Society for American Archaeology

The Isthmus and the Valley of Oaxaca: Questions about Zapotec Imperialism in Formative
Period Mesoamerica
Author(s): Robert N. Zeitlin
Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 250-261
Published by: Society for American Archaeology
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 THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEY OF OAXACA:
QUESTIONS ABOUT ZAPOTEC IMPERIALISM
IN FORMATIVE PERIOD MESOAMERICA

Robert N. Zeitlin

Recent archaeologicaland epigraphicresearchsuggests the existence of what could be Mesoamerica'sfirst

conqueststate, centeredat MonteAlbdn,the majorLate FormativeperiodZapotecsite in the Valleyof Oaxaca.
This paper exploresthe idea of an early Zapotec empire by examining evidencefrom one of Monte Albdn's
outlyingregions,the southernIsthmusof Tehuantepec.Thestudyisframed in termsof threehypotheticalmodels
of political and economic interaction,any one or combinationof whichcould conceivablyaccountfor ancient
Zapotecrelationshipswiththe southernIsthmusand its otherhinterlandregions.
Las investigacionesrecientesarqueol6gicasy epigrdficassugierenla existenciade lo que puede habersido el
primerestado de conquista,cuyo centrofuera Monte Albdn,el sitio mayor del periodoFormativoTardio.Este
articuloexplora la idea de un imperioantiguo zapotecoa travesde una revisi6nde las evidenciasderivadasde
una de las regionesmarginalesde MonteAlbdn,el Istmo sur de Tehuantepec.El estudioestd estructuradocon
tres modeloshipoteticosde las interaccionespoliticasy econ6micas.Uno de los tres modelos,o una combinacion
de ellos,puedadar explicacionessobrelas relacionesdel estadozapotecoantiguocon el Istmo sury con las otras
regionesmarginalesdel mismo.

Mesoamerican archaeology is embroiled in a controversy over the development of sociocultural

complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca. The argument is fascinating and enlightening not only insofar
as it bears on questions about the rise of ancient Zapotec civilization, but because it vividly ex-
emplifies two very different views of evolutionary process.
On one side of the debate are those who argue against the very existence of a state level of
government in the Valley of Oaxaca until perhaps as late as A.D. 400, during the Classic period.
Advanced by a group of archaeologists who would account for developments in Oaxaca under the
same cultural-materialist model they have applied to their research in the Valley of Mexico, some
300 km to the northwest, this position attributes the introduction of wealth inequalities, social
stratification, and ultimately state formation to the inexorable growth of population and its eventual
consequence: competition for control of scarce arable land. Under these conditions, the state is seen
as a political institution primarily serving a privileged minority who, having preempted the agri-
cultural infrastructure, employ it to impose their will upon an increasingly dependent peasant ma-
jority (Sanders and Nichols 1988; Santley 1980).
Differing sharply from the foregoing is the archaeological identification in Oaxaca of a state polity
almost a millennium earlier, in the Late Formative period, which appears to have been the outcome
of a confederation of the valley's preexisting Zapotec chiefdoms. Some proponents of this inter-
pretation envision the alliance as early as 500 B.C., at the beginning of the period called Monte
Alban I, for the purpose of military defense against outside incursion (Blanton 1978; Blanton et al.
1981). In this voluntaristic conception of state formation, a previously unoccupied site, Monte
Alban, was designated the administrative center of the new confederation. Looming sentinel like
from its position at the approximate junction of the three arms of the valley, the possibly sacred
mountaintop center is characterized as a "disembedded capital," selected for its geopolitical neu-
trality (Blanton 1983).
A variant of the military-confederation hypothesis of state formation allows for the founding of
Monte Alban at 500 B.C. as a "disembedded capital," but defers the transformation to statehood

RobertN. Zeitlin, Departmentof Anthropology,BrandeisUniversity,Waltham,MA 02254

AmericanAntiquity,55(2), 1990, pp. 250-261.

Copyright? 1990 by the Society for AmericanArchaeology

250

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 [Zeitlin] THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEY OF OAXACA 251

until several hundred years later, around the second century B.C. beginning of Monte Alban period
II. At that time the alliance is seen as the integrative mechanism through which the valley Zapotec
implemented an aggressive policy of hinterland conquest (Flannery and Marcus 1983; Spencer 1982).
The question about whether the formation of the Zapotec state initially was induced by population
pressure, by an acknowledged need to unite for protection against outside threats, or as the outcome
of a valley-wide venture into imperialism is one with far-reaching implications for the study of
sociocultural evolution. From the more-circumscribed perspective of regional prehistory, the pos-
sibility of a Zapotec conquest state during the Late Formative period would suggest that we might
be dealing here not only with the earliest instance of state formation in ancient Mesoamerica,
predating by several centuries the better known phenomenon at Teotihuacan, but Mesoamerica's
earliest manifestation of imperialism as well.
In this paper I focus on questions about Formative period Zapotec imperialism by evaluating
archaeological evidence from one of Monte Alban's hinterlands, the southern Isthmus of Tehuan-
tepec, for indications of political subjugation and economic exploitation. While it is not my purpose
to enter directly into the discussion about when and why a state polity first appeared in the Valley
of Oaxaca, a demonstration of imperialism would, of course, have implications for the question of
state formation, since true empires presuppose the hierarchical system of institutionalized control
that is the state.
It should be noted here that archaeological evidence for a Late Formative period Zapotec conquest
of localities outside the Valley of Oaxaca already has been posited (Drennan 1983; Feinman 1985;
Flannery 1983; Markman 1981; Redmond 1983; Spencer 1982). Drawing on my own data, I will
attempt to reconstruct the order of Valley Zapotec political and economic relationships with southern
Isthmian groups as an assessment and possible refinement of these research conclusions.
To put the south Isthmian data into context, I first summarize the principal arguments upon
which the existence of a Late Formative period Monte Alban empire is predicated. I then turn to
documentary and archaeological indications of the longstanding economic and material ties between
the Valley of Oaxaca and the southern Isthmus. Three alternative models of interaction will be
introduced that could account for these relations during the Formative period. Finally, an anttempt
will be made to arrive at a conclusion, however provisional, as to which model-(a) tribute exaction
allowing for local political autonomy, (b) economic exploitation under direct governance of the
conqueror, or (c) reciprocal economic exchange between indepen
independent polities-best describes the
Oaxaca interaction sphere during this early period of its prehistory.

CURRENT EVIDENCE FOR FORMATIVE PERIOD ZAPOTEC IMPERIALISM

One of the most compellingling lines of internal evidence for a Late Formative Zapotec conquest
state e Marcus's ongoing epigraphic analysis of the carved stone slabs on Building
J, the arrowhead-shaped Period II structure located on Monte Alban's main plaza. Starting with an
idea originally proposed by Caso (1938, 1947) that the 50-odd stone carvings depicted dead rulers
of towns subjugated by Monte Alban, Marcus set out to locate the specific places they referred to.
By comparing the place glyphs carved on each slab with those known from the sixteenth-century
Aztec Codex Mendoza,e so far has publishedher tentative identifications of four localities, all
of which wer e outer perimeter of Zapotec influence (Marcus 1976, 1983a).
Tututepec, one of the identified localiti es, is near the Pacific coast, in the regio wn historically
as the Mixteca de la Costa; the other three are in highland areas north and south of the Valley of
Oaxaca (Figure 1). Marcus believes that these were among a number of places subjugated by Monte
Albain in order to gain better access to exotic products needed by the growing state to support its
bureaucratic apparatus. By redistributing high-prestige imports to the valley's minor elite in return
for their allegiance and surplus production, the Zapotec system of centralized political integration
could be better sustained (Flannery and Marcus 1983).
Marcus's specification of Late Formative Zapotec conquests employing place names in use well
over a thousand years later, during the sixteenth century, has not been without criticism (Sanders
and Nichols 1988). Soon after her initial report, however, an archaeological project focused on the

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252 AMERICANANTIQUITY [Vol. 55, No. 2, 1990

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Figure 1. Map of ancient Oaxaca, indicating Monte Alban, Laguna Zope, and the four hinterland localities
provisionally identified by Marcus (1976, 1983a) as subjugated by the Zapotec state during the Late Formative
period.

hypothesis of hinterland subjugation was initiated in the Cuicatlan Caiiada, a semitropical canyon
located in the Mixtec highlands, one of the four places originally identified from the Building J
toponyms. Survey and excavation carried out by Elsa Redmond and Charles Spencer led them to
conclude that during the Late Formative period the Cafiada was indeed an object of Monte Alban
imperialism, and that thereafter, until the early Classic period, the previously independent region
was reduced to tributary status, under direct jurisdiction of Zapotec administrators (Redmond 1983;
Spencer 1982). Enforced payments from subject to sovereign replaced reciprocal exchange as the
means by which the Late Formative Zapotec fulfilled their high-status commodity needs from this
frontier locality.
According to Spencer (1982), the material manifestations of conquest in the Cuicatlan Caniada
were: (1) signs of the violent destruction and abandonment of local villages; (2) objects of intimi-
dation, specifically a skull rack for the display of what are purported to have been the heads of
defeated warriors; (3) village relocation, thought to reflect Zapotec-imposed resettlement of the local
populace to places where they could be used more effectively for the production of agricultural and
other regionally specialized products; (4) evidence for the stepped-up production of those desired
goods; (5) identification of what appears to be a frontier garrison where the Monte Alban overlords
were housed; (6) reduction of the hierarchical settlement pattern to a single level of communities

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Zeitlin] THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEYOF OAXACA 253

beneath the governing Zapotec garrison, taken to indicate dissolution of the preexisting ranked
political structure; (7) the imposition of Zapotec architecture on local traditions; (8) elimination of
indigenous ceremonial facilities and trappings, such as ritual roasting pits, shell ornaments, and
figurines; and (9) the disappearance of products previously imported from Monte Alban and else-
where, interpreted as resulting from the termination of reciprocal exchange.
The Cuicatlan archaeological project left a number of its hypotheses open to further testing and
reinterpretation (Zeitlin 1983), as a consequence of which Sanders and Nichols (1988) were inspired
to propose an alternative: Rather than imperial conquest, the evidence suggests to them the seizure
of the Caiada by a remnant Zapotec population expelled during Period I by the paramount valley
chiefdom, located at Monte Alban. Their assessment, however, is clouded on several significant
points. To begin with, the Valley of Oaxaca outcasts chosen by Sanders and Nichols as the likely
immigrants to the Caiiada were from San Jose Mogote, one of the valley's principal sites during
the previous period. While it is true that San Jos6 Mogote was all but compltely abandoned during
Monte Alban I times, the loss of inhabitants and temporary cessation of large-scale construction
there can be accounted for as part of a population movement into Monte Alban by which the new
administrative center was founded (Flannery and Marcus 1983).
Sanders and Nichols also find it more reasonable that the leaders of Monte Alban would have
colonized lands within the Valley of Oaxaca before embarking on any long-distance imperialist
quests. In this, however, they seem to have missed Spencer's point that what was needed to fuel
the increasingly complex political system in the valley were prestige goods whose very value came
from their exotic provenience (Spencer 1982). Whilethe fissioning of ranked societies alluded to
by Sanders and Nichols is well known from ethnographic examples, it does seem an odd application
that would find the people of San Jose Mogote retreating 100 km through mountainous, sparsely
inhabited territory, to a place where they had to fight to displace an established local population,
all just to find a new home. Everything considered, the case for Zapotec imperialism made by
Redmond and Spencer seems the most credible current explanation of the Cuicatlan Caniiadadata.

ZAPOTEC RELATIONS WITH THE SOUTHERN ISTHMUS OF TEHUANTEPEC

It is not surprising that of the four Building J glyphs identified by Marcus, one is interpreted as
referring to a place on the Pacific coast, for the Valley Zapotec have long shown an affinity for the
products of their tropical lowland neighbors. If, as seems to be the case, the Late Formative Zapotec
had an economic interest in the coastal lowlands, another attractive region would have been the
southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, whose sociopolitical and economic ties with the Valley of Oaxaca
extend back to the initial Formative period.
Beginning as early as 1500 B.C., ornamental marine and freshwater shells, thought to have
originated at the south Isthmian site of Laguna Zope, were transported to the highland Valley of
Oaxaca, along with obsidian from farther south at El Chayal in what is now Guatemala (Flannery
and Winter 1976; Pires-Ferreira 1975; Zeitlin 1978). Close relations extend to later periods. Indeed,
by the mid-fourteenth century A.D., archaeological, ethnohistorical, and lexicostatistical evidence
indicates that the Valley Zapotec population actually migrated in large numbers to the southern
Isthmus, and from that time forward came to dominate the indigenous Huave, Mixe, Chontal, and
Zoque populations of the region (de Burgoa 1934; Fernandez et al. 1960; Zeitlin 1978a).
Historical documents give us an even more detailed picture of the economic importance of the
southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec for the adjacent highlands. The Relaciones Geogrdficas of 1580
for Oaxaca (del Paso y Troncoso 1905) list sea salt and cotton among the items imported from the
southern Isthmus to the Valley of Oaxaca. Cacao grown in Tehuantepec or transshipped from
Soconusco and Tabasco also can be included. Parsons (1936), writing at a time prior to the con-
struction of an automobile road between the two regions, noted that over half the able-bodied adult
males among the 2,500 inhabitants of Mitla were involved in long-distance commerce with the
southern Isthmus. Following precolonial mountain trails, mule drivers from Mitla and other valley
towns packed highland fruits and vegetables along with pottery, which they bartered on the southern
Isthmus for salt, dried fish, shrimp, marine shells, and other coastal-lowland products. More recent

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254 AMERICANANTIQUITY [Vol. 55, No. 2, 1990

records indicate that over 18 metric tons (20 tons) of sea salt alone are transported monthly from
the southern Isthmus to the Valley of Oaxaca (Beals 1975; Eder 1971; Malinowski and de la Fuente
1957). Commerce in some of these products could in all likelihood be projected far back into
prehistory, were they recoverable archaeologically (e.g., Peterson 1976).
In view of this extensive economic interdependency, it is tempting to speculate upon the kind of
political relationship that might have existed between the Valley Zapotec and southern Isthmus of
Tehuantepec groups during the Late Formative period. Can a coastal-lowland equivalent to the
conquest and colonization thought to have occurred in the Cuicatlan Cafiada be demonstrated?
While this is a research question slated for further field investigation, some of the data from our
previous work there might be directed profitably toward a provisional characterization of Zapotec
presence in the region during these critical Monte Albfn late I and II time periods.

THREE MODELS OF LATE FORMATIVE ZAPOTEC INTERREGIONAL INTERACTION

At least three models of interaction could be adduced to describe Late Formative Monte Albfn-
south Isthmian political and economic relations. The first of these involves a form of imperialism
of which the later Aztecs often are cited as an example. We must, of course, recognize that the Aztec
state was still in the process of development when, after only a brief century of dominance in the
structure of mesoamerican politics, it was dismantled by the Spanish conquistadors. Yet even at
the pinnacle of its power, it could be termed "imperial" only under the broadest definition. While
its fearsome army is known to have conquered outlying regions for tribute and sacrificial human
victims, the Aztec polity rarely maintained direct administrative control of the vanquished beyond
the immediate environs of its highland city-state.
It is true that in some strategic hinterland areas military fortresses were established to discourage
insurrection; that the major temple of a defeated group routinely was destroyed, its patron deity
deposed rulers might be
removed to the Atec capital; that recalcitrant (often, however, merely to
be replaced by other local leaders); and that marriages commonly were arranged with Aztec nobility
to strengthen ties of loyalty. But typically the military is seen as withdrawing after conquest, leaving
subjugated provinces to home rule. Under this system of hegemony, as long as required goods were
delivered to the designated tribute collector (Aztec calpixque), local autonomy in most other aspects
of social and political life largely was left undisrupted (Calnek 1982; Gibson 1971; Hassig 1985).
Laggard tributaries whose compliance could not be secured through persuasion or conciliation, or
those who presumed to interfere with the conduct of Aztec commerce, on the other hand, could
expect swift and violent retribution.
The second model that might have applied to the Zapotec state pertains to imperialism with
imposed, centralized governance and a high degree of economic integration. This conceptualization
of empire, perhaps most familiar from historical examples of Western colonialism, involves political
incorporation and much tighter control of vanquished territories than is discerned in the Aztec
confederation (though it may have been the direction in which the Aztecs were moving at the time
of their defeat by the Spanish). Here we find the undertaking of large-scale public-works projects
in provincial areas, the purpose of which, in some instances, is to proselytize, in other instances to
increase economic productivity, and in yet others to administer and effect communication with the
sovereign state. Such empires are further characterized by direct intervention in the assignment of
local economic activities, through the emplacement and maintenance of an elaborate, state-con-
trolled managerial bureaucracy, and by the requirement for a powerful and ongoing military presence
throughout the realm in order to discourage insurrection. It would seem to be a centralized gov-
ernance model of imperialism such as this, albeit on a territorially modest scale, into which can be
best fit the Monte Alban subjugation of the Cuicatlan Caniada described by Redmond (1983) and
Spencer (1982).
As a third alternative there is the possibility that the Valley of Oaxaca was able to satisfy its Late
Formative period economic needs short of conquest and colonization, through intensified trade with
outlying suppliers. A system of long-distance exchange originally organized for the acquisition of
prestige goods could have been modified and expanded to include other desired commodities. Even

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Zeitlin] THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEY OF OAXACA 255

if a policy of conquest and colonization had been implemented in some areas, trade could have
operated in other localities where expediency or logistics dictated. As one such situation, Marcus
(1983b:358) notes that no Mixtec valley with a large mountaintop center is known to have been
subjugated by the Monte Alban state. Apparently only weaker, less-organized, less-populous societies
were candidates for conquest.

FORMATIVE PERIOD EVIDENCE FOR ZAPOTEC PRESENCE ON

THE SOUTHERN ISTHMUS
With these three models of state-hinterland interaction in mind, I turn now to some of the
archaeological evidence bearing directly on the question of Monte Alban's relationship with lowland
southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec groups. In so doing, one useful source of information comes from
the analysis of settlement patterns. Drawing on data from a surface survey conducted in 1972 along
the Rio de los Perros drainage by Judith Zeitlin and myself (Zeitlin 1978a, 1978b), the picture of
the Early Formative southern Isthmus at 1500 B.C. is that of a region sparsely occupied by a few
agriculturally self-sufficient communities concentrated on the coastal plain. A generally continuous,
if modest, proliferation of these settlements is detected throughout the entire Formative period.
Not until Classic times is any appreciable occupation of the adjacent piedmont zone identified,
a development that may have been associated with the introduction of irrigation agriculture. While
we are uncertain about Isthmian coastal geomorphology and the impact of shifting shorelines on
archaeological site location, no permanent settlement has yet been encountered along the immediate
littoral zone of the survey area dating earlier than the mid-fourteenth century A.D., late in the
Postclassic period. At that juncture an unequivocal case for Zapotec causality finally can be made,
as reflected in the south Isthmian settlement-pattern data. During their incursion from the Valley
of Oaxaca, Zapotec colonists apparently caused the abandonment of large south Isthmian towns,
established their own settlements at strategic locations, assimilated some of the indigenous popu-
lation, and displaced others into marginal zones. At no point during the much earlier Formative
period, however, is there archaeological evidence for community relocation by outside imposition,
nor are there indications that new agricultural techniques were introduced for the purpose of ex-
panding the production of local export food items, as is said to have occurred at Cuicatlan.
Early on in the Formative period, by 1100 B.C., one site in the area surveyed had grown to over
49 ha in area. With its artificial mounds as the probable locus of public architecture, its regionally
central location, and concentration of such high-status goods as obsidian and marine shells, Laguna
Zope exhibits the archaeological characteristics of a settlement occupied by a ranked society. Neither
Laguna Zope, situated on the open flood plain, astride a natural route of communication linking
the southern Isthmus with the Oaxaca Valley, nor any other presently known south Isthmian
community of the time, gives any indication of having been established with defensive consider-
ations. Only in the Late Postclassic period, at the walled-in Zapotec hilltop site of Guiengola, does
a defensible frontier installation appear in the region. Nor did our excavations and survey reveal
evidence of warfare or conflagration dating to periods before and including the time of Laguna
Zope's abandonment at about A.D. 300, in contrast to the situation reported for the Cuicatlan
Caniada. To the contrary, a two- and ultimately a three-tiered hierarchy of indigenous settlements
remained intact throughout the Formative and Classic periods, suggesting a long and sustained era
of political autonomy.
If settlement-pattern data fail to show any major alterations in south Isthmian society attributable
to Monte Alban interference, are there, nevertheless, other lines of evidence to that effect? Here the
most interesting information to date comes from the examination of pottery. Both formal and
stylistic analyses show that from the earliest centuries of the Formative period until 200 B.C., there
is nothing particularly notable about Valley of Oaxaca influence on the local pottery tradition. A
number of shared attributes are discerned throughout the Formative, suggesting that avenues of
communication existed between the highland valley and the coast, but a quantitative study of stylistic
similarities indicates that beginning about 400 B.C., in marked contrast to what was occurring in
the Cuicatlan Canfiada,there was a weakening of ceramic ties between the two regions (Zeitlin 1984).

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256 AMERICANANTIQUITY [Vol. 55, No. 2, 1990

I'

?/ J/
0 10
CM

v?^ /w /
Figure 2. Typical initial Late Formative period Maya-related glossy-orange-, glossy-brown-, and red-on-
glossy-orange/brown-slipped pottery of the southern Isthmus. The bottom three examples are decorated with
Usulutin-like resist designs, the westernmost manifestation of this technique in Mesoamerica.

At that time what is striking about south Isthmian pottery is its resemblance to contemporaneous
wares of Chiapas and the developing lowland Maya region to the east and north (Figure 2). The
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the early years of the late Formative period, appears to be the westward
limit of a vigorous and widespread Maya-centered ceramic horizon.
Around 200 B.C., however, at just the time postulated for the inception of Zapotec imperialism,
a very noticable shift in pottery style takes place as the Maya related glossy-waxy orange- or brown-
slipped tradition is all but abandoned on the southern Isthmus, in favor of a highly burnished,
unslipped, gray monochrome. In forms and decoration, this locally-made pottery is related closely
to the graywares of Monte Albfn periods Late I and II (Figure 3).
What is the significance of this close cultural relation with Monte Albfn? In the Cuicatlan Cafiada,
where a local variant of Monte Alban pottery goes into production at about the same time as that
of the southern Isthmus, Redmond (1983) interprets it as indicating the reduction of that region to
tributary status. The imitation Oaxaca Valley ware appears to have been a Zapotec-imposed sub-

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Zeitlin] THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEY OF OAXACA 257

I..;------:4,

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Figure 3. Typical Late Formative period south Isthmian pottery resembling Monte Alban Late I and II
graywares.

stitute for pottery the conquerors previously had furnished in trade. Yet, suggestive as they may
be, the Cuicatlan circumstances are not analogous to those on the southern Isthmus, where there
is no tradition of ceramic importation from the Valley of Oaxaca. All we can safely say at this point
is that cultural ties between Monte Alban and the southern Isthmus, as manifested in ceramic
relations, for some reason were intensified greatly in the final two centuries B.C.
As for the impact on hinterland regions of the highland Zapotec state's need for exotic commod-
ities, again the current south Isthmian data do not point clearly to conquest. During the Early and,
particularly, the Middle Formative periods of its prehistory, there is reason to believe that Laguna
Zope, the principal settlement on the southern Isthmus, was a major source for pearl oysters,
Spondylus, and other ornamental shells imported to the Valley of Oaxaca, where they served the
emerging elite ranks of the population as a symbol of high social status (Pires-Ferreira 1975; Zeitlin

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258 AMERICANANTIQUITY [Vol. 55, No. 2, 1990

1979). But beginning with the Late Formative period, just as the Zapotec state supposedly was
finding it more expedient to satisfy its intensifying demand for foreign commodities by substituting
conquest and tribute for trade, a precipitous decline in shell and shellworking is observed at Laguna
Zope. By the beginning of the Classic period, with the abandonment of the settlement, the south
Isthmian shell-export industry seems to have all but disappeared, contrary to what might have been
expected if a tribute-hungry Monte Alban had conquered the region.
Although the export of shell products would, from what we find at Laguna Zope, appear to have
dwindled, no concomitant decrease is seen in the importation of obsidian to the southern Isthmus.
Analysis indicates an undiminished-to-increasing local per capita availability of the highly valued
lithic material during the very years that shellworking was waning in importance (Zeitlin 1979). In
the Cuicatlan Caiiada, a decline in obsidian importation during the Late Formative period, while
the production of local export commodities is being intensified, is taken to indicate the replacement
of exchange with tribute exaction. The situation there seems quite different from that on the Pacific
lowlands of Tehuantepec.
We cannot as yet explain the enigmatic decline in shellworking at Laguna Zope. Perhaps the
demand for south Isthmian shell lessened as the reigning polity at Monte Alban grew able to fill its
needs from closer-at-hand tribute-paying colonies, such as Tututepec. Perhaps Monte Alban turned
to importing unworked shell and employed its own craft specialists in the capital for the manufacture
of ornaments, effectively reducing colonial regions to the status of raw-material suppliers, a not-
uncommon condition under imperial domination. Possibly Zapotec economic interest in the south-
ern Isthmus shifted to cotton, sea salt, salt-dried fish, shrimp, or some of the other products that
historic and ethnohistoric documents tell us were traded up to the Valley of Oaxaca in later years.
Or it may have been that the growing exchange system operating under the aegis of Teotihuacan,
a system which, it has been claimed, ultimately controlled the entire Pacific shell trade in Mesoamer-
ica during the Early and Middle Classic periods (Starbuck 1975), already had begun to bypass the
southern Isthmus. The proposition that Teotihuacan commerce, and the culture it might have
brought with it, ignored the region is enhanced by the remarkable lack of Teotihuacan influence on
Classic period south Isthmian pottery (J. Zeitlin 1978a) and in the virtual absence of obsidian
importation from central Mexican sources thought to have been under Teotihuacan control (Zeitlin
1982). Much more research will be needed before any of these alternatives can be evaluated.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON THE NATURE OF FORMATIVE PERIOD

ZAPOTEC INTERREGIONAL RELATIONS
In sum-and I say this cautiously, recognizing the paucity of data upon which my assertions are
based-there is, depite signs of strong cultural ties, little current archaeological evidence pointing
to the extension of direct Zapotec economic or political control down to the lowland southern
Isthmus. One obvious possibility must be that additional field investigation in the region eventually
will disclose evidence of Zapotec conquest and even of occupation. From an earlier investigation
(Wallrath 1967) we know, for instance, that there are a number of prehistoric archaeological sites
in the southwestern corner of the Isthmus where later Postclassic Zapotec migrants from the Valley
of Oaxaca built their fortress-like center at Guiengola.
Excavation in the as-yet-uninvestigated elite areas of Laguna Zope also could provide new insights.
If the Zapotec had effected a military conquest of the southern Isthmus during the Late Formative,
as is posited for the Cuicatlan Caniada,the elite area of this regional center might well yield evidence
of the new overlords. Signs of burned or otherwise destroyed structures and physical violence
discernable in burial remains of the indigenous south Isthmian rulers would necessitate a revised
interpretation of south Isthmian-Zapotec relations. Architectural details in public buildings in Monte
Alban style; greater internal differentiation in these structures, reflecting the imposition of an ad-
ditional outside level of administration; and stone-lined tombs and associated grave goods belonging
to the distinctive Zapotec burial tradition would be additional material indicators of a foreign
takeover of the region, along the lines of a direct governance model of imperialism.
Failing to recover such evidence, the possibility yet exists that the southern Isthmus might have

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Zeitlin] THE ISTHMUS AND THE VALLEY OF OAXACA 259

been conquered, then subsequently relegated to the status of semiautonomous polity, as in the
tributory model of imperialist hegemony. Marcus (1988) suggests that the Building J toponyms at
Monte Alban refer to places that define the territorial limits of the Monte Alban II empire. That
would put the southern Isthmus just outside the Zapotec realm, whose boundary on the southeast
would be defined by Ocelotepec. The Aztecs, however, are known to have subjugated regions far
beyond any contiguous borderline, and such conceivably could have been the situation with the
Zapotecs in Tehuantepec.
Were that so, the indications of direct governance listed above would not be found, but limited
Zapotec ethnic intrusion into the regionren sulting from upper-class intermarriage might be discerned,
as might signs of colonization by small enclaves of settlers from the Valley of Oaxaca. Among the
other archaeological manifestations of this admittedly difficult-to-distinguish form of economic
domination might be the material remains of a Zapotec inspired prestige cult superimposed on the
indigenous ideological tradition and, on the economic front, the construction of warehouses con-
taining locally produced goods valued by the Zapotec elite, which would not otherwise have been
bulked and stored on the southern Isthmus.
Alternatively, should further investigation confirm current indications that outside political con-
trol, either direct or indirect, was lacking on the Late Formative southern Isthmus, we are left with
our third model of interaction, one based on interregional exchange between independent polities.
Evidence for the movement of goods and ideas between the Isthmus and the Valley of Oaxaca
during the Late Formative period is manifest. Indeed, from what is known today, the southern
Isthmus seems best interpreted as a region profoundly influenced by and consistently interacting
with surrounding societies, yet one which retained its political autonomy until almost the end of
its lengthy prehistory when, in the course of less than two centuries, it succumbed in short order to
the rule of Zapotec, Aztec, and finally Spanish conquerors.
Does the likelihood of a politically autonomous southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec weaken the
argument for the existence of a Late Formative imperialist state at Monte Alban, or for any kind
of Zapotec state at all? Not necessarily. If it turns out that the south Isthmian region avoided
conquest during this period, the reasons may have less to do with the form of Monte Alban
sociopolitical integration than with variables peculiar to the apparent Zapotec efforts at the ex-
ploitation of their very diverse hinterlands.
We may well come to see a number of concurrent variations, ranging from outright conquest to
hands-off reciprocal trade, in the way Monte Alban elected to deal with its outlying sources of
wealth, strong and weak, close at hand or distant. Perhaps a profitable research objective might be
to distinguish the different hinterland variables that may have evoked alternative economic and
political strategies on the Zapotec part. A definitive answer will depend not only on continuing
research at Monte Alban itself but on archaeological investigations in surrounding regions, both
highland and lowland, within the Oaxaca cultural sphere.' Out of this work we can anticipate not
only a much more solid understanding of the chronology, scale, and complexity of ancient Zapotec
civilization, but perhaps, as an added dividend, a greater general appreciation of the way states and
empires came into being.

Acknowledgments. My manuscriptdraws heavily on south Isthmian researchfunded throughgrantsfrom

the National Science Foundationand the Sigma Xi Society. It is an updatedand expandedversion of a paper
originallydeliveredat the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for AmericanArchaeology,Toronto. In trans-
formingit into its present form, I gratefullyacknowledgethe help of George L. Cowgill, Robert Hunt, Joyce
Marcus,and Judith FrancisZeitlin.

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NOTE
An archaeologicalinvestigationcurrentlyunderwayfurtherup the Oaxaca coast, in the Rio Verde region
(Joyce 1987; Winter 1987), could provide importantadditionalinsightsinto the question of highland-lowland
interactionin Late FormativeOaxaca.Of particularsignificanceis the fact that this is the locale of Tututepec,
one of the settlementsidentifiedby Marcuson BuildingJ at Monte Alban. A preliminaryreporton this project
finds no evidence of directZapoteccontrol of the Rio Verde Valley duringthe Late Formativeperiod(Joyceet
al. 1988).

ReceivedMay 12, 1988; acceptedMay 11, 1989

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