Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World

Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World is a collection of essays by archaeologists of Mesoamerica and the Andes. It derives from a conference at Dumbarton Oaks that asked participants to present research that challenged accepted economic models for understanding “ancient” economies in the New World (typically characterized by economists as less complex than those in the Old World). The resulting chapters offer a revisionist perspective by demonstrating that certain societies in the Americas had extensive trade networks and large regional markets, two of the markers used by economists to identify complexity (conceived as positive and equated with development). The existence of complex economies in North and South America prior to European contact is unlikely to surprise ethnohistorians, but the conversation among archaeologists is nonetheless salient for historians interested in identifying disciplinary differences and questioning conventional social science periodizations that characterize the centuries prior to European contact as prehistory.The collection has 18 chapters. The first serves as the editors' introduction to economic issues of concern to archaeologists working in the book's three geographical areas. It is an organization that parallels the long-standing practice of defining areas of expertise along imperial and nation-state boundaries: the Mexican highlands (Mexica empire, Mexico), the Maya region (Maya city-states, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras), and the central Andes (Inca empire, Ecuador, Peru, and so forth). The region-specific chapters vary from discussions of existing literature to presentations of new research. The last chapter, by the economic anthropologist Barry L. Isaac, comments on the chapters' contributions to archaeologists' understanding of how markets functioned in the past and the political contexts that facilitated commercialization. The contributors' shared terminology indicates their shared assumption that states govern by managing resources (i.e., the economy), which is an early twentieth-century formulation that ranks societies based on the accumulation of capital; complex states have advanced economies, and simple societies depend on subsistence.Apart from demonstrating that the New World had complex economic structures, the collection aims to encourage archaeologists to embrace a hemispheric perspective in their study of markets and trade. The call is not for scholars to expand the geographical scope of their studies, which are regionally specific, but to compare their findings and identify larger patterns. Hemispheric, as employed here, does not include regions in North or South America beyond Mesoamerica and the Andes. A topical organization, rather than regional, would have facilitated comparisons and indicated the utility of taking transregional perspectives. For example, Richard E. Blanton (author of chapter 2, on Postclassic Mesoamerica) and Richard L. Burger (author of chapter 13, on Early Horizon Chavín de Huántar) each suggest that markets emerged at pilgrimage sites.Several contributors take an ethnohistorical approach. The chapters by Hirth and Gerardo Gutiérrez employ Nahua records to argue that towns and households profited from trade in central Mexico prior to 1521. The appendix to Hirth's chapter on Nahuatl economic vocabulary, by Mark Christensen, is a model of linguistic morphology and will be of immediate use to historians. In their chapter, Alexandre Tokovinine and Dmitri Beliaev similarly employ linguistic data from sixteenth-century dictionaries and pictographic sources to argue for the central role of merchants in Maya society. The chapters on the Andes are skeptical that documents from the 1500s bear significance for prior periods. Historians who take issue with the anthropological method of upstreaming (using evidence from one century to theorize about occurrences in previous centuries) will appreciate these discussions.The essay by Enrique Mayer on the intellectual life of his mentor, John Murra, is an eye-opening exposé on the influence of personal politics on scholarly production. Murra's vertical archipelago model for the Andean economy posited that regional leaders controlled the distribution of resources between ethnically linked communities in different ecological zones. As Mayer explains, Murra came to this noncommercial economic model, which disallows the existence of merchants or markets, in the context of late 1960s anticapitalist activism. To posit a model aligned with Marxist ideology for understanding the Andean past, Murra ignored evidence showing that the Inca state shut down regional markets to expand their political power. Mayer's rendering of Murra's intellectual trajectory is an apt reminder for historians to acknowledge the influence of present-day debates (like neoliberal economics) in our renderings of the past.The study of Indigenous economic activity (trade, management of resources, craft production, etc.) prior to European contact has primarily been the reserve of archaeologists. Historians have shied away from the topic due to the paucity of written sources but most importantly because the historiography has posited that Spanish arrival resulted in abrupt economic ruptures. The terminology employed by archaeologists, such as pre-Columbian, supports this breach perspective. The collection, which should be required reading for ethnohistorians, is an invitation for historians to think across such periodizations and in longer chronological terms to underline Indigenous continuities and to emphasize specificity and context over ahistorical economic models

Archaeology · Conversation · Economy · Empire · Geography · Maya · Mesoamerica · Old World · Parallels · Prehistory · Sociology · Surprise · Anthropology · Historical Studies in Central America · History · History and Politics in Latin America · Latin American history and culture

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