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Advances in City-State Research, with an Example from Mesoamerica

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Stephen A. Kowalewski
Stephen A. Kowalewski
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The last 20 years have seen advances in the understanding of city-states, especially in ancient Greece, where textual information fuels new theories about institutions and the ancient economy. Archaeological research makes significant contributions with data comparable across multiple city-states on settlement patterns, urban and rural development, political and ritual activities, and other materializations of institutionalized behavior. Using a new corpus of 74 city-states from Oaxaca, Mexico, I show that city-states differ from one another in patterned ways, and I argue that this variation depends on internal factors such as the social mode of production and external factors including place in regional and interregional exchange.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Archaeological Research (2020) 28:3–52
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-019-09130-z
1 3
Advances inCity‑State Research, withanExample
fromMesoamerica
StephenA.Kowalewski1
Published online: 16 March 2019
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract
The last 20 years have seen advances in the understanding of city-states, especially
in ancient Greece, where textual information fuels new theories about institutions
and the ancient economy. Archaeological research makes significant contributions
with data comparable across multiple city-states on settlement patterns, urban and
rural development, political and ritual activities, and other materializations of insti-
tutionalized behavior. Using a new corpus of 74 city-states from Oaxaca, Mexico,
I show that city-states differ from one another in patterned ways, and I argue that
this variation depends on internal factors such as the social mode of production and
external factors including place in regional and interregional exchange.
Keywords City-states· Urbanization· Ancient economy· Postclassic Mesoamerica·
Oaxaca· Archaeological survey
Introduction
City-state societies attract our attention like coral reefs or old-growth forests that
impress with their bounty and intricate complexity of cooperation and competi-
tion. City-state cultures distinguish themselves from large territorial states, empires,
chiefdoms, and other social forms in that demographic growth is so typical it seems
part of their nature, as do flourishing commerce, economic growth, and greater con-
sumption. They also stand out for their innovation and cultural diversity.
Mogens Herman Hansen is the major scholar of our time on the subject of city-
states. Based at his Copenhagen Polis Centre, he compiled a massive dataset of
Archaic and Classical Greek city-states (Hansen 2006). He drew in dozens of schol-
ars to contribute case studies from around the world (Hansen 2000, 2002). Hansen
published his conclusions about city-states in general and the Greek polis in particu-
lar in a wonderfully succinct article titled “95 theses about the Greek polis in the
* Stephen A. Kowalewski
skowalew@uga.edu
1 Department ofAnthropology, University ofGeorgia, Athens, GA30602, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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