Linda R. Manzanilla
The evolution of societal complexity is a major subject of archaeological inquiry. This volume addresses storage as one archaeological indicator of evolving organization and administration systems, in key areas of emergence of complex societies: the ancient Near East, Mesoamerica, and the Andean Region. It derives from a Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Annual Meeting Symposium that I organized in 2010, where we discussed cross-cultural evidence of storerooms, tokens, and administrative devices and their implication for social behavior and institutions.
The literature on storage as an independent variable for organization and administration is not vast (see Chapter 1). One example, devoted to Mesoamerica and northern Mexico, is Almacenamiento prehispánico del Norte de México al Altiplano Central (edited by Séverine Bortot, Dominique Michelet, Véronique Darras, Université de Paris I-CEMCA, 2012). However, no comprehensive, much less cross-cultural, volumes on storage as an analytical category in analyzing societal evolution exist.
In putting together the SAA session, I chose three areas where the control of goods and people may be followed as hallmarks of different types of societies. Through comparison of their evolutionary trajectories, we can see commonalities that Steward believes are apparent even in multilineal pathways (see Introduction). I also emphasized to session participants that we should have in mind what types of goods are stored, in what type of facility, in what social context, and how the goods are distributed at what intervals. The group was focused on many cases on which administrative mechanisms develop to control the flow of the stored goods. These are the main subjects of this volume: how archaeologists study storage and its role and its analytical significance in the evolution of systems of control, administration, and societal organization.
In Chapter 1 Mitchell Rothman provides a theoretical look at the relationship between storage behavior and other aspects of culture in societies from those of hunter-gatherers to the state.
Following that, the first part of the volume is devoted to Near Eastern examples, where storage facilities have been present since the onset of sedentary life, both at familial and communal scales; these facilities will later be incorporated into monumental ritual and secular structures, which organize redistributional and trading networks of state-level organizations. Unique to the Near East is a set of independent control mechanisms, seals and seal-impressed clay locks on doors and containers. As the use of these control mechanisms change over time, they develop into a bureaucratic tool to account for—that is, audit—these movements. Ultimately, this system is enhanced by a system of written, so-called Uruk IV tablets, which increase administrators’ ability to collect and store information.
In Chapter 2, Mitchell Rothman and Enrica Fiandra describe changing storage methods and their relationship to elaborating control systems from 4200 to 3000 BC, which ultimately trace a trajectory to state-level societies. Examples include Tepe Gawra in the piedmont of northeastern Iraq, Arslantepe in southeastern Turkey, and Uruk-Warka, the world’s first great city in southern Iraq. All are involved in local systems of control, storage places, and in broad geographical trading networks. In each, a correlation of the use of seals and sealings as audited administrative mechanisms and eventually clay tablets and changes in storehouses and storerooms confirm the analytical power of storage to understand evolutionary changes.
In Chapter 3, Ianir Milevski, Eliot Braun, Daniel Varga, and Yigal Israel analyze a late third millennium BC formal silo system at the site of Amazia, Nahal Lachish, between the Negev and first Judean Hills in Israel. This is early evidence of a surplus production system, presumably of grains that the author describes as a redistributive system, locally, but one also in contact with state-level Egyptian colonies with more formal, centralized control systems. These systems of storage reflect an evolution of centralized storage from earlier types in the same region as outlined in the final chapter.
In Chapter 4 Tate Paulette continues where Rothman and Fiandra left off. He uses archaeological and written evidence to explore the central role played by grain and, in particular, grain storage within this broader struggle to define the contours of a rapidly evolving political economy. Over the course of the third millennium BC, Mesopotamia was swept up in a wave of political experimentation, economic restructuring, and ideological invention. Across the region, newly fashioned states struggled to establish control over the resources, the labor, and the allegiance of urban and rural populations.
Our second part is devoted to the Andean Region, a region where environmental phenomena cause severe risks for sedentary communities, and where storage is a key factor to face them.
In Chapter 5, Thomas Pozorski and Shelia Pozorski describe a system of regularly laid-out storage structures, stamp and cylinder seals, and other emblems of bureaucratic control and status. Unlike the Near East, there are no corresponding sealings, but stamps are rather ideological symbols, perhaps used to stamp cloth. This chapter puts these features in context by first describing the complex polity that occupied the Casma Valley of Peru during the Initial Period (1800–1400 BC). Subsequent sections provide details about storage structures and especially their modular architectural form, which became emblematic of bureaucratic power and control within the polity.
In Chapter 6, John R. Topic shows the relations among data-recording devices, a system of storage units, and the structure of the Chimú and Inka states of Peru. He begins by describing the Inka quipu, a record-keeping device. He then describes an earlier device used by the Chimú (ca. AD 850–1470) that was based on a specific form of architecture combined with the use of tokens for recording information. The Chimú device is closely associated with large numbers of storage complexes. He explores how the arrangements of storage complexes among the Inka and the Chimú may have also contributed to the recording of information as part of their imperial system.
In Chapter 7, R. Alan Covey, Kylie E. Quave, and Catherine E. Covey discuss state-directed storage in the Inka Empire (AD 1400–1530), particularly storage systems in provincial regions, as well as the area around Cuzco, the imperial capital, with an overview of the architectural and archaeological evidence of Inka storehouses, and the implications of the evidence for interpreting the parts of the economy dominated by local Inka nobles and by imperial political economies. They conclude that the local, noble-directed economy dominated the most productive parts of the region; political economy was focused on exotic raw materials and labor coming from provincial regions.
In Chapter 8, Frank Salomon, Gino de las Casas, and Víctor Falcón-Huayta address an ethnographic use of the quipu. Particularly, the village of Rapaz (Peru) managed its communal sector (fields, canals, terraces, pastures, and herds) through a ritual-administrative complex located in a walled precinct. The precinct’s two buildings are a qulka or Andean storehouse, and a still-used sacred meetinghouse, the home of a collection of quipus, where traditional authorities governed the sector of the common people they ruled. Ethnographic songs and other information clarify the relationships among storage, governance, ritual, and communal economy. This chapter emphasizes harvest collection and disbursal through the storehouse, an administrative system with a marked feminine symbolic association.
Our third part is devoted to Mesoamerican examples. In some cases storage of foodstuffs is a key issue for political control. In others, the control of labor seems to be more important.
In Chapter 9, Linda R. Manzanilla reviews the scarce data on centralized storage at Teotihuacan, one of the first vast urban developments of Classic Central Mexico (first six centuries AD), and concludes that the political economy was not focused on central control of staple goods, but rather on controlling certain sumptuary raw materials, such as jadeite and mica, and competing with neighborhood centers managed by the intermediate elite. In such centers, a series of tokens for specialized labor may be evident in the archaeological record. She argues that the size of roundels (small, medium- size, and large), the raw materials in which they are made (pottery, mica, slate, shell), and the existence of parts of roundels (especially complete, halves, and quarters) may represent a system related to persons involved in the life of the multiethnic neighborhood centers, and their partners in the corridors toward sumptuary good provisioning regions. Storage may not therefore be centralized, but spread among individual households and neighborhoods controlled by nobles.
In Chapter 10, Silvia T. Garza-Tarazona, Claudia Alvarado-Léon, Norberto González-Crespo, and Beatriz Palavicini-Beltrán discuss the Epiclassic site of Xochicalco, in Morelos, Mexico. Given the hierarchical structure at Xochicalco, the ruling class survived by obtaining tribute from their subject villages. In particular, the city’s acropolis represented the need for specific areas for storage, protection, and control of all types of goods and products from the territories under military subjugation in specialized workshops for preparation of food and goods. The evidence in the upper part of the city allows them to suggest that the food stored in the graneros (storehouses) was used for the subsistence of priests, rulers, and full-time specialists working within the Acropolis workshops. The tinajas (pithoi) found in the rooms related to the graneros in both the Acropolis and the structures G4 and G11 in the Main Plaza were used for the preparation of large quantities of food.
In Chapter 11, Michael P. Smyth describes the critical importance of storage to ancient Maya political economies. Even though the Maya occupied a tropical environment, the growing season was not year-round, and many environmental factors limited surplus production. Under these conditions, the maintenance of large sedentary, agriculturally dependent populations required substantial investment in storage. Clearly, the political administration of tribute collection and its storage was fundamental to elite power structures and the organization of storage can reveal much about the Maya political economy. This chapter explores differences in storage strategies, how and where goods are stored, and how stored goods are administered, as a way to reconstruct the political structure among the lowland Maya.
In Chapter 12, Cristina Vidal-Lorenzo, Ma. Luisa Vázquez-de-Ágredos-Pascual, and Gaspar Muñoz-Cosme also deal with storage systems used in the Maya area, but on the basis of archaeological, iconographic, literary, or ethnographic sources. Structures to store food and other domestic items of the common population were always of a perishable nature, in the same manner as their dwellings, except in cases such as that of Joya de Cerén (buried under volcanic ash). With respect to the water storage facilities these, to the contrary, tend to be well documented. The property of the ruling group was stored within the palaces; scenes showing the exchange of gifts or tributes, such as those captured on the beautiful Maya polychrome ceramics, suggest that all of these objects (vases, jaguar skins, feathers, blankets, cacao, and so on) had to be suitably and immediately stored away in rooms close to those where they were received, as exemplified by the palace complex at the Maya Acropolis of LaBlanca.
In Chapter 13, José Luis de Rojas stresses that storage and administration formed part of the Aztec Empire societal structure. In Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Triple Alliance, there were different stores of diverse size in which different items were kept, including grains, for example, buildings named petlacalco, a dependency specialized in economic affairs, where tribute goods were stored. The administrator was the huey calpixqui, together with mayordomos, treasurers, counters, tax collectors, and the rest of officials in charge of the treasury. Another indirect evidence of the existence of Aztec stores is the presence in the documentary sources of people in charge of the collecting and administration of tribute. For the Mexica case, we have two different types of evidence: administrators residing in the royal palace at Tenochtitlan and those who were in towns and provinces subject to the Aztec Empire.
In Chapter 14, the editors bring together the commonalities and differences in the various cases to find the general principles that underlie storage and evolution.