
plaster. Powdered lime of the type Price 1968).
used for stucco was stored in a plas
ter-lined pit in the center of the floor, Spines used for bloodletting eventu
and against the south wall of the room ally came to reflect the emerging so
was a low bench or altar of puddled cial hierarchy: true stingray spines
adobe which had also been plastered occurred near public buildings, while
white. an "imitation" stingray spine (whit
tled from a deer bone splinter) was
By 900 B.C. San Jos? Mogote had excavated from an ordinary house
grown to more than 20 ha in size with hold. But Mesoamerica's fanciest
an estimated population of 80-120 example is a jade stingray spine from
households, making it one of the a tomb at La Venta, a Middle For
largest settlements in highland mative site on Mexico's Gulf coast
Mexico at that time (Marcus 1976a). (Drucker 1952). We might guess that,
Perhaps 10 percent of the village was while ordinary villagers used imita
given over to public buildings, which tions, villagers of higher status used
ranged from massive platforms of real stingray spines and paramount
adobe brick to boulder-faced pyra chiefs used jade versions. This is
midal terraces with small flights of consistent with the later Mesoamer
steps. The village was divided into ican notion that the autosacrifice of
several residential wards, separated the elite was important for the whole
by gullies or arroyos which were not community, and "the higher the so
occupied, and within these wards cial position of the individual... the
there are indications of emerging more arduously he performed the
differences in social rank. Certain fasts, penances, and tortures" (Vail
wattle-and-daub houses?perhaps lant 1941, p. 206).
those of ward or community leaders?
were set on platforms of puddled Death and the ancestors
adobe. Certain adults were buried
with beads and ear spools of jade, Descent was a major organizing
while others were not. Nevertheless, principle in Zapotee society, and the
archaeological data suggest that there ancestors continued to take part in
was a continuum of status from village activities after death. One's
higher to lower, without a sharp di ancestors, if properly treated, could
vision into socioeconomic classes like
those of the historic Zapotee.

A contextual analysis of ritual para Figure 6. Stylistic derivation of the fire-serpent

and were-jaguar, two supernatural beings
phernalia (such as the fish spines al represented on the pottery of Formative
ready mentioned) suggests the exis Mesoamerica. Found in naturalistic form (a)
tence of rites on the level of the indi on pottery at sites near Mexico City, the fire
vidual, the household, the communi serpent can be abstracted as in (6), where his
gums become inverted ITs and his eyebrow
ty, and the sodality or "fraternal ?ames become simple curves; (c) is a vessel
order" (Flannery 1976b). Conch-shell found with an infant burial at Abas?lo, Oaxaca.
trumpets were rare and are found The naturalistic were-jaguar shown in (d) is
mainly near public buildings; excep carved on a looted stone axe said to be from
tions were conchs that broke while Oaxaca; in more abstract versions such as (e),
he displays his characteristic cleft head within
being carved in the houses of shell oversized brackets. The vessel below (/) is from
workers. Musical instruments such as House 1 at Tierras Largas, a small site near San
turtle-shell drums, antler drumsticks, Jos? Mogote. (Height of vessels, 10-12 cm.)

380 American Scientist, Volume 64

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Figure 7' This group of four ceramic figurines
was discovered in a ritual scene beneath the
floor of House 16/17, San Jos? Mogote. The
position of the three extended figures with
crossed arms corresponds to the most common
arrangement of the body in Early Formative
adult burials?even to the pendants worn by
the figures. (Height of tallest figurine, 14
cm.)

intercede on one's behalf with the

supernatural beings they had gone to
I4
join. Offerings of food, chocolate, and
pulque (a fermented drink) were
.... ....

placed with burials, and sixteenth

century Zapotec nobles were con
stantly in trouble with Spanish
priests because they continued to
make sacrifices to their deceased kin.
A colonial document from Ocelote
pec, in the rugged sierra south of the
Valley of Oaxaca (N. Espindola 1580),
tells of a renowned coqui named Pe
tela who ruled shortly before the
Spanish subdued the area. After his
death the Zapotec nobility "comme
morated him as a god ... and sacri
ficed to him as a god." The Spanish
administrator Bartolom? de Piza
searched for Petela's remains, which
he discovered "buried dry and em
balmed, laid in such a manner that all
the bones were in place; [de Piza]
burned them publicly." When a
plague hit Ocelotepec six months
later, killing more than 1,200 persons,
"the nobles went back to making sa
crifices to Petela over the ashes of the
bones which de Piza had burned, for
he [Petela] was an interc?der with
[the deity] whom they wanted to call
off the plague."
The archaeological record provides
some clues to the evolution of this
relationship between man and the
ancestors. During the period 1150
650 B.C., a series of free-standing,
motifs of apparent iconographie sig
nificance were incised on the pottery
of the Valley of Oaxaca. Upon closer
analysis, most of these motifs turn out
to be stylized representations of two
supernatural beings which anthro
pologist Michael Coe (1965) has
identified for this time period: the
"fire-serpent" or "sky-dragon," and
the "were-jaguar"?a part-human,
part-animal being. Coe has argued
that the were-jaguar is supernaturally
associated with rain, and there are
iconographie grounds for suspecting
that the fire-serpent may be an early
depiction of lightning.
Recently, Nanette Pyne (1976) ana
Fire-serpent as patron
or apical ancestor lyzed the distribution of nearly 600
such ceramic motifs in Formative
Oaxaca. Her study suggests that they
were more frequently associated with
residential units and the people oc
cupying them than with public
buildings or institutions. Moreover,
the two mythico-religious beings were
almost mutually exclusive: certain
groups of households showed a posi
|--| tive statistical association with the
I I
Father's fire-serpent and a negative associa
household
tion with the were-jaguar, while other
groups of households, occupied at the
same period, showed the reverse.
Ego's
household 3 Houses at sites such as Tomaltepec,
Abasolo, and the east and west resi
Burials with dential wards at San Jos? Mogote
.Ml!' fire-serpents
incised on featured fire-serpents on black and
Figurines of the pottery
ancestors used gray pottery, while the sites of Tierras
in ritual scenes Largas, Huitzo, and the south resi
dential ward at San Jos? Mogote
Figure 8. Simplified model for the ideology of featured were-jaguars on white or
descent in a Formative Oaxacan village. A de yellow pottery. Some adult males at
ceased male, his fictive descent from the an San Jos? Mogote and Tomaltepec
cestral fire-serpent reinforced by the carved (and some infants of indeterminate
symbols on his burial vessel, is interred in a
cemetery in the fully extended, arms-folded sex at Abasolo) were buried with
position. He "reappears" as a fully extended, vessels bearing fire-serpents (Fig. 6).
arms-folded figurine in a ritual scene in the Coe (1965) has argued that Formative
household of his descendants. While hypo Indians conceived of the were-jaguar
thetical, the reconstruction accounts for simi
larities in burial type and figurine position, as
as the mythological offspring of a
well as the observed association of fire-serpent male jaguar and a human female,
vessels with males. from whom long lines of humans had

1976 July-August 381

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descended. It is therefore possible
that early Oaxacan villages included
at least two major descent groups,
with the fire-serpent or were-jaguar
as mythical ancestor or patron, and
with some tendency to cluster by
residential ward.
Several patterns of burial were evi
dent in Formative Oaxaca. Children,
young women, and certain adults
were simply buried near the house or
in a convenient storage pit which had
fallen into disuse (Flannery 1970).
Many adults, however, were buried in
cemeteries in one of a series of stan
dard burial positions. In the most
common position the body was fully
extended, face down, aligned to one of
the cardinal points, with the arms
folded over the chest and anywhere
from one to more than a dozen jade
beads in the mouth. At Tomaltepec,
Michael Whalen (1976) found a
cemetery of more than 50'such buri
als, and a smaller cemetery accom
panied the west ward at San Jos?
Mogote.
House 16/17 at San Jos? Mogote
provided one possible clue to the
continued involvement of the ances
tors after death. This house, occupied
by a part-time flint knapper, lay be
side a drainage canal and a large cis
tern hollowed out of bedrock. Nearby
was the extended burial of a middle
aged woman, laid to rest face down
with her arms folded and an unusual
quantity of jade. To the north of the
house was a lean-to or storage shed
with a remarkable cache beneath its
floor: four ceramic figurines, clearly
arranged in the form of a scene, had
been placed in a shallow excavation
and covered over again. Three figures,
standing with their arms folded, wore
identical pendants; a fourth, probably
originally seated yoga-fashion, lay
across their legs (Fig. 7). While the
meaning of the scene is unknown, the
crossed-arms position of the standing
figurines corresponds precisely to the
most common adult burial position of
the period, which sometimes included
similar pendants. It is therefore pos
sible that the three standing figures
represent deceased kin of someone in
House 16/17. (At the very least, they
suggest that one use for Formative
figurines was in the creation of small
ritual scenes.)
A model for the rituals connected
with descent in the Formative Oaxa
can village is proposed in Figure 8: the
382 American Scientist, Volume 64
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Figure 9. Between the feet of the sprawled
figure on Monument 3, San Jos? Mogote, is the
hieroglyphic day-name "One Earthquake/' an
earfy use of the 260-day Zapotec calendar.
(Maximum length of stone, 145 cm.)
deceased, his affinity to a mythico
religious apical ancestor reinforced by
the symbols on his burial vessel,
might reappear in a small ritual scene
in the house of his descendants.
During the period 200 B.C. to A.D. 700,
this pattern apparently gave way to a
veneration of royal ancestors like that
demonstrated by the sixteenth-cen
tury Zapotec. The small, handmade
figurines of the Formative vanished
from the archaeological record. Royal
tombs were supplied with large an
thropomorphic funerary urns (Caso
and Bernai 1952). Many of the per
sonages depicted on these urns bear
calendric names (e.g. "13 Serpent"),
as do a series of carved funerary bea
kers which are sometimes found in
pairs, one bearing a male figure, the
other a female (Caso and Bernai 1952,
p. 64), and figures depicted in im
portant tomb murals (Caso 1938, PL
III)?all of which suggests that we are
dealing with an ancient deification of
royal ancestors, whose names were
taken from the pije, or ritual calen
dar.
The 260-day ritual
calendar
By 600 B.C., San Jos? Mogote was on
its way to a peak size of 40 ha and an
estimated population of 100-200
households, when a major reorgani
zation of public architecture took
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place. A 15-m-high natural hill in the
center of the village was selected as
the site for a complex of stone ma
sonry buildings oriented to the car
dinal points. Two of these buildings,
Structures 14 and 19, averaged 2 m in
height and more than 20 m on a side;
their lower walls were of huge lime
stone blocks weighing up to 2 metric
tons. In the angle between two exte
rior walls of Structure 14 sat an altar
composed of two immense, tightly
fitted blocks of the same limestone,
whose source lies several kilometers
away on the opposite side of the At
oyac River (Flannery and Marcus
1976).
The most remarkable feature in this
stone masonry acropolis was a carved
stone that was found serving as the
threshold for a corridor between
Structures 14 and 19. The carving
depicts a naked human more than a
meter in height, his eyes closed, his
arms and legs out to the side as if he
were sprawled on the ground; on his
chest appears a scroll-like pattern
which may represent flowing blood
(Fig. 9). Many of these attributes?
the nudity, the closed eyes, the awk
ward posture, and the flowery "blood
scrolls"?were conventions used by
later Mesoamerican peoples to depict
slain or sacrificed captives. Most im
portant, the figure has between its
feet a day glyph accompanied by a dot
indicating the number one: "One
Earthquake" is the reading which
most closely matches later Zapotec
glyphs. Since this was a day in the
ritual calendar, the inscription could
represent either a date or (more like
ly) a name selected from the date of
birth?presumably the name of the
unfortunate individual shown on the
stone. It is also the oldest yet discov
ered evidence for the "living" 260-day
sacred calendar which the Zapotec
were still using at the time of the
Spanish conquest. Later monuments
in the valley expand our knowledge of
the pi je and its meshing with the
365-day calendar to produce a cycle of
52 years (Marcus 1976b and in press).
In our opinion, two of the most com
mon mistakes being made by stu
dents of prehistoric human ecology
are the attribution of Western eco
nomic motives to pre-Columbian
subsistence behavior and the dis
missal of pre-Columbian ritual as a
form of intellectual activity unrelated
 to subsistence. Neither approach is the public building in Formative Oaxaca. In People: Evolution of the Zapotec and Mix
Cultural Change and Continuity, ed. C. tec Civilizations of Southern Mexico, ed. K.
supported by an examination of Za Cleland. NY: Academic Press. V. Flannery. Santa Fe: School of American
potec cosmology. The Zapotec world Research.
Ford, R. I. An ecological analysis involving the
was an orderly place in which human population of San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. Millon, R. 1973. The Teotihuac?n Map. Part
actions were based on empirical ob Ph.D. thesis, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor, One: Text. Austin: Univ. Texas Press.
servations, interpreted in the light of 1968.
Neely, J. A. 1967. Organization, hidr?ulica y
a coherent body of logic. Once that Kirkby, A. V. 1973. The use of land and water sistemas de irrigaci?n prehist?ricos en el
resources in the past and present Valley of Valle de Oaxaca. Boletin 27:15-17. Inst. Nac.
logic is understood, all Zapotec be
Oaxaca. Memoirs 5, Museum of Anthropol Ant. Hist., Mexico City.
havior?whether economic, political, ogy, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor. Paddock, J. 1966. Mixtec ethnohistory and
or religious?makes sense as a series
-. 1974. Individual and community re Monte Alban V. In Ancient Oaxaca, ed. J.
of related and internally consistent sponses to rainfall variability in Oaxaca, Paddock. Stanford Univ. Press.
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underlying principles. In other words, gional, and Global, ed. G. White. Oxford jaguar in Formative Oaxaca: A contingency
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one very non-Western metaphysic
MacNeish, R. S. 1964. Ancient Mesoamerican Village, ed. K. V. Flannery. NY: Academic
regulated exchanges of matter, ener civilization. Science 143:531-37. Press.
gy, and information. We raise these
Marcus, J. 1976a. The size of the early Meso Rappaport, R. A. 1971a. Ritual, sanctity, and
criticisms not to detract from the american village. In The Early Mesoameri cybernetics. Amer. Anth. 73:59-76.
study of human ecology but to make can Village, ed. K. V. Flannery, NY: Aca -. 1971b. The sacred in human evolution.
it still more holistic and hence more demic Press.
Ann. Rev. Ecol. and System. 2:23-44.
-. 1976b. The origins of Mesoamerican Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. 1975. Acceptance speech
useful. Our goal is to find a framework
for analysis which is neither a mind writing. Ann. Rev. Anth. 5:35-67. on receipt of the Thomas Huxley medal,
less ecology nor a glorification of mind-. In press. The iconography of milita University of London.
divorced from the land. rism at Monte Alban and neighboring sites Sanders, W. T., and B. J. Price. 1968. Meso
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Religious Art and Iconography in Pre Thornthwaite, C. W. 1963. Drought. Encyclo
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1976 July-August 383

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