The Distributional Approach: A New Way to Identify Marketplace Exchange in the

Archaeological Record
Author(s): Kenneth G. Hirth
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (August/October 1998), pp. 451-476
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
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Current Anthropology Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
 1998 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/98/3904-0003$3.00
The Distributional
Approach
A New Way to Identify
Marketplace Exchange in
the Archaeological Record1
by Kenneth G. Hirth
Archaeologists working in Mesoamerica have long recognized the
importance and antiquity of marketplaces and market exchange
in the organization and integration of pre-Hispanic society. Most
approaches currently employed have, however, had difficulty in
identifying pre-Hispanic marketplaces using material remains.
This study introduces a new way to identify marketplace ex-
change based on the composition of domestic assemblages and
how they are affected by market-based provisioning strategies. It
identifies three distinguishing features of marketplace exchange:
that households provision themselves independently of one an-
other, that exchanges are concentrated in a centralized locale,
and that economic interaction takes place without regard to so-
cial rank. The distribution of imported ceramics and locally pro-
duced obsidian tools in domestic contexts at the archaeological
site of Xochicalco, Mexico, is compared with the expectations for
marketplace exchange. The study concludes that marketplace ex-
change was an important feature of economic activity at Xochi-
calco between a.d. 650 and 900 and illustrates the potential
value of the distributional approach for identifying prehistoric
economic behavior in the archaeological record.
kenneth g. hirth is Professor of Anthropology at Penn State
University (University Park, Pa. 16802, U.S.A. [kgh2@psu.edu]).
Born in 1949, he was educated at the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee (B.B.A., 1971; M.A., 1972; Ph.D., 1974). He was a re-
searcher at the Instituto Nacional de Antropologı́a e Historia in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, and taught at Western Michigan University
and the University of Kentucky before assuming his present posi-
tion in 1993. His recent publications include ‘‘The Investigation
of Obsidian Craft Production at Xochicalco, Morelos’’ (Ancient
Mesoamerica 6:251–58), ‘‘Political Economy and Archaeology:
Perspectives on Exchange and Production’’ (Journal of Archaeo-
logical Research 4:203–39), and Ancient Urbanism at Xochi-
calco: The Evolution and Organization of a Pre-Hispanic Society
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, in press). The present
paper was submitted 7 v 97 and accepted 9 ix 97; the final ver-
sion reached the Editor’s office 24 ii 98.
1. The ideas in this paper have benefited from discussions with
William Sanders and David Webster of the Department of Anthro-
pology at Penn State University. I thank the Instituto Nacional de
Antropologı́a e Historia and colleagues in the Centro Regional de
Morelos in Cuernavaca for research permits and assistance to con-
duct this research over the 15-year period between 1978 and 1993.
Sponsorship for this research came from the National Science
Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Geo-
graphic Society, the University of Kentucky Research Foundation,
and the College of Liberal Arts of Penn State University.
The marketplace was the center of economic life in an-
cient Mesoamerica. It was here that countless products
were bought and sold and all the riches of the New
World were displayed. The 16th-century Spaniard Bernal
Dı́az del Castillo, astounded by the size, diversity, and
organization of the Tlatelolco market, declared that
never in all of his travels had he seen such a market
(1956:215). In fact, there were few societies in the an-
cient world in which markets were more important in
the organization of economic life than they were in
Mesoamerica. This is all the more amazing given that
the vast majority of materials circulating in Mesoameri-
can market systems were transported by human porters
(Hassig 1985).
Market systems were an important component of the
Mesoamerican political economy, and archaeologists
generally assume that they were part of an ancient pre-
Hispanic tradition whose origins extend back 2,000
years before the Spanish conquest (Blanton 1983). While
most prehistorians acknowledge the importance of the
marketplace in Mesoamerican society, the institution
is not well understood because of the difficulty of iden-
tifying market activity in the archaeological record
(Blanton et al. 1982:55). Few studies address the origins
of market institutions or the ways in which their devel-
opment stemmed from or shaped the social and politi-
cal institutions in which they operated (Blanton 1983,
1985; Berdan 1985; Feinman, Blanton, and Kowalewski
1984).
This study is concerned with increasing our ability to
identify and study market exchange in the archaeologi-
cal record. A specific goal is the development of a distri-
butional approach (Hirth 1995c) that focuses not on the
location, form, or spatial configuration of the market-
place but on the frequency and distribution of the mate-
rial remains procured through exchange by primary
consumption units (households, palaces, civic-ceremo-
nial entities, etc.). Analysis of materials from the large
Epiclassic site of Xochicalco, Mexico (Noguera 1945;
Sáenz 1962, 1964; Hirth 1984, 1989a; González et al.
1995), shows how the distributional approach can be
used.
Marketplaces in Pre-Hispanic
Central Mexico
Marketplaces are locales where large numbers of mar-
ket exchanges take place (Plattner 1989a). Market ex-
change, according to Pryor (1977:104), is ‘‘a type of bal-
anced distributional transaction involving goods or
services where the forces of supply and demand are visi-
ble.’’ Intrinsic to this definition is the idea that market
exchange achieves balance through some culturally me-
diated form of negotiation. Market exchanges include
both barter transactions, in which objects are ex-
changed for one another (Chapman 1980; Appadurai
1986:9), and those involving money or some other con-
ventional medium of exchange (Dalton 1965, Plattner
451
452 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
1989a). These exchanges may occur as single balanced
and reciprocal events or in clusters as they do in a mar-
ketplace. The concentration of exchange in a specific lo-
cale creates an economic institution that has a tremen-
dous effect on the demand for resources, the quantity
of items exchanged, and the efficiency with which they
move.
Ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources indicate that
markets were an important economic institution
throughout Mesoamerica during pre-Hispanic times
(Cook and Diskin 1976b; Beals 1967; Berdan 1985; C.
Smith 1972, 1983). Markets are well described in the
Central Mexican highlands, where they provided in-
come for the elites who supervised their operation
(Carrasco 1983, Berdan 1982, Sahagún 1979). Using
ethnohistoric information, Pedro Carrasco (1978) has
emphasized the important role that markets had in in-
tegrating economic, social, and political sectors within
the Mesoamerican state. Markets were under the super-
vision of a local ruler who guaranteed the safety of indi-
viduals participating in them, regulated quality, price,
and volumetric measures, and policed trading practices
(Hassig 1985:67–68; Clavijero 1974:237; Anderson, Ber-
dan, and Lockhart 1976). For these services the ruler
levied a small tax in kind on vendors trading in the mar-
ketplace. Markets were occasionally moved as a result
of warfare or for political reasons. For example, the
Aztec king of Axayacatl moved the marketplace from
Acatzingo to Tepeaca as a reward for the latter’s role as
a faithful ally in the turbulent Valley of Puebla (Durán
1994:159).
Market operations were probably elite-administered
from the beginning. In the Valley of Oaxaca there is
good evidence that elites played an important role in
the development of regional market systems between
400 and 500 b.c. (Blanton 1983; Feinman, Blanton, and
Kowalewski 1984:172). In areas such as the Valley of
Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos the earliest markets were
probably located in the largest communities, where
they were sponsored by prominent elites. This con-
forms to ethnographic observations that communities
with large populations foster marketplace development
(Appleby 1976, C. Smith 1974) and that elites take an
active role in mobilizing resources for a wide variety of
purposes (Dalton 1977, D’Altroy and Earle 1985, Hirth
1996). Marketplaces may also develop in the context of
expanding state institutions, mobilizing resources from
individual households and thus reducing the control of
rural elites over resources in favor of more centralized
control (Blanton 1983:58).
Although elites provided administrative supervision,
most marketplaces operated independently of direct po-
litical control at Spanish contact. This is evident in part
from the variety of distinct market schedules found in
the Valley of Mexico at the time. Markets were held
daily in large cities and on 5-, 9-, 13-, and 20-day cycles
in smaller towns (Hassig 1982). This led to occasional
conflicts in market scheduling between adjacent towns
that would have been avoided if a single, integrated
market schedule had been imposed on the region by
political means. Similarly, markets consistently out-
lived regional cycles of political unification and disin-
tegration. Pre-Columbian market systems throughout
Mesoamerica continued to operate during the colonial
period with little Spanish interference or control (Gib-
son 1964:352–53; Cook and Diskin 1976a:11). The
stability and longevity of these market systems were a
function of the central provisioning role they played in
the everyday lives of common people. This role was
too important to be diverted or suspended by shifts in
the political landscape and produced an economic
institution more durable than the political systems in
which it operated.
Markets performed three important provisioning
functions for pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican society. First,
they performed a supply function by bringing together
stocks of staple goods in central locations that could be
accessed by households on a regular basis. Second, they
fulfilled a distribution function for craft and service
specialists by providing an outlet for their wares and a
source of the resources necessary for their support. This
is evident in the close relationship between market de-
velopment and the intensification of craft production
throughout Mesoamerica at the time of the conquest
(Sanders and Santley 1983). Finally, markets fulfilled a
scheduling function by assisting individual households
to manage their time and labor budgets efficiently
(Blanton 1983; Feinman, Blanton, and Kowalewski
1984:174). This was important as households chose
(Netting 1990, 1993) or were forced (Blanton 1983) to
increase production, allocating more time to agriculture
and/or craft activities and relying on markets for prod-
ucts they no longer had time to produce for themselves.
Markets also had an important role in the integration
of pre-Hispanic political economies by providing the
means for converting tribute goods into alternative
commodities for use by the state (Hicks 1987:100).
High-value goods could be converted into consumable
staples and stored wealth into perishables as the market
provided the pivot for the operation of a wealth finance
economy (D’Altroy and Earle 1985). Although elites
were concerned that markets perform these conversion
functions, they usually did not attempt to monopolize
control of distribution networks as is occasionally sug-
gested (see, e.g., Santley 1983, 1984). Instead elites em-
phasized the production of agricultural staples, the for-
mation of tequitl (labor service) relationships, and the
expansion of commodity tribute to produce the wealth
on which they relied.
Archaeological Approaches
to Studying Markets
Despite their importance, pre-Hispanic markets are dif-
ficult for archaeologists to study, largely because of
the lack of appropriate methods and analytical models.
Previous studies have focused on the configurational,
contextual, or spatial aspects of pre-Hispanic market
activity. The approach developed here focuses on the

distribution of goods through market exchange and
should be seen as complementary to these other ap-
proaches for studying complex market interaction.
The configurational approach attempts to identify
market exchange from the spatial and architectural con-
figurations created by market behavior. This place-
oriented approach focuses on locating marketplaces
(tianguis) in terms of the types of architectural arrange-
ments associated with market activity. To accomplish
this researchers have relied on ethnohistoric descrip-
tions of pre-Hispanic marketplaces recorded during the
16th century (Sahagún 1979; 1961:59–94; Feldman
1978; Dı́az del Castillo 1956:218–19) and ethnographic
studies of indigenous markets in Oaxaca (Beals 1967;
Cook and Diskin 1976a, b) Chiapas (C. Smith 1983),
and Guatemala (C. Smith 1972).
Ethnohistoric descriptions of places such as the Aztec
market of Tlatelolco have provided some of the main
criteria for identifying pre-Hispanic marketplaces. The
two main features of Central Mexican marketplaces are
their central location and their formal architectural de-
sign. Furthermore, because markets in the largest com-
munities were collection and distribution points for
large quantities of commodities, they tend to be located
on primary transportation arteries that provide high
connectivity with the surrounding hinterland. Market-
places were characterized by a built environment that
is potentially recognizable using archaeological tech-
niques. The largest marketplaces were in special areas
near or adjacent to administrative precincts, and they
were often surrounded by a wall or arcade. These walls
or arcades enclosed both buildings associated with the
administrative activities of the marketplace (Cortés
[1962:89] describes a central building in the Tlatelolco
market occupied by magistrates who supervised and
regulated economic transactions) and the shops and
stalls of permanent vendors (tlanamaquilizcalli) (de
Molina 1977). These latter were the places where food
was served and apothecaries, barbers, stovemakers, and
obsidian craftsmen practiced their trades (Cortés 1962:
87; López de Gómara 1966:162–63; Dı́az del Castillo
1956:217). Pre-Hispanic markets were organized in
rows and sectors like contemporary markets, with simi-
lar products sold together in the same area (Cortés 1962:
87–89; Feldman 1978).
These useful and relatively straightforward criteria
are, however, somewhat difficult to apply in archaeo-
logical situations. Although all markets were probably
organized in rows and corridors, they differed greatly in
the scale and durability of their architectural installa-
tions. Cortés (1962:86–89), for example, indicates that
commercial activity took place in many public plazas
throughout the Basin of Mexico. Whereas permanent
markets probably fit the architectural criteria just
listed, periodic markets almost certainly lacked perma-
nent architectural features and were held in areas that
fulfilled other public functions during the 5–20-day pe-
riods between market days (see Hassig 1982). This
would make them all but invisible to archaeological de-
tection. My surface mapping of a week-long market fair
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 453
at Tetecala, Morelos, in 1976 revealed that intensive
open-air commercial activity in periodic market con-
texts leaves few material traces. While the Tetecala fair
was organized using the same row-and-corridor pattern
as permanent markets, virtually no architectural traces
remained after closure other than lines of postholes left
from tables and awning supports. Furthermore, like per-
manent marketplaces, the fairgrounds were subse-
quently cleaned of debris, making them difficult to
identify from the patterning of artifact remains.
Given these limitations, it is not surprising that the
configurational approach has had only limited success
in illuminating the pre-Hispanic marketplace. Most
identifications of ancient marketplaces have been based
on information collected by surface reconnaissance. As
a result, marketplace identifications, even at large ur-
ban sites like Teotihuacan and Monte Alban, remain
speculative and based on little more than the presence
of large open plazas at central or readily accessible por-
tions of the site (Millon 1973, Winter and Payne 1976,
Blanton 1978). Surface finds, though useful for solving
many types of problems, do not provide control over the
architectural associations necessary for marketplace
identifications, and no stratigraphic excavations have
been attempted to confirm marketplace identifications
using architectural criteria.
The contextual approach infers the existence of mar-
ketplaces from the presence of cultural features be-
lieved to require the provisioning and distribution func-
tions of the market to exist, for example, large cities and
full-time craft specialists. This approach has the disad-
vantage that market exchange is not examined directly
but inferred (Torrence 1986). Urban market models as-
sert that market systems often develop as a by-product
of urban growth. In the urban context the marketplace
provisions resident populations with food and resources
from the surrounding hinterland (Appleby 1976). As
pre-Hispanic cities grew the importance of their mar-
ketplaces would have increased as greater numbers of
non-food-producing specialists (administrators, crafts-
people, elite families and retainers) needed to be sup-
plied with staples. Proponents of this approach usually
view the marketplace in institutional terms, seeing its
origins in the same social and political processes that
led to the formation of cities (Carrasco 1978, Polanyi
1957; cf. Acheson 1994:12).
The weakness of this approach is that it assumes
rather than investigates the means by which elite and
commoner households provisioned themselves. There
were multiple ways of provisioning in Mesoamerica
that did not involve the marketplace. At the time of the
conquest large amounts of food and labor were provided
to the state, the elite, and prominent warriors through
tequitl and tribute. The administrative ban on com-
merce outside the marketplace (Carrasco 1978:55;
Durán 1971:276) suggests that nonmarket exchange had
previously been widespread. Furthermore, the distribu-
tion of craft specialists throughout rural areas (Brumfiel
1982, 1986, 1987) suggests that a significant percentage
of this production was performed on a part-time basis
454 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
within households that also practiced agriculture. Al-
though we know that large 16th-century cities often
had daily markets, we need to learn more about the
structure of pre-Hispanic provisioning strategies and
how they developed in relation to urban institutions.
A variant of the contextual approach infers the pres-
ence of markets from information about the scale and
specialization of craft production. This approach as-
sumes that large numbers of craft specialists (especially
full-time specialists) will be present only in societies
that have reliable and efficient distribution systems. A
close relationship is posited between levels of produc-
tion, specialization, and the scale, complexity, and inte-
gration of the distribution systems that support them.
Marketplaces concentrate consumer demand for craft
products, which is important for independent, full-time
specialists who must sell their wares to support their
families. Since markets facilitate a greater flow of prod-
ucts than either redistribution or reciprocal economies,
a rapid increase in the number of independent craft spe-
cialists is considered to reflect the emergence of market
institutions.
An example of this approach can be found in the re-
search on craft production at the large urban center of
Teotihuacan. While evidence for numerous craft activi-
ties has been found (Hempenius Turner 1987, Krotser
1987, Millon 1973, Muñera Bermudez 1985, Sheehy
1992, Spence 1981), it is the production of obsidian
tools that reflects the greatest degree of specialization
thus far recorded in Mesoamerica (Spence 1967, 1981,
1984, 1987; Clark 1986). Because the level of production
far exceeds demand within the city, it has been argued
that obsidian craftsmen were producing for an extensive
distribution system encompassing much of northern
Mesoamerica (Santley 1983, 1984). It remains unclear
how many craftsmen produced for the marketplace as
opposed to special merchant or state clients. Evidence
of craft specialization is, however, only indirectly infor-
mative about the forms of distribution in a society. For
example, while the presence of a large number of craft
specialists supports the presence of markets, the ab-
sence of craft specialists does not mean that no markets
existed. Market systems in Africa, for instance, oper-
ated with few full-time craft specialists (Bohannan and
Dalton 1962). An approach that infers market exchange
from craft activity will allow marketplaces to be identi-
fied only in a portion of instances where production spe-
cialists occurred. Full utilization of this approach will
require a better understanding of how pre-Hispanic craft
production may have varied under different distribution
systems.
The spatial approach attempts to reconstruct eco-
nomic exchange either from the way in which commod-
ities are distributed over space (Renfrew 1975) or from
the arrangement of population centers in terms of the
patterns predicted by central-place theory (Blanton
1996, M. Smith 1979). Since market exchange increases
the efficiency, volume, and distance over which items
travel, it is argued that they should produce distinctive
distributions of items in comparison with other forms
of exchange. Colin Renfrew (1975, 1977) provided one of
the earliest formulations of this approach by modeling
different forms of exchange in terms of expected fall-off
rates of goods moving through space from their point of
origin. These models were based on the ‘‘law of mono-
tonic decrement,’’ the idea that efficient forms of distri-
bution such as marketplace exchange will distribute
commodities more widely than less efficient forms of
exchange such as balanced reciprocity or redistribution.
Although fall-off models are appealing, they have been
difficult to apply except in situations where points of
origin can be determined with a high degree of certainty
(Renfrew and Dixon 1976, J. Muller 1995).
A successful application of the spatial approach in
Mesoamerica can be found in the work of the Valley of
Oaxaca Settlement Project (Blanton et al. 1982, Fein-
man, Blanton, and Kowalewski 1984, Feinman 1982).
Researchers working here have observed that ceramics
manufactured in local workshops were distributed over
a 40–60-km radius during Monte Alban I (500–200
b.c.). The mechanism that best accounts for these ce-
ramic distributions is the development of a regional
market system. The stimulus for the emergence of mar-
ket systems is considered to have been the shift from
single-crop farming systems to a more intensive, two-
crop system in which the second, dry-season crop was
aided by small-canal irrigation (Blanton 1983:57; Fein-
man, Blanton, and Kowalewski 1984:173; Marcus and
Flannery 1996). Intensification of production reduced
the amount of time available for normal household
maintenance and self-sufficiency. The result was an in-
crease in exchange for normal household provisioning
and the development of regional market systems as the
context in which exchange took place.
The Distributional Approach
The three foregoing approaches identify market ex-
change primarily by indirect means. The distributional
approach attempts a more direct assessment by examin-
ing its provisioning function. This approach focuses on
the differential distribution of commodities among the
society’s primary units of economic consumption. The
most fundamental of these are households that in turn
support more inclusive forms of consumption at the so-
dality, community, chiefdom, or state level. Although
households normally produce a large percentage of the
resources they consume, they are never completely self-
sufficient (Dalton 1977). Consequently, they develop
strategies for provisioning themselves and buffering
themselves from fluctuations in their own production
strategies (Dalton 1977, Halstead and O’Shea 1989,
Hirth 1992). Market exchange is one such strategy.
Market exchanges, as I have said, are exchanges in
which the terms are balanced and actively negotiated
(Pryor 1977:104). They occur in contexts that range
from highly centralized to isolated (fig. 1). Market ex-
changes can be centralized by creating special zones or
places for them to take place, most commonly a perma-

F i g. 1. Forms of market exchange.
nent or periodic marketplace. Marketplaces provide an
efficient means of distributing large quantities of re-
sources throughout the society by providing equal ac-
cess to commodities for all consuming units. Decentral-
ized market exchanges take place in the context of
trading partnerships and other reciprocal relationships
that may be unique, independent activities. In contrast
to exchange in the marketplace, reciprocal exchange re-
sults in a low volume of commodity movement and an
unequal distribution of resources throughout the soci-
ety. Intermediate between these extremes are small
clusters of market exchange relationships represented
by itinerant peddlers, shopkeeper merchandising, and
direct procurement or barter with specialists in craft
workshops. In pre-Hispanic Central Mexico market ex-
changes were highly centralized, and the marketplace
was one of society’s central social and economic insti-
tutions.
The high volume of resources flowing through pre-
Hispanic marketplaces was a function of four important
relationships. First, buyers and sellers interacted within
the marketplace independent of their social rank; this
is a defining feature of market exchange. Social rank did
not affect the basic structure or balance of marketplace
exchange, and no enduring relationship was necessarily
established beyond the completion of the transaction
(Calnek 1978:104). While longer-term ‘‘personal’’ rela-
tionships may be established between interacting par-
ties within the marketplace under certain economic
conditions (Plattner 1989b), these linkages are not
based primarily on social inequality. Second, house-
holds participated directly in the procurement of re-
sources with minimal reliance on intervening social au-
thority. Although marketplaces were supervised and
regulated by specific rulers, economic transactions were
not subject to direct social or political control. Third,
marketplaces mobilized large quantities of resources di-
rectly from individual households. This mobilization
was critical for pre-Hispanic economic integration be-
cause households were the society’s primary production
and storage units. Finally, the market was responsive to
conditions of supply and demand. Although the exact
price-setting mechanisms cannot be established (Kurtz
1974), it is known that administrators did attempt to
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 455
stimulate exchange and protect craft specialists from
wide fluctuations in commodity demand (Carrasco
1983:77; Kobayashi 1993).
These features distinguish marketplace exchange
from other forms of economic distribution (e.g., Polanyi
1957). Compared with isolated balanced or generalized
reciprocal exchanges (Sahlins 1972), marketplace ex-
changes increase the volume, diversity, efficiency, and
distance of goods moving through the distribution sys-
tem. Furthermore, by bringing together a diversity of
products in one locale, marketplaces provide a setting
for a wide range of conversions between different com-
modities. Forms of reciprocity based on trading partner-
ships, in contrast, are frequently characterized by small
spheres of distribution, heterogeneity in the sources of
commodities utilized, and/or distribution patterns that
replicate the social hierarchy (Renfrew 1975, Winter
and Pires-Ferreira 1976).
Redistribution (Polanyi 1957; Polanyi, Arensburg, and
Pearson 1957; Service 1962; Hirth 1996:216) and mobili-
zation (Smelser 1957, Earle 1977, Welch 1991) are
alternative forms of distribution that, although they
provide a centralized flow of resources, differ from mar-
ketplace exchanges in several important ways. First,
they do not facilitate resource distribution at the house-
hold level; pooled resources may be consumed by the
institution collecting them or made available to a
smaller number of households than contributed to their
collection. Second and more important, resources flow
primarily through hierarchical social and political net-
works rather than through independent economic chan-
nels. The result is the creation of multiple, parallel cir-
cuits of resource exchange that restrict both the flow
of resources and the number of provisioning relation-
ships individual households can establish to meet their
economic needs. This produces heterogeneity between
households in the types and quantities of resources they
procure and a distribution of high-value and imported
items that parallels existing social hierarchies.
Marketplace exchange is distinct from other forms of
distribution in providing individual households with a
centralized but nonhierarchical provisioning network
that operates independently of other sociopolitical rela-
tionships in the society. This is reflected ethnohistori-
456 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
cally in Mesoamerica by the fact that the majority of
individuals selling wares in pre-Hispanic marketplaces
were tlanamacac or producer-sellers (Sahagún 1961;
Berdan 1978:84). These producer-sellers represent the
direct participation of individual households in market-
place provisioning, and it is economic activity at the
household level that provides archaeologists with a
means of detecting marketplace exchange from mate-
rial remains.
Over the past decade household archaeology has
emerged as a powerful analytical approach for studying
prehistoric behavior (Blanton 1994, Netting, Wilk, and
Arnould 1984, Santley and Hirth 1993, Wilk and Ash-
more 1988, Wilk and Rathje 1982, Widmer 1987). What
is important here is that it supplies a way of studying
marketplace exchange by examining the type and fre-
quency of the commodities households contain. Since
households were both the primary suppliers and con-
sumers of commodities exchanged in the marketplace,
comparison of their artifact inventories provides a mea-
sure of differential involvement in a common distribu-
tion network. An important signature of marketplace
exchange is that households provision themselves inde-
pendently of one another and without regard to broader
social and political relationships. As market systems
evolve, the marketplace takes over some of the distribu-
tion functions formerly provided by kinship and other
social networks. The result is an increase in the homo-
geneity of material culture assemblages between house-
holds of different social ranks. Since individuals partici-
pate in the marketplace independent of their class or
social rank, marketplace exchange will produce greater
similarity in household assemblages at the community
and regional level than other forms of exchange.
Differences may still be found between households
participating in marketplace exchange, but, ceteris pari-
bus, households of low rank should have access to the
same range of low-cost utilitarian goods as households
of high rank. In general terms, a large portion of the
variation among households should be a function of ei-
ther differential purchasing power or the operation of
provisioning networks in addition to marketplace ex-
change. Differential purchasing power is often itself a
reflection of socioeconomic status in pre-Hispanic soci-
ety, since most wealth was mobilized and moved
through sociopolitical means. Nevertheless, both high-
and low-status households would have had access to the
same types of resources in the marketplace to the ex-
tent that purchasing power and social conscriptions al-
lowed. Alternative provisioning networks seem to have
played a minor role for most households in Central
Mexico at the time of the conquest. An exception to
this was the mobilization of resources through tequitl
labor and tribute that significantly augmented the
quantities of local goods available to families of high-
ranking members of the society (Carrasco 1976, Hicks
1991). In its simplest form tequitl involved supplying
craft goods (ceramics, textiles, etc.) or household labor
to cultivate a small plot of land to support elite families
or sociopolitical institutions (Hicks 1991; Hirth 1996:
211).
Evidence for Pre-Hispanic Markets
at Xochicalco
The site of Xochicalco is located 70 km southwest of
Mexico City in the modern state of Morelos, Mexico
(fig. 2). The site grew to prominence around a.d. 650
and was an important regional center until it was de-
stroyed militarily around a.d. 900 (Hirth 1995a, Gonzá-
lez et al. 1995). At its apogee, Xochicalco had a popula-
tion of 10,000–15,000 and a conquest empire covering
much of western Morelos and adjacent regions, an area
of perhaps 2,000–3,000 km2.
Xochicalco’s rise and decline took place during the
Epiclassic period, one of the most tumultuous epochs in
Central Mexican prehistory. This was the period when
Teotihuacan disappeared as an influential center in the
highlands and its former political territory fragmented
into multiple competing political spheres (Sanders and
Price 1968, Webb 1978). Competition took the form of
both military conquest and efforts to gain control over
long-distance exchange routes (Webb 1978). The role of
Xochicalco as both a military and a commercial center
is reflected by the military themes, eclectic style, and
evidence for multicultural contact portrayed in its mon-
umental art and the diversity of prestige goods recov-
ered in elite contexts (Hirth 1989a; V. Smith 1988, n.d.;
Sáenz 1962, 1964).
The presence of markets at Xochicalco can be inferred
from configurational and contextual evidence. From a
configurational perspective, Xochicalco contains five
large plazas any one of which could have been used as
a marketplace. Three of these (South, East, and Coatzin)
are more likely candidates for marketplace use in that
they are located along roads and have associated build-
ings that could have housed market administrators (fig.
3). Furthermore, the East Plaza was enclosed by a wall
like the permanent market described by Cortés (1962:
87) at Tlatelolco. The Plaza Central is an unlikely can-
didate for a market area, being both small and congested
with buildings leaving little open area for vendors. Sim-
ilarly, while the Plaza Ceremonial is relatively large, ac-
cess is indirect and appears to have been controlled by
way of a building along its southwestern side. Although
the South, East, and Coatzin Plazas are likely market-
place locales, it is impossible to confirm their use in
this way on the basis of plaza configuration alone.
From a contextual perspective, it could be argued that
Xochicalco’s large urban population and its location in
a marginally productive agricultural area created provi-
sioning needs that required a marketplace. Surface map-
ping and excavation have identified seven workshops
(fig. 4) where craft specialists produced obsidian tools in
quantities that together probably exceeded the con-
sumption requirements of the city’s resident population
(Hirth 1995b). Since some of these tools were reaching
households in Xochicalco’s surrounding hinterland, it
could be argued that distribution took place through a
central marketplace.
Unfortunately, neither the site size, the architectural
layout, nor the evidence for craft specialization provides
 h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 457

F i g. 2. Location of Xochicalco in Mesoamerica.

F ig. 3. Roads and plazas on Cerro Xochicalco. Shaded plazas represent areas believed to
have been marketplaces.
458 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998

F ig. 4. Locations of obsidian workshops at Xochicalco.

direct information on marketplaces at Xochicalco. The
distributional approach is a supplemental and more di-
rect means of testing the existence of marketplace
exchange. For example, if a marketplace existed at
Xochicalco, then we will expect to find a high level of
homogeneity in the distribution of circulating com-
modities among houses. Sharp differences in the com-
position of domestic inventories would suggest the op-
eration of multiple distributional networks involving
both market and nonmarket forms of exchange to meet
household provisioning needs. The assemblages of high-
and low-status households will be expected to vary
more as a reflection of differences in purchasing power
than as a result of nonmarket forms of distribution.
To make this evaluation, information on domestic ar-
tifact assemblages was drawn from a sample of 118
Epiclassic houses that were identified as discrete, intact
units during surface mapping (Hirth 1993). Compari-
sons of domestic artifact inventories were based on
materials recovered from single-component Epiclassic
houses using intensive surface collection techniques.2
All of these houses were located in Xochicalco’s urban
core, where site conservation efforts since the early
2. Ninety-nine of the 118 houses were single-component Epiclassic
houses, without any evidence for reoccupation during the Postclas-
sic. An additional 39 civic-ceremonial areas were identified and
surface-collected to provide a comparative sample.

20th century have preserved a large block of both resi-
dential and civic-ceremonial architecture (Hirth n.d.,
Litvak King 1971). Surface collection is a reliable means
of sampling Epiclassic domestic assemblages at Xochi-
calco for the following reasons: (1) no occupation before
the Epiclassic is present on Cerro Xochicalco (Hirth and
Cyphers Guillen 1988); (2) virtually all of the architec-
tural fill used to construct house platforms is sterile,
lacking cultural materials that could have mixed with
in situ deposits through normal erosional processes
(González et al. 1995); (3) Xochicalco was attacked, de-
stroyed, and rapidly abandoned at the end of the Epiclas-
sic, leaving large amounts of in situ domestic refuse di-
rectly on the floors of burned and collapsed residential
structures (González et al. 1995, Hirth 1995a, Webb and
van Rossum 1997, Webb and Hirth 1998); and (4) por-
tions of the site beyond 500–600 m from permanent wa-
ter were not reoccupied after the Epiclassic (Hirth and
Cyphers Guillen 1988).
These conditions allowed a large sample of in situ
domestic refuse to be recovered from a wide range of
elite and ordinary houses. Two classes of data, imported
ceramics and obsidian tools, were used to evaluate
whether houses were being provisioned through market
or nonmarket means. Imported ceramics were used in
this analysis for two reasons. First, their foreign origin
meant that all of the variation in domestic assemblages
would be a function of the distribution system through
which they moved. Second, their relative scarcity, the
foreign identity attached to them, and the higher costs
and breakage rates associated with transporting them
over space are likely to have made them prestige goods
and consequently sensitive to nonmarket forms of dis-
tribution including movement through the social hier-
archy. The hypothesis was that if nonmarket forms of
distribution were important at Xochicalco, imported ce-
ramics would be differentially distributed between elite
and ordinary houses. Most obsidian was imported in the
form of polyhedral cores that were made into prismatic
blades and other artifacts in local workshops (Hirth
1995b). By comparing the types and quantities of obsid-
ian tools recovered from domestic and workshop con-
texts, it was possible to evaluate whether individual
households were procuring finished tools directly from
the workshop of their manufacture or from multiple
sources in a central marketplace.
Market Effects on the Distribution
of Imported Ceramics
The Xochicalco ceramic assemblage is dominated by lo-
cally manufactured monochrome and bichrome wares.
Decoration is simple, most often consisting of simple
red bands around brown or orange bowls. For the most
part the elaborate red-on-natural painting characteristic
of the Coyotlatelco ceramic tradition is absent in west-
ern Morelos (Dumond and Muller 1972; Rattray 1966;
Cyphers 1980, n.d.; Cyphers and Hirth n.d.; Hirth and
Cyphers Guillen 1988). Imported ceramics can be
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 459
readily distinguished from locally manufactured ones
on the basis of both paste and surface finishes. Imports
include micaceous paste (Micaceous Gray, Micaceous
Orange), metamorphic paste (Tembembe Crusty Or-
ange, Tembembe Plain), and a few rare types such as
Fine Orange, Type C Thin Orange, and Oaxaca-style
gray ware (Cyphers 1980, Cyphers and Hirth n.d., Hirth
and Cyphers Guillen 1988).3 They include some storage
as well as service ware in forms that complement or du-
plicate those of local wares. Therefore they function as
substitutes for locally manufactured ceramics rather
than being unique and obtainable only through ex-
change. Moreover, imports occur primarily as service
ware. Storage containers are limited to Tembembe
Crusty Orange and Tembembe Plain ware and may
have been imported and sold containing resources such
as resin, honey, or some other commodity. In the single-
component Epiclassic houses of the sample, imported
ceramics normally constituted 3–6% of the domestic
assemblage. Although they had a low enough cost to oc-
cur in most houses, they were still probably more ex-
pensive than local vessels with similar decoration be-
cause of their higher transportation costs and breakage
rates.
Under conditions where market exchange is op-
erating, imported ceramics will be available for pur-
chase by all members of the society, and acquisition and
subsequent occurrence in archaeological contexts will
be a function of their general availability, value, and rel-
ative cost. When they have very high costs they will
tend be restricted to elite households, and marketplace
acquisition will be hard to distinguish from forms of gift
exchange and redistribution where goods are distributed
through social hierarchies. This, however, was usually
not the case with most widely traded ceramics in Cen-
tral Mexico from at least the Classic period on. Most
ceramics, even imported ones, were relatively inexpen-
sive and within the procurement budget of houses at all
levels of the social hierarchy. This is because most ce-
ramic vessels have food preparation and service func-
tions and are basic necessities in domestic settings. Im-
ported ceramics usually have functional counterparts in
locally manufactured wares and cease to be traded when
their costs significantly exceed their prestige and use
values vis-à-vis local ceramics. Nonculinary ceramics
with special social importance and/or civic-ceremonial
functions have a different cost equation from ceramics
for food service or preparation and may be distributed
over wider distances or through nonmarket means.
Value is determined by cultural norms rather than costs
per se. Nevertheless, value and cost are closely linked,
with value determining the price consumers are willing
3. Micaceous Gray and Micaceous Orange ceramics probably origi-
nated in either Guerrero (F. Muller 1974:57) or the Mixteca Baja,
where such ceramics are relatively common (Marcus Winter, per-
sonal communication). Tembembe Crusty Orange and Tembembe
Plain may have been manufactured in the Valley of Toluca, north-
west of Xochicalco, considering their greater frequency of occur-
rence there (Cyphers n.d.).
460 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998

table 1 ics. The implication here is that imported ceramics oc-

Imported Ceramics in Elite and Ordinary Houses cur with equal frequency in all houses during the
at Xochicalco Epiclassic. (Ordinary houses seem to have a slightly
higher percentage both of imported bowls and of im-
ported and locally decorated wares combined than elite
Comparison
Elite Ordinary houses, but these differences are not statistically sig-
(N ⫽ 14) (N ⫽ 60) nificant.)
X X F p A similar pattern was found when elite and ordinary
houses were combined and regrouped by compound
Total imports/area .010 .009 .061 .806 size. House compounds were divided into three groups:
Total imports/total ce- .056 .053 .038 .847 large (650 m2 or more), medium-sized (⬎300 but ⬍650
ramics m2), and small (300 m2 or less). Analysis of variance re-
Imported bowls/area .001 .002 .410 .524 vealed no significant differences in either the ratio of
Imported bowls/total .021 .047 .944 .335 imports to total ceramics or the density of total imports
bowls
Imported bowls/total .006 .009 .467 .496 by house size (table 2). Similarly, when only imported
ceramics service ware was examined, no differences were ob-
Imported and locally .083 .135 1.636 .205 served between houses of different size in terms of ei-
decorated bowls/to- ther the density of imports or the ratio of imported
tal bowls
bowls to total ceramics or total bowls. While small
houses had lower percentages of total imports and im-
note: Elite, courtyard type (see Hirth 1993, n.d.); ordinary, all ported bowls to total ceramics than either medium-
other types irrespective of size. sized or large structures, these differences were not sta-
tistically significant.
It is significant that imported ceramics appear to have
to pay and price determining the distances over which entered Xochicalco primarily as consumer and not as
imported ceramics will move. prestige goods. The primary demand for imported ce-
Ceramic assemblages from 14 elite and 60 ordinary ramics was in domestic and not civic-ceremonial struc-
houses were used to evaluate whether imported culi- tures. Civic-ceremonial areas had both lower percent-
nary ceramics were equally available to all segments of ages and lower densities of imports than domestic
Epiclassic society at Xochicalco.4 Elite houses were dis- structures (table 3), although these differences were not
tinguished from others on the basis of a combination of significant. Similar differences, again not statistically
features including a formal rectangular floor plan, large significant, were observed when domestic and civic-cer-
size, and abundance of decorative stonework (sculpture, emonial structures were compared with respect to the
columns, rooftop almenas, etc.) (Hirth 1989b, 1993, density of imported bowls and the ratio of imported to
n.d.). Analysis of variance was used to compare the total bowls. The lower frequency of imported ceramics
mean frequencies of imported ceramics in elite and or- in civic-ceremonial areas indicates that they were not
dinary houses.5 These comparisons revealed no signifi- procured and distributed through civic-ceremonial in-
cant differences in the percentage of imports, the den- stitutions; if they were, then they would be present in
sity of imports, or the density of imported service-ware civic-ceremonial areas in higher frequencies. This is
bowls in elite and ordinary houses (table 1). Although somewhat surprising in that these areas are assumed to
more imported ceramics were usually recovered from have had the purchasing power to procure them. If all
elite structures, these frequencies appear to be a func- ceramics were procured in the marketplace, then we
tion of larger house size and therefore collection area might expect them to occur in the same percentages in
rather than reflecting greater access. No difference was civic-ceremonial structures as in domestic areas. The
observed between elite and ordinary houses in the ratio differences observed may reflect that civic-ceremonial
of imported bowls to either total bowls or total ceram- areas were provisioned not solely through the market-
place but through a combination of means including
4. Only single-component Epiclassic houses were included in this tribute and labor service. The lower frequency of im-
analysis; Epiclassic houses with traces of reoccupation during the ports may reflect the acquisition of local ceramics
Postclassic were excluded. This meant that all of the ceramic and
lithic materials recovered from surface collections in residential through tequitl, the primary way of provisioning elite
compounds could be used as a sample of Epiclassic domestic con- and state institutions at the time of the conquest (Car-
sumption. Furthermore, because of exceptional architectural pres- rasco 1978). This relationship is often expressed in eth-
ervation only complete houses were included in the sample, elimi- nohistoric sources as ‘‘bringing wood to the lords and
nating the possibility of creating false differences by differentially temples’’ (Craine and Reindorp 1970).
sampling ceramics from functionally distinct areas of houses (e.g.,
kitchen areas, middens, patios, storage areas, etc.). Assemblage
comparisons are based on a 100% collection strategy of all visible
ceramic and lithic material over the entire residence. For a full dis- Market Effects on the Distribution
cussion of household ceramic patterning see Hirth (1993) and Cy- of Obsidian
phers and Hirth (n.d.).
5. Ceramic comparisons were based on sherd counts. Separate anal-
ysis of ceramic residential assemblages using minimum vessel The effects of marketplace exchange were also exam-
counts revealed the same general pattern. ined using obsidian tools recovered from domestic con-
 h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 461

t ab l e 2
Imported Ceramics by House Size at Xochicalco

Medium- Comparison
Small Sized Large
(N ⫽ 9) (N ⫽ 42) (N ⫽ 23)
X X X F p

Total imports/area .009 .009 .010 .193 .825

Total imports/total .038 .055 .056 .381 .684
ceramics
Imported bowls/area .001 .002 .002 .389 .679
Imported bowls/total .002 .010 .010 .918 .404
ceramics
Imported bowls/total .008 .051 .043 .847 .433
bowls
Imported and locally .171 .118 .121 .612 .545
decorated bowls/
total bowls

note: Small, 300 m2 or less; medium-sized, ⬎300 but ⬍650 m2; large, 650 m2 or
more.

texts. In evaluating distribution possibilities, it was the gravity model and the law of monotonic decrement
reasoned that obsidian could be acquired by indi- (Renfrew 1977), the frequency of obsidian in domestic
vidual houses from workshops in one of three ways: contexts should be inversely proportional to the dis-
(1) by direct procurement through reciprocal exchange, tance from alternative workshops. Other things being
(2) through redistribution from elite households con- equal, households should procure their obsidian from
trolling workshop production, or (3) through market- the closest available workshop even when the distances
place exchange. involved are relatively short. This type of patterning
If obsidian was procured directly from workshops might be expected in Xochicalco because of the archi-
through reciprocal exchange, then two conditions tectural and barrio divisions identified in the ancient
should also be present. First, the obsidian recovered city (Hirth 1995a) and because reliance on nearby work-
from domestic contexts should be of the same type (i.e., shops would be analogous to the zonal marketing pat-
source) as that of the workshop from which it was ob- terns found in modern communities (Berry 1967:41–43;
tained and variation among households should be a Garner 1967:346; Huff 1969).
function of the variation among workshop sources Alternatively, if obsidian was distributed to house-
(Winter and Pires-Ferreira 1976). Second, as predicted by holds by elites, then elite households will have the
greatest quantity and/or diversity of obsidian, and fin-
ished tools will move downward through the commu-
nity following the social hierarchy. Access to obsidian
t ab l e 3 will be a function of social distance from the elite
Imported Ceramics in Domestic Structures and households controlling production. The distribution of
Civic-Ceremonial Areas at Xochicalco obsidian will depend upon how elites controlled pro-
duction (e.g., through patron-client or tribute relations)
Civic- and the number of elite-centered distribution networks
Domestic Ceremonial Comparison operating simultaneously within the society. On the
Structures Areas whole, however, obsidian will be more abundant in
(N ⫽ 74) (N ⫽ 14) elite households than in others.
X X F p
Finally, households procuring obsidian through mar-
ketplace exchange will have obsidian in proportion to
Total imports/area .009 .005 1.833 .179 their needs and uses irrespective of social rank. The
Total imports/total .053 .025 3.273 .074 widespread dispersal of obsidian throughout Mesoamer-
ceramics ica indicates that obsidian was a low-cost, utilitarian
Imported bowls/area .002 .001 1.010 .318
Imported bowls/total .043 .023 .619 .433 commodity easily within the reach of all households.
bowls Procurement of obsidian from vendors in a marketplace
Imported bowls/total .009 .005 .891 .348 will produce homogeneity of household assemblages in
ceramics the types of obsidian consumed, as all households will
Imported and locally .125 .105 .274 .602
decorated bowls/ have access to the same sources of supply.
total bowls Production debris recovered from stratigraphic exca-
vations of seven workshops (Hirth 1995b) revealed vari-
462 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
ation in production technology, the obsidian sources
utilized, and the ratio of chert to obsidian worked.
These investigations revealed differences between
workshops in the scale of production (Andrews 1997)
but not in the types of obsidian artifacts they produced.
All workshops produced prismatic blades and the same
array of tools from modified blade segments.6 Of the dif-
ferences found between workshops, variation in obsid-
ian sources was the most useful for a direct comparison
of domestic assemblage contents. Obsidian at Xochi-
calco came from three main sources: Ucareo (Micho-
acan), Zacualtipan (Hidalgo), and Pachuca (Hidalgo).
While Ucareo and Zacualtipan obsidian are both gray,
Pachuca obsidian is green and can be separated from the
others by simple visual inspection. Examination of pro-
duction debris from workshops reveals significant vari-
ation in their access to and use of Pachuca obsidian. Pa-
chuca obsidian constituted between 0.1 and 10.5% of
the total obsidian debitage in six of the seven Epiclassic
workshops. In the workshop excavated as operation H,
however, the frequency of Pachuca obsidian was 24%.
Clearly, obsidian workshops were developing sources of
supply independent of one another for the type and
quantity of obsidian used.
What is significant for this analysis is that if houses
procured their obsidian through either direct reciprocal
exchange or elite distribution, houses linked with
workshop H should have noticeably more Pachuca ob-
sidian than houses linked to other workshops. Con-
versely, if obsidian was being distributed in a central
marketplace, all houses should have had equal access to
Pachuca obsidian, and it should occur in proportion to
its ideological preference or technical superiority in
utilitarian tasks over the gray obsidians. Since Pachuca
obsidian is not perceptibly stronger or sharper than gray
obsidian and since the ideological preference for green
over gray obsidian may be viewed as a constant across
Mesoamerica, marketplace exchange should create ho-
mogeneity in the distribution of Pachuca obsidian
among all households.
A total of 32 Epiclassic houses had sufficient obsidian
in their surface collections to allow a reliable determi-
nation of source variation.7 Statistical comparisons
showed that houses on the South Hill, where Operation
H and most of the other obsidian workshops are located,
did not have higher frequencies of either Pachuca green
or total gray obsidian than houses located elsewhere on
the site (table 4). Instead, all houses at Xochicalco ap-
pear to have had equal access to green and gray obsidian.
Pachuca obsidian was not more highly concentrated on
the South Hill, nor did it decrease in frequency with in-
creasing distance from Operation H as would be ex-
pected under conditions of direct reciprocal exchange.
6. The only functional variation found in the manufacturing output
of workshops was the production of some unifacial and bifacial
tools from chert and other locally available materials. Workshops
did not differ from one another in the types of obsidian implements
they produced.
7. Only houses with collections of five or more pieces of obsidian
from well-preserved areas were included in the analysis.
table 4
Pachuca Obsidian in Residential Contexts
at Xochicalco
Comparison
South Hill Other
(N ⫽ 16) (N ⫽ 16)
X X F p
Total Pachuca ob- .750 1.125 .871 .358
sidian
Percentage of Pa- .026 .130 7.301 .011
chuca obsidian
Total gray obsidian 21.500 12.875 1.780 .192
Elite houses on the South Hill near Operation H had no
greater amounts of Pachuca obsidian than elite houses
elsewhere on the site, negating the possibility that
elites controlled distribution within individual barrios.
Moreover, elite houses had slightly less Pachuca obsid-
ian (4.2%) than other domestic structures (6.6%), al-
though this difference was not statistically significant
(χ 2 ⫽ 1.148, d.f. ⫽ 1, p ⫽ .284). In fact, Pachuca obsidian
increased in frequency with distance from the South
Hill and Operation H (F ⫽ 7.301, d.f. ⫽ 1, p ⫽ .011)—the
opposite of what would be expected with either direct
reciprocal exchange with workshops or redistribution
from elite houses (most of which are located on the
South Hill).8 Although elite houses used somewhat
more obsidian than others, this appears to be more a
function of their larger size and demand for obsidian
than of resource pooling or redistribution. The results
of the analysis here and elsewhere (Hirth 1993, Hirth,
Flenniken, and Andrews n.d.) indicate that all houses
had access to the same range of green and gray obsidian
irrespective of their status or social rank and support
the conclusion that houses were provisioning them-
selves on an as-needed basis through a marketplace.
Discussion
The foregoing analysis suggests that an approach that
examines the provisioning strategies of households and
other primary consumption units in the society is a pro-
ductive way of studying pre-Hispanic exchange. Com-
bining this distributional approach with configura-
tional, contextual, and spatial approaches is a more
precise means of identifying the presence of prehistoric
marketplaces than using any of these techniques alone.
Market exchange achieves balance in exchange rela-
8. I have discussed elsewhere the internal divisions of the South
Hill into small residential wards and the distribution of elite
houses within them (Hirth 1995a). If elites made obsidian available
to members of their wards and other elites, then we would expect
to find high concentrations of Pachuca obsidian somewhere on the
South Hill. Since this is not the case, we can conclude that elites
did not control the output of the Operation H workshop and the
distribution of obsidian.

tionships whether it takes place in a trading partner’s
house, a merchant’s shop, or a stall in a marketplace.
What is special about the emergence of marketplaces is
that they are centralized places where the social barriers
to economic transactions are removed. Economic trans-
actions occur between individuals independent of and
without regard to the broader social and political rela-
tionships operating in the society. Prices are set through
negotiation rather than social deference, and offers from
individuals of high rank can be accepted or rejected by
individuals of low rank without long-lasting social con-
sequences. These special circumstances have two im-
portant results: a greater flow of goods and resources
and a link between heterogeneity in the occurrence of
commodities in households and purchasing power.
The accumulated evidence suggests that market-
places were an important component of Xochicalco’s
economy during the Epiclassic period. Xochicalco has
five public plazas, three of which could easily have
served as marketplaces. The site’s location in a mar-
ginal agricultural area produced a need to feed its urban
population, and the presence of obsidian craft special-
ists in the city suggests that they were exchanging fin-
ished tools for food and other goods from the broader
supporting population. Whereas city size, architectural
layout, and the presence of craft specialists provide indi-
rect support for the presence of marketplaces at Xochi-
calco, it is the homogeneity of assemblages between
elite and ordinary houses that provides direct evidence
of the operation of marketplace exchange. Imported ce-
ramics circulated freely throughout the city and were
equally abundant in both elite and ordinary houses.
Similarly, obsidian tools manufactured in local work-
shops were spread evenly throughout all houses at
Xochicalco irrespective of differences in sources of sup-
ply among workshops. The result from all lines of evi-
dence is a persuasive argument for marketplace ex-
change as the dominant form of economic distribution
at Xochicalco during the Epiclassic.
It was possible to apply the distributional approach
at Xochicalco because excellent site preservation per-
mitted the identification of a large sample of single-
component Epiclassic houses whose domestic assem-
blages could be sampled by intensive surface collection.
Although this situation is difficult to duplicate at many
sites, the approach can be adopted wherever it is possi-
ble to construct representative samples of assemblages
from domestic and civic-ceremonial contexts. Future
research needs to apply the distributional approach to
societies characterized by nonmarket forms of distribu-
tion to determine what their archaeological signatures
might be and to develop models that can be tested with
household assemblage data. The general patterns I have
proposed for direct reciprocal exchange and elite dis-
tribution also need to be tested using other well-
controlled data sets. In most instances, however, it
would be a great mistake to assume that commodities
moved between households through a single form of
distribution. Resources move in multiple ways, and
pursuing resources through multiple provisioning net-
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 463
works maximizes the flow of items and decreases a
household’s overall procurement risk. Therefore the
distributional approach may allow us only to approxi-
mate normative forms of exchange. A partial solution
to this problem is the comparative analysis of multiple
commodities with different use and exchange values in
an attempt to reveal the multifaceted nature of provi-
sioning networks.
Conclusions
Markets were important economic institutions in pre-
Hispanic Mesoamerica. To understand when and why
they first appeared and to determine their effects on the
growth and development of political systems, we need
a reliable way of identifying marketplaces in the archae-
ological record. Traditional approaches that base their
inferences on architectural information, the presence of
large urban populations, or large-scale craft specializa-
tion provide highly variable and often unreliable indica-
tions of whether marketplaces were present. The ap-
proach recommended here focuses on how market
exchange impacts the inventories of material goods
found in participating households. The distinguishing
features of marketplace exchange are that households
provision themselves independently of existing social
hierarchies, that exchanges are concentrated in a cen-
tral locale, and that economic interaction takes place
without regard to social rank. The result is greater ho-
mogeneity in household artifact inventories than would
be produced by other types of exchange, variation
among domestic assemblages being largely the result of
individual purchasing power. At Xochicalco, market-
place exchange is reflected in a homogeneous distribu-
tion of both imported ceramics and locally made obsid-
ian tools. Different types of exchange create different
mixtures of trade goods within interacting units. These
types of exchange can be detected when a level of analy-
sis is selected that is sensitive to resource flows and the
consumption patterns they reflect. The comparative
analysis of their household artifact inventories provides
a means of measuring these differences.
Comments
r ic h a r d e. b l a n to n
Sociology-Anthropology, Purdue University,
W. Lafayette, Indiana 47907, U.S.A. 24 iv 98
I welcome Hirth’s contribution on this often neglected
but important topic in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican re-
search. His distributional methodology is appropriate
for market study, and his main conclusions are, by and
large, convincing and interesting. But a more robust dis-
cussion would make use of recent conceptual develop-
ments in exchange theory, as well as adopting a more
464 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
complex analytical strategy that would integrate data
from multiple scales of analysis rather than privileging
a household perspective.
It is widely recognized that commodity exchange in
general can be distinguished from gift exchange by ref-
erence to the degree of social embeddedness of the ex-
change transaction (Gregory 1982), but two largely dis-
tinct forms of commodity transactions are evident,
barter and market. Barter exchanges occur in compara-
tively socially isolated circumstances between par-
ticular individuals or groups (e.g., Humphrey and
Hugh-Jones 1992). Because barter transactions occur
discretely in space and time, little comparative infor-
mation concerning supply, demand, or other variables
related to commodity values is available to participants,
and therefore no price emerges that reflects market con-
ditions. Market transactions involve an information-
intensive process in which market participants are able
to gather and evaluate information pertinent to sale and
purchase decisions. In early complex societies in vari-
ous world areas marketplaces and periodic market
schedules were developed in order to bring together
crowds of sellers and buyers in an information-rich en-
vironment (although early states also favored market-
place transactions over barter because marketplaces fa-
cilitated the collection of transaction taxes). Hirth’s
main market diacritics, ‘‘some culturally mediated
form of negotiation’’ and money (or its equivalent), are
therefore not the key features distinguishing markets
from other kinds of exchange transactions. Barter
should not be conflated with market, given that barter
has greater potential for the distortion of information
and is institutionally less complex. Negotiation, while
common in barter, is not always found in market trans-
actions; the key feature of markets is the institutional-
ized structuring of information flow that makes market
conditions widely known in society.
Hirth’s finding that imported pottery and obsidian
were available to households of varying socioeconomic
statuses, evidently through market purchase, is an im-
portant one, but I am worried that other researchers not
finding the same patterns in their distributional data
will infer from it an absence of markets. The particular
circumstances found at Epiclassic Xochicalco may
make it unusually well suited to the kind of analysis
Hirth emphasizes; other market situations may be more
complex and less easy to decipher. At Xochicalco, mar-
ket transactions evidently were not strongly influenced
by sumptuary rules restricting consumption by socio-
economic status, at least not for the commodities stud-
ied by Hirth (some restrictions on consumption were
present in the Central Mexican Late Postclassic, for
which we have the best data on markets [e.g., Durán
1964:142]). Market factors influencing consumption de-
cisions that might result in very different distributional
patterns across households than Hirth found also do
not seem to have been operative in Epiclassic Xochi-
calco. For example, had there been a decline in the sup-
ply of Pachuca obsidian during this period (and an atten-
dant increase in price), less affluent households would
more often have substituted non-Pachuca varieties for
the preferred green obsidian; wealthier households
would have found less need to substitute. Thus Pachuca
obsidian would show a more restricted distribution be-
tween households owing to market forces, not because
of nonmarket distribution.
While I would agree with Hirth’s assertion concern-
ing the value of household archaeology in an investiga-
tion of exchange, a more complete study of market sys-
tems would integrate household, community, and
regional-scale data. While Hirth correctly points to the
practical difficulties inherent in studying marketplaces,
this kind of analysis might be productive, making use
of more data on community structure than are found
here. How does plaza accessibility vary by presumed
function? How does relative plaza access vary in rela-
tion to size, shape, architectural elaboration, and arti-
fact distribution? Beyond Xochicalco, what system of
secondary centers of a regional system connected rural
populations to the capital, and does the distribution of
lower-order centers conform to the expectations of
central-place theory? Are there plazas in lower-order
centers similar to the probable market plazas at the cap-
ital? Does rural household access to commodities
match patterns observed at the center? Hirth’s stimu-
lating analysis is the beginning of what should become
a larger project of market-oriented research.
pedro carrasco
3 Terri Rd., Framingham, Mass. 01701, U.S.A.
22 iv 98
In two papers of mine cited by Hirth I discuss not only
the difference between market and nonmarket types of
economic organization but also the contrast between
two theoretical models of the market: the free market,
with free access and bargained prices, and the regulated
market, using procedures such as price setting and re-
stricting or forcing participation in market exchanges.
I also make a distinction between producer-sellers and
professional traders ( pochteca), discuss merchant capi-
tal, and point out that the pochteca could be agents of
the rulers as well as independent traders. Features of
both models are present in real societies, but their rela-
tive importance is difficult to evaluate. I doubt that in
the absence of written texts archaeological data can
make a significant contribution on these matters. Hirth
suggests that a homogeneous distribution of household
artifacts is the result of market exchange, basing his dis-
cussion on pottery and obsidian. It would be advisable
to test Hirth’s hypothesis in a living society where the
patterns of circulation and distribution of goods are
known.
I will comment only on a few points about the eth-
nohistorical materials Hirth uses. He states that Axaya-
catl moved the marketplace from Acatzinco to Tepeaca.
This is not how I read Durán (1967, vol. 2: 162), who
says that Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina ordered the estab-
lishment of a market in Tepeaca to which valuables

from distant areas would be brought but does not name
an already existing market to be moved to Tepeaca.
I do not see how the variety of market schedules
would indicate that they operated independently of
political control. The standard schedule was every
20 days, in large towns every 5, and in Tenochtitlan-
Tlatelolco every day. This conforms with the vigesimal
system common to all Mesoamerica and with the 20-
day periods of the year that defined the major public rit-
uals. The 13-day cycle is less well reported; probably it
was connected with the 13-day period that defined a
number of important ritual celebrations, which might
have been occasions for markets. Markets held every 9
days are mentioned only in an entry in Molina’s dic-
tionary; Ross Hassig tells me (personal communica-
tion) that he has found no other reference to them. Mo-
lina’s entries cannot always be taken as proof of Nahua
usage in ancient Mexico, for he often coined words to
translate Spanish words denoting concepts or things not
known in Mexico before the conquest. Molina used as
a model Nebrija’s Spanish-Latin dictionary, and in this
instance Nebrija includes the entry ferias de nueve en
nueve dias nundinae -arum, which obviously refers to
the Roman market cycle. Molina gives Feria de cinco
en cinco dias. macuiltianquiztli (literally ‘‘five-mar-
ket’’) for the Nahua usage. Then, following Nebrija, he
adds Feria de nueue en nueue dias. chicunauhtian-
quiztli (literally ‘‘nine-market’’). In the Nahuatl-Spanish
section, published later, the entry became Chicun-
auh tianquiztli, mercado o feria de nueue en nueue
dias.
Early descriptions of the marketplace are not clear as
to the structures present in them. Cortés, as cited by
Hirth, speaks of ‘‘houses’’ where medicines were sold,
barbers washed and shaved heads, and cooked food was
sold. Cortés also says that each kind of goods was sold
in a separate street. This might refer to the aisles in the
marketplace but also could mean that certain artisans
lived near the marketplace and that their homes were
both their workshops and their place of sale. Tlatelolco
had a large number of such craftsmen. Goods imported
by private merchants might have been stored in their
own houses. In any case there are no clear descriptions
of stores as permanent structures devoted exclusively to
sales. Perhaps, as in many Indian markets today, most
vendors had no permanent structures in the market-
place. The word tlanamaquilizcalli that Hirth gives for
shops and market stalls means literally ‘‘house of
sales.’’ It comes from Molina’s dictionary and may be a
form coined to translate Spanish tienda. I don’t know
whether it is attested in old texts. There is no space here
to discuss all the entries in Molina’s dictionary referring
to stores.
One structure described as present in the marketplace
was an altar (momoztli) where an idol of the god of the
market was kept and offerings of all the commodities
sold were laid. A structure of this type should be detect-
able archaeologically, but of course there is no certainty
that all Mesoamerican marketplaces had such altars
(Durán 1967, vol. 1: 177, 179; Sahagún 1975: 113;
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 465
Torquemada 1975–83, vol. 2: 303; Mengin 1939: ¶347,
with a drawing).
w in i f r e d c r e a m e r
Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois
University, DeKalb, Ill. 60115, U.S.A. (wcreamer
@niu.edu). 1 v 98
This article pushes archaeology a step closer to under-
standing ancient exchange. Hirth’s effort to identify
marketplace exchange by comparing households’ provi-
sioning strategies gives us an idea to test in archaeologi-
cal contexts. The data from Xochicalco presented here
conform to the expectations of the distributional ap-
proach, but data from other sites need to be tested to
bolster the results.
Two of the assumptions underlying the distributional
model are particularly thorny. One is the assumption
that buyers and sellers ‘‘interacted within the market-
place independent of their social rank.’’ The other is the
assertion that the features of marketplaces identified
here distinguish marketplace exchange from other
forms of economic distribution. As for the first, a mar-
ketplace provides direct competition, which can be
used by buyers to prevent gouging. Skeptical buyers are
not limited to buying from the first vendor they en-
counter. At the same time, social ranking is not irrele-
vant, as buyers bring with them the possibility of future
purchases. An obviously impoverished individual mak-
ing a rare investment in a tool is likely to be distin-
guished from a wealthy person whose repeated custom
might secure a seller’s livelihood. Volume discounts
and repeat-purchase discounts are likely to have been
used in the past as they are today. Further, within the
market precinct, choice of vendor was not made exclu-
sively by availability of goods combined with price; per-
sonal relationships undoubtedly had some influence.
These may have been based on repeated contacts, fam-
ily relationships, dominance and subordination, client
and patron relations, and other inequalities within the
larger whole.
With regard to the second assumption, forms of ex-
change that archaeologists seek to differentiate are
likely to have existed within the marketplace setting,
especially in the moneyless societies of the New World.
The present work suggests a way in which the presence
of a market setting may be identified. Now we must de-
velop ways to identify the sources of goods present in
the marketplace. Foodstuffs and many other goods are
likely to have originated locally. It would be useful if
archaeologists could also identify materials that came
to the marketplace with a person from far away or that
came to the marketplace via many hands.
As Hirth points out, it is the range of goods present
in households (the homogenizing effects of trade) that
is the clearest indicator of marketplace exchange. This
information can be elicited from archaeological sites
that meet the criteria he has outlined in this article—
preservation of household architecture and household
466 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
contents. If this analytical step indicates the presence
of marketplace exchange, it will be necessary to look at
the processes that may be at work within the market
setting. Hirth suggests that future research ‘‘apply the
distributional approach to societies characterized by
nonmarket forms of distribution to determine what
their archaeological signatures might be.’’ Once such
research has been undertaken it may be possible to go
back to Xochicalco and examine the distribution of data
to look at the conjunction of patterns. Hirth anticipates
this need in the comments leading up to his conclu-
sions.
An added measure of value in this article comes from
the dialogue it may stimulate between cultural anthro-
pologists interested in economic processes and archae-
ologists. These two groups have long been in contact
and increasingly appreciate the data and analysis each
can bring to the other. Hirth moves this process along
and provides a productive new direction for the discus-
sion.
g a r y m. f e i n ma n
Department of Anthropology, University of
Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 53706, U.S.A. 23 iv 98
It is a pleasure to offer brief comments on this interest-
ing and important scholarly effort. Hirth’s article makes
important contributions at three levels. Theoretically,
it brings the issue of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican mar-
ket exchange and its history and time depth to the fore-
front. Methodologically, it proposes new distributional
indicators that are designed to identify market behav-
ior. Empirically, it presents significant new findings on
the distribution of exotic ceramics and obsidian at
Xochicalco.
As Hirth says, scholars have long known that the
market was a critical vehicle for economic provisioning
and distribution in Aztec Central Mexico, but we still
know surprisingly little about the emergence, variation,
or diachronic transitions in ancient Mesoamerican mar-
ket exchange. Part of the problem is the difficulty he
points to in directly identifying market behavior, but I
also detect an implicit reluctance among anthropologi-
cal archaeologists to acknowledge and accept that such
concepts as ‘‘barter,’’ ‘‘supply,’’ ‘‘demand,’’ ‘‘currency,’’
and even ‘‘profit’’ may well have some relevance in Na-
tive American historical contexts.
On the basis of the indirect configurational and con-
textual indicators and the evidence provided here for
the rather widely dispersed distribution of specific
classes of ceramic and obsidian artifacts at ancient
Xochicalco, I concur with Hirth’s argument for the im-
portance of marketplace exchange there during the
Epiclassic period. If households were a primary unit of
consumption and production in pre-Hispanic Meso-
america (e.g., Feinman 1998), then the hypothesis (Fein-
man, Blanton, and Kowalewski 1984) that marketplace
exchange likely was a significant mechanism of eco-
nomic circulation across much of Mesoamerica even
before the Epiclassic still appears viable. Nevertheless,
as Hirth notes, more direct indicators of market behav-
ior are needed. He sees evenness in household access
to certain kinds of low-cost utilitarian goods as a
potentially more direct indicator of market exchange
than the criteria employed previously. Although the
underpinnings of this argument seem generally reason-
able, those who in the future follow (and build on)
Hirth’s work must be careful not to equate the expecta-
tion of homogeneity in full household inventories with
market activities. After all, whether discussing the
Aztecs or the contemporary world, market activities
can be associated with marked inequities in total
household access to material goods (the overall volume
of possessions) as well as significant distributional dif-
ferences in the availability of specific kinds of high-
value items.
In regard to Xochicalco, Hirth provides a valuable
new empirical vantage at the domestic scale. Neverthe-
less, because his analytical tack is likely to serve as a
model for other researchers interested in similar issues,
there is one methodological aspect that I wish to dis-
cuss. In his analysis of the distribution of imported pot-
tery across the site, Hirth found that his sample from
larger elite houses included more examples of imported
pottery than was recovered from smaller houses. How-
ever, the proportions of imported-to-local ceramics
were relatively similar between elite and ordinary
households (because of the greater total quantities of
pottery found in the larger, elite contexts). While I
would tend to concur that the imported wares appear to
have been generally available to all societal segments, I
do not agree with his interpretation that access to ce-
ramic goods was homogeneous, the quantity differences
being simply due to the greater size of the elite struc-
tures (and therefore larger collection areas). Although
the greater quantities of imported pottery and pottery
in general associated with elite houses could reflect a
methodological bias as Hirth asserts, one might also see
these patterns as indicating that elites (or those living
in larger houses) had access to more things (ceramics)
and more highly valued things. After all, that is basi-
cally what we see today. People who live in large houses
generally use many of the same utilitarian products as
people living in smaller houses, but they often tend to
have more of such things (e.g., telephones, dishes,
shoes). Those same individuals frequently also have
more high-value goods (e.g., computers, cars). A ratio of
high-to-low-value artifacts in large-versus-small houses
might well find comparable proportions of these items
in each contemporary context, but one would not want
to interpret this as indicating overall comparability in
access to material things. At present, it is difficult to
evaluate these two alternative scenarios (collection bias
versus quantitative differences in access). However, for
the present, consideration of these different interpreta-
tions (with implications for understanding ancient con-
sumption patterns) would be advanced by supple-
menting the reported proportions in tables 1, 2, and 3
with raw counts.

Despite this last concern, Hirth should be com-
mended for a thoughtful effort that tackles a major the-
oretical research question with new data. Through his
direct consideration of pre-Aztec marketplaces (and the
participation of domestic units in them), he has articu-
lated issues that contemporary Mesoamerican archaeol-
ogy must directly address. If we do not do so, we never
will understand the workings, transitions, and diversity
of the economies in this particular ancient world.
r os s ha s s i g
School of American Research, P.O. Box 2188, Santa
Fe, N.M. 87504, U.S.A. (hassig@sarsf.org). 23 iii 98
Most theories of markets and marketing are ethno-
graphically or historically based and focus on merchant
behavior because, of the two major actors in market
transactions—merchants and consumers—merchants
and their activities offer if not the most readily observ-
able evidence of mercantile transactions then certainly
the most readily assembled. Moreover, only merchant
behavior indicates systems of markets. But such behav-
ior is exceptionally difficult to demonstrate archaeolog-
ically—hence the usual focus on trying to identify mar-
ketplaces as indirect indicators of marketing.
In this attempt to identify markets at Xochicalco,
Hirth argues that the best evidence is not the presence
or absence of marketplaces, which is typically equivo-
cal, but rather the result of marketing, which is the
household-level dispersal of goods, i.e., the consumers’
behavior. He makes a persuasive argument for Xochi-
calco. (As a minor point, I believe that most people who
study markets talk about market distribution to refer to
the spatial arrangement of markets rather than the
house-by-house pattern of goods derived from markets,
for which the term ‘‘dispersal’’ might be less ambigu-
ous.) There may be other dispersal behaviors that could
account for the patterns he finds, such as centralized
distribution of war booty or some sort of rationing sys-
tem for everyday goods, but arguing for these requires
elevating unusual and unlikely patterns over the more
common and plausible market mechanisms.
Now that pre-Hispanic marketing has been demon-
strated in the case of Xochicalco, where major con-
founding variables are absent or controlled, its ap-
plication should be more readily acceptable in
Mesoamerican cities that cannot claim such controlled
conditions. However, the approach essentially tests for
the presence or absence of markets; this is fine for large
urban centers where these are likely to be permanent,
but elsewhere the marketing system is very much the
issue. There is a vast difference between a permanent
market and a periodic one and between an every-third-
day periodic market and one that meets every 20, and
a market that is part of a central-place system differs
markedly in its economic and social impact from one
that is dendritic or solar. A presence/absence test ap-
plied to an urban center will not in itself distinguish
these. The approach Hirth has proposed for Xochicalco
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 467
can nevertheless be harnessed to these ends if commod-
ity flow and market frequency can be detected from the
distributed goods.
Market dependence is likely to be highest in urban
centers, where households are interdependent, and low-
est in rural settings, where households produce much
of what they consume. Therefore, while a small range
of goods can serve to establish the presence of markets
in cities, rural areas demand a wider range both to estab-
lish the presence of a market and to assess the depth
of market dependence. Neither assessment will directly
reveal market frequency, but the greater the market de-
pendence (as established by the distribution of more
common and less expensive items through the market),
the greater the presumed frequency with which these
goods are required and the more often the markets that
service those demands are likely to be held.
The periodicity of one town’s market will at least
hint at the nature of the marketing system and how the
region is socially and economically integrated, even
though that alone will not convincingly demonstrate it.
For that, a regional cross-section of settlements will
need to be sampled, but an elaboration of Hirth’s re-
search strategy offers a real possibility of achieving that
end. The archaeological detection of markets, and espe-
cially marketing systems, has not fared well in the past
because marketplaces are not always distinct from
other structures, as Hirth notes, and marketing systems
are patterns of behavior not locations. But by focusing
on the part of the marketing that can be most readily
detected archaeologically—consumer choices as mea-
sured by household artifacts—Hirth comes as close to
focusing on behavior as is feasible without direct obser-
vation or records. The judicious elaboration of his ap-
proach holds promise for going beyond the detection of
markets to the tentative identification of market types
and systems.
f re d e r i c h i c k s
Department of Anthropology, University of
Louisville, Louisville, Ky. 40211, U.S.A.
(f.hicks@louisville.edu). 23 iv 98
There is a great deal we do not really know about the
pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican market system, and we
know even less about any nonmarket systems through
which goods might have been distributed on a local
level. What we do know has been reconstructed from
many small and scattered scraps of data, and because
the data are so fragmentary it is not surprising that
there are some disagreements. Any archaeological ap-
proach that promises to shed light on the market sys-
tem and perhaps confirm (or not) these reconstructions
should be welcomed, especially if it can reveal changes
in the system over time.
I would agree that a distributional approach is to be
preferred over what Hirth calls the configurational and
contextual approaches, and I am inclined to see it as an
aspect of the spatial approach. But I don’t think he car-
468 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
ries it far enough. What Hirth is really telling us is that
if a given consumer good is evenly distributed through-
out the area of a city or town, in both elite and ordinary
households, it must have been acquired from a single
source to which all have access. Looking for institu-
tions likely to account for this in Mesoamerica, a single
urban marketplace seems the most likely. It follows
then that if there are different varieties of a consumer
good and these are distributed unevenly in the same
area, it must have been acquired in a different way, per-
haps from multiple sources to which not all had access.
Hirth opens his paper with a general discussion of the
role of marketplaces in Mesoamerica, but since he is
proposing a method by which archaeologists can distin-
guish market distribution from other forms, I think the
paper would benefit from more discussion of these
other forms and their potential distributional manifes-
tations and more consideration of factors that might
lead to a less homogeneous distribution of consumer
goods. For instance, if the nobles of a city, or some of
them, received tribute in goods made or acquired by
their subjects some distance away and did not share this
tribute with others of the city, this could lead to a less
homogeneous distribution of goods. I can also imagine
circumstances under which marketing could result in a
differential distribution of consumer goods. For exam-
ple, in the eastern Valley of Mexico in Early Aztec
times, neutron activation analysis combined with dis-
tributional studies led Minc, Hodge, and Blackman
(1994) to conclude that there were several centers of
pottery production and that pottery was distributed
through a regionally integrated market system, with the
result that the products of different centers overlapped
in distribution but unevenly. Many Late Postclassic
cities in Central Mexico contained two or more parcia-
lidades, described as ethnically distinct and having
their own nobility. If different parcialidades patronized
different markets, this could have led to a discontinu-
ous distribution of such goods. Once one starts down
this path, one can think of many other models affecting
distribution. This is not to disparage Hirth’s distribu-
tional approach; quite the contrary, I think it has wider
utility than he attributes to it.
Hirth uses imported pottery for his application of the
method to Xochicalco, but I wonder if he would not get
the same results using locally made pottery. I do not un-
derstand why imported ceramics should be ‘‘more sen-
sitive to nonmarket forms of distribution’’ than local
wares. He says that the imported ceramics in this in-
stance were inexpensive and within the procurement
budgets of all households, and I would not dispute that.
Smith and Heath-Smith (1994) find it to be true also in
Late Postclassic rural communities in Morelos, al-
though there elite households had slightly higher fre-
quencies of imported ceramics. Hirth says that the im-
ported wares are no more frequent in elite households
than in ordinary ones, but I find this puzzling, partly be-
cause elite households should have had the means to
acquire more goods, of whatever kind, on the market
and partly because ethnographic accounts indicate that
elite households had to host larger and more frequent
banquets than others did and therefore presumably re-
quired more pottery. I wonder if the larger sample that
local pottery would have provided would not have re-
vealed this.
patricia plunket
Department of Anthropology, Universidad de las
Américas–Puebla, 72820 Cholula, Puebla, Mexico.
22 iv 98
Hirth has provided an innovative and elegant methodol-
ogy designed to identify market behavior in the archae-
ological record. His demonstration that the homogene-
ity of the distributional patterning of imported ceramics
and obsidian at 118 elite and ordinary houses suggests
that these items were exchanged in a centralized mar-
ketplace, where the forces of supply and demand took
precedence over social rank, is clearly a contribution
that will motivate many follow-up studies. The major
limitation archaeologists will have as they apply this
strategy will be the identification of sites that share the
singular characteristics that made Xochicalco so appro-
priate for this study: a short, unicomponent occupation,
rapid abandonment, and superb preservation.
Although there is great merit in following Hirth’s
lead, a few caveats should be observed. He has tried to
simplify and synthesize his data in order to present ar-
chaeologists with a new approach to a very difficult
problem, but the unsuspecting might be led to believe
that the distribution of artifacts at archaeological sites
is simply the product of the ways in which people ob-
tain their household goods—reciprocal exchanges, re-
distribution systems, or markets. The distribution of
the materials at Xochicalco and other sites is much
more complex and is best viewed as the sum of the vari-
ous procurement strategies, processing activities, and
discard behaviors employed by each household. Hirth
has, of course, focused primarily on the procurement
strategies in order to make his point.
Perhaps some of the minor differences Hirth encoun-
ters in his data can be explained by the functional varia-
tion among households and the ways in which each do-
mestic group gets rid of what it considers trash.
Although the differences are not statistically signifi-
cant, ordinary houses have a greater percentage of im-
ported ceramics than elite houses. This recalls the dis-
tribution of Mycenean pottery at Tell el Amarna in
Egypt. Most of these vessels were small decorated con-
tainers that were probably used for perfume, but rather
than being associated with elite residences they were
concentrated in the rubbish dumps of the workmen’s
quarters. Wardle (1994:242) suggests that ‘‘the valuable
ointments were perhaps acquired by the rich, and the
discarded containers then put to other uses by their ser-
vants until broken, rather like glass jars in recent
years.’’ It is relevant that ceramics in general and im-
ported wares in particular tend to be recycled, even in
bits and pieces, with the result that their final distribu-

tion may not reflect exchange patterns as closely as we
might suppose. Recycling has been documented at vari-
ous sites in Mesoamerica (e.g., Uruñuela et al. 1997),
and it is an activity that can have important effects on
an archaeological assemblage.
Although Hirth makes a good case for the existence of
market exchange in his study of Xochicalco’s obsidian, I
find his contention that elites should have more obsid-
ian than others debatable. The distribution of obsidian
should be highly influenced not just by the exchange
systems households use to obtain it but also by the
functional requirements of each domestic group. Do
elites need and use the same amounts of obsidian as do
those who scrape the hides, make the sandals, grate the
pigments, and in general perform the many activities
that produce the crafts sold at the markets? This is a
problem for further discussion.
In taking Hirth’s methodology farther afield, particu-
larly at sites that do not meet the high standards of
Xochicalco, we should be aware that specific processing
activities and different discard strategies will affect the
distribution of the artifacts and obscure the exchange
patterns by which those items arrived at each individ-
ual household. Hirth’s contribution is, however, sig-
nificant in that it reminds us that distributional data of-
fer excellent opportunities to explore much more than
changes in site size through time, the identification of
specific craft activities, or the presence of foreign ethnic
groups within a settlement.
r i c h a r d wi l k
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University,
Bloomington, Ind. 47405, U.S.A. 10 iii 98
Perhaps because of the legacy of Polanyi, for whom mar-
kets were the critical institution in history, there has
been a great deal of polarizing rhetoric about the role of
markets in the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican economy.
The tendency has been to make too much of markets—
seeing the entire economy as dominated by the institu-
tion and capable of being analyzed by formal economic
methods—or to make too little of them—seeing the en-
tire Mesoamerican past as dominated by household pro-
duction and gift-giving, with only small amounts of
elite trade and part-time specialization. The pro- and
antimarket rhetoric obscures the central point of much
recent economic anthropology—that markets come in
a variety of shapes and sizes, that there is no single mar-
ket principle, and that markets can be integrated into a
remarkable variety of economic systems. Indeed, mar-
kets may best be seen as places where different kinds
of economies—subsistence, specialized, simple-com-
modity-producing, elite gift-exchange—come together.
From this perspective, they cannot be used as diagnostic
markers of a single economic ‘‘type’’ or evolutionary
grade. There is excellent ethnographic data from around
the world on economies in which individual house-
holds participate in several kinds of markets, in recipro-
cal gift exchange, in redistributive exchange, and in var-
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 469
ious kinds of highly local resource-sharing all at the
same time. This complexity presents some daunting
problems in interpreting archaeological evidence, but it
also provides many alternative scenarios to the simple
market/no-market dichotomy.
Hirth’s paper is refreshing for its sophisticated meth-
odological approaches to finding the subtle traces of an-
cient Mesoamerican markets. The focus on household-
level consumption instead of regional aggregation is a
promising development, though not completely new.
His evidence for the homogenizing effect of market-
place exchange is quite convincing for obsidian, which
varies very little in quality regardless of the source. Ce-
ramics, however, are another story, and I find Hirth’s
chain of inference weaker in the ceramic analysis. One
of the things that makes pottery attractive as a market
good is its variability in design and decoration; therefore
it is quite possible that variety-seeking rather than
strictly utilitarian utility-maximizing is the best way to
understand the market for imported ceramics. As in
modern markets, consumers would seek to buy not all
the same things but different assortments of goods, and
styles would change fairly rapidly over time. Modern
peasant markets are often divided into areas delivering
bulk goods, which vary little in quality, and sections
that deal in piece goods that vary widely in quality and
other characteristics. Therefore it is quite possible that
from the same market households could procure a fairly
uniform array of grains, metates, and obsidian blades
while acquiring a highly diverse set of collections of ce-
ramics, jewelry, and clothing. It depends what social
and economic motivations are driving consumption.
The values of goods are not, as Hirth implies, simply a
product of marketplace relationships and the energetics
of acquisition and production.
This paper provides some excellent tools for thinking
about exchange and procurement at the household
level. The next step should take us beyond the market/
no-market polarity, however, to consider some of the
more complex ways in which markets can articulate re-
gional, local, and household economies.
m ar c us w in t e r
Centro INAH Oaxaca, Pino Suárez 715, 68000
Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. 24 iv 98
We can thank Hirth for suggesting something anthropo-
logically interesting to do with those damn sherd
counts. His paper raises challenges for household ar-
chaeology. First of all, since artifact distributions at
most Mesoamerican urban centers are not as clear and
simple as they seem to be at Xochicalco, we need to
work on recovery of reliable, comparable, and quantifi-
able samples. At Monte Albán approximately 50 Late
Classic Xoo-phase houses have been partly excavated.
The majority were excavated in the 1930s and 1940s,
and domestic refuse was not saved. Even in recent exca-
vations, however, primary refuse deposits that might
accurately reflect household activities are not very fre-
470 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
quent. Many deposits contain chronologically mixed
sherds derived from disintegrated adobes or dirt moved
around for fill.
We can also follow Hirth’s lead in thinking about
what economic structures produced the artifact distri-
butions we find. Some Monte Albán data are quantifi-
able, and adding Hirth’s scheme to analyses in progress
should yield interesting results. In the meantime I offer
a few impressions and speculations.
Xoo-phase data from Monte Albán support the idea
that households obtained some goods through a market;
for example, obsidian and standardized moldmade ce-
ramic figures are common in most households. Several
Late Xoo residences on the north slope of Monte Albán
revealed evidence of ceramic production including G.35
serving bowls. Whether these vessels were then distrib-
uted through a market, directly exchanged with neigh-
bors, or used only in the producing household is not
known. Imitation Balancan Fine Orange may be the
closest thing to ‘‘imported’’ Xoo-phase ceramics; it is
not especially common but has been found in associa-
tion with medium- and low-status households and was
probably available to all. Some ceramics have limited
distribution: for example, large urns and ceramic stat-
ues were evidently made for the elite, perhaps as com-
missioned pieces.
Many major Late Classic Valley of Oaxaca sites and
some in other regions such as the Mixteca Baja have a
nucleated center, often on a hilltop, with at least one
temple or temple-patio-altar compound, a ballcourt, a
palace, and a square or rectangular open area or plaza.
The latter, usually not excavated since no structures are
evident (test pits at Cerro de las Minas, for example, re-
vealed fill used to level the space), probably served as a
marketplace. Some of Monte Albán’s site divisions,
such as El Gallo, Atzompa, El Paragüito, and El Pitayo,
exhibit (most of) these elements and may have been au-
tonomous communities. Central Monte Albán also has
these elements and probably served similar functions
on a much larger scale. The architectural layout of these
communities facilitated Xoo-phase leaders’ control of
political and religious activities and perhaps their regu-
lation of the flow of goods into and out of the market.
This pattern continued in the Postclassic and is still
common today.
If markets were present in the Late Classic at Xochi-
calco, Monte Albán, and other centers, the question re-
mains, as Hirth notes, When did markets first appear?
Establishment of a market may have been a major ingre-
dient in the founding of Monte Albán. From the begin-
ning Monte Albán (and other early urban centers in Oa-
xaca) meet criteria of Hirth’s ‘‘traditional approach’’ for
inferring presence of a market: open plaza space, large
urban population, large-scale craft specialization. Re-
cent excavations have shown that some of the first
monumental construction at Monte Albán involved
leveling and extending the plaza to the east and the
west. I believe one of the plaza’s primary functions was
as a marketplace.
The distribution of pottery changed from village to
urban times in the Valley of Oaxaca. In the Early Forma-
tive San José phase, for example, the same types of figu-
rines and pottery occur at San José Mogote and Tierras
Largas, separated by 10 km, though it is easy to recog-
nize that the ceramics were not made by the same arti-
sans. Ceramics from Tierras Largas and Hacienda
Blanca, only 5 km apart, do appear to be the same (San
José Mogote and Hacienda Blanca are about 8 km apart).
Households therefore obtained local ceramics within
their village or from a nearby village. (Nonlocal special
ceramics moved along other paths.) This pattern per-
sists into the immediately pre–Monte Albán Rosario
phase: ceramic inventories are limited—relatively few
vessel forms occur, figurines are not common, and some
variety in forms between sites is documented, again
suggesting that ceramics were obtained locally from
producers in one’s own or a neighboring village.
The Monte Albán pattern is different: a great variety
of vessel forms and decoration characterize Monte Al-
bán I pottery, especially gray ware, and hundreds of
households obtained similar pottery. New levels of pro-
duction may reflect village specialization. Market avail-
ability would account for the wide distribution of this
pottery and standardized gray ware figurines at Monte
Albán and in outlying communities.
Blanton (1978:88) compared early period I gray ware
in different sectors of Monte Albán and suggested that
differences in ceramics between site sectors might be
due to ethnic differences. The same data could just as
easily support the interpretation that ceramics were ob-
tained through a market, since most sectors do have ex-
amples of some categories. Here is where distribution
studies of the type proposed by Hirth could help. Three
factors would provide more reliable results; detailed
breakdown of early gray ware by form and design, better
chronological control, and use of collections actually
associated with households.
Period I ceramics also include crema-paste pottery
made near Atzompa, where the distinctive clay sources
are found. (Production centers for gray, café, and ama-
rillo wares may not have been so localized.) All or
nearly all Monte Albán households probably had crema-
paste cooking vessels. Special crema forms—large dec-
orated urns, braziers, and sculpted pieces found near the
North Platform—were probably made for the elite, as
suggested for the Xoo phase.
An interesting change is documented at Monte Albán
for early period II—large rectangular ovens are found as-
sociated with residences near the Main Plaza. These
ovens were probably used for firing large crema bowls
with three spherical feet. Apparently crema ceramic
production was shifted from near Atzompa to the center
of Monte Albán while distribution still continued
through the market (these vessels also occur in many
period II households). Control of production may have
been taken over by Monte Albán’s leaders.
The founding of Monte Albán and other urban centers
had economic, social, political, and ideological dimen-
sions. Commoners who moved from valley-floor vil-
lages to Monte Albán gave up direct and immediate ac-

cess to cultivated fields. In compensation they may
have had easy access to many products, perhaps ob-
tained through the market in exchange for labor. By es-
tablishing a market, early leaders would have opened up
the economy, making possible alternative household
strategies of varying degrees of specialization and such
innovations as new vessel forms and decorations as well
as new agricultural strategies. The market may have fo-
mented changes in production rather than the other
way around.
As Hirth suggests, we need to study the geographic
area served by markets. Period I in Oaxaca was more
complicated than we usually admit. For example, it is
not known how many early period I gray ware produc-
tion centers existed, and much of the pottery looks sim-
ilar to that found at Monte Albán. Crema pottery found
at Huitzo, however, is not made with Atzompa paste,
though it still has characteristic white particles. Source
analyses and more detailed ceramic design analyses are
needed to distinguish between production centers. This
research, in combination with the kind of household
distribution studies initiated by Hirth, may help us
trace the paths of goods from production locales to dis-
tribution centers and finally to households.
Reply
k e n n e t h g. h i r t h
University Park, Pa., U.S.A. 2 vii 98
An intellectual discussion with one’s colleagues can be
a satisfying experience, and I thank the commentators
for their valuable observations on three general topics:
the theoretical value of the distributional approach, the
operational limitations facing its application in other
areas of Mesoamerica, and the conceptual issues that
must be addressed in broadening and refining the ap-
proach for the study of other forms of exchange. I am
gratified by the general support for the distributional ap-
proach and Winter’s observations that similar distribu-
tional patterns are found at Monte Albán. Since the ma-
jority of the discussants focus not on my conclusions
but on the methodological and conceptual issues in-
volved in expanding and refining the approach, it is
these topics that I will address.
The consensus is that caution is required of investiga-
tors who use this approach in future studies. I strongly
agree. Before the distributional approach can be widely
applied, specific ethnographic information and con-
trolled archaeological studies are needed that examine
the distribution of material remains under different
combinations of production and distribution. Hassig
and Carrasco are concerned that investigators will
move too quickly to infer marketplace exchange with-
out considering the effects of alternative forms of ex-
change. Blanton and Feinman are concerned with the
reverse, that archaeologists not finding uniformity in
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 471
material remains will conclude that markets are absent
without considering how sumptuary laws or other mar-
ket forces govern artifact frequency.
Hicks feels that the distributional approach should be
expanded to include other forms of distribution. I agree
that this is necessary, but my objective was to provide
a concrete example of how the approach could be ap-
plied, not to discuss a general theory of exchange. What
is needed in archaeology is approaches that link theory
and data, and that is what I have attempted here. I be-
lieve that the distributional approach can be broadened
to encompass other forms of distribution, but to accom-
plish this investigators must reconstruct the expected
empirical patterns. The commentators correctly iden-
tify the range of ethnographic (Wilk, Carrasco), ethno-
historic (Carrasco), and archaeological (Creamer, Plun-
ket, Winter) data needed to clarify these empirical
patterns. They argue that a wide range of variables need
to be incorporated into future model building, including
information on market forces (Blanton), volume and
distance effects on distribution (Hassig), individual con-
sumer motivations (Wilk), the effects of social rank and
personal relationships on consumption (Creamer, Fein-
man), urban-rural differences (Hassig), and the role of
multiple nonmarket forms of exchange (Creamer, Has-
sig, Plunket). Wilk emphasizes that we should not label
societies in terms of single ‘‘types’’ of exchange. Econo-
mies are composed of multiple forms of distribution,
and different commodities may be obtained through
several different procurement strategies. Hassig points
out that households in the same society will differ in
their degree of market participation or reliance on other
forms of procurement on the basis of their location vis-
à-vis urban marketplaces.
Creamer questions whether buyers and sellers inter-
acted in the marketplace independent of their social
rank. In my view social rank does not directly structure
interaction in marketplace exchange. The freedom to
elicit and reject purchase offers without social conse-
quence is lost when social rank is the basis for eco-
nomic interaction. Social rank can affect economic in-
teraction through differential purchasing power or
through sumptuary laws or prohibition of consumption.
Furthermore, while preferred-customer relations al-
most certainly were part of market behavior, I believe
that these associations were less frequent in pre-
Hispanic marketplaces than Creamer assumes. For
example, preferential pricing of staple goods based on
volume purchasing would have been relatively rare in
ancient Mesoamerica because of the transportation
constraints governing the movement of bulky items.
In addition, many instances of trading-partner or
established-customer relations in markets reported
ethnographically relate to guaranteeing predictable
supplies of goods rather than procuring advantageous
prices.
Blanton makes the important point that market-
places provide an information-rich environment for in-
teracting parties. His criticism of my discussion of mar-
ketplace exchange stems from our very different
472 c u r r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 39, Number 4, August–October 1998
definitions of the term ‘‘barter.’’ I use it in the long-
established sense of commodity-for-commodity ex-
change, which may or may not take place in a market-
place. He uses it in a very specific way as a form of
noncentralized exchange that includes both gift-giving
and negotiated transactions. Once we clarify that we are
talking about two completely different things, I can
agree with him completely: we should not conflate
noncentralized forms of exchange with marketplace in-
teractions, since the information involved and the ar-
chaeologically recognizable effects of the two types of
interaction can be quite different. His assertion that ne-
gotiation and money are my main criteria for market-
place exchange is incorrect. I assert throughout the arti-
cle that it involves a constellation of features including
an institutional base, centralization of exchanges, bal-
anced transactions, freedom to interact irrespective of
social rank, and negotiation to set and regulate prices.
Blanton feels that the discussion would have been im-
proved by including data from multiple scales of analy-
sis rather than privileging a household perspective. I
certainly agree with this position, and that is why I in-
cluded configurational, contextual, and spatial informa-
tion for marketplaces at Xochicalco. I did not restrict
my discussion to household assemblages but also in-
cluded assemblages from civic-ceremonial structures in
the comparisons. I believe that the analysis demon-
strates that inventory analyses of the type undertaken
here provide more specific identifications of market-
place exchange than other approaches. Blanton feels
that a more robust study would have incorporated re-
gional- and community-level information on the con-
struction, architectural elaboration, and function of and
artifact distributions from buildings in public plazas.
My project focused on the single large urban commu-
nity of Xochicalco, not the surrounding region. The data
he feels I should have incorporated were not available,
and I would not attempt such a study without reliable
information from problem-oriented excavations. Sur-
face data, which I presume he would use to establish the
functions of buildings in public plazas, would be highly
speculative given the reuse of plazas and their associ-
ated buildings and the incorporation into architectural
constructions of refuse that erodes out over time.
Two commentators point to the need to consider the
motivations behind consumption patterns. Wilk raises
the important point that commodities satisfy different
needs ranging from subsistence functions to defining in-
dividual identity and ethnicity. The former is repre-
sented by foodstuffs, obsidian, and ground stone tools,
while the latter is satisfied by symbolically charged
goods such as ceramics, textiles, and jewelry. I agree
that differing consumer motivations will create diver-
sity in household assemblages, although I doubt that we
can identify motivations using typological analysis.
Moreover, individual consumption choices are played
out within the range of available commodities and
household purchasing power. Xochicalco ceramics are
unique in this regard, as they exhibit a very limi-
ted range of decoration with which to satisfy Wilk’s
variety-seeking motivations. Vessel form is fairly stan-
dardized, the majority of ceramics are monochromes,
and decoration is limited to lip banding or stamping. At
Xochicalco imported ceramics may have provided one
of the few means of individualized expression, and this
may account for their widespread occurrence in all
households. It was their availability in the marketplace
and affordability, however, that made it possible for
households to procure them.
Plunket questions the assumption that elites will
consume more resources and asserts that we need to
consider the effects of recycling on the distribution of
goods in consumption contexts. I agree with both obser-
vations. Elites are assumed to be higher consumers of
ceramics because of their ethnographically documented
high levels of food consumption and more frequent
sponsorship of social events involving food display and
distribution (Hicks). Higher levels of tool consumption
might be expected under conditions of patron-client
production where craftsmen resided in elite com-
pounds, as we see in some Maya sites (Widmer n.d.).
However, without question, ordinary households in
which craftsmen engaged in woodworking and the pro-
cessing of hides, textiles, or fibers would have used the
largest amounts of obsidian tools and other resources.
Since I was interested in normal domestic rather than
craft-related consumption, I removed all craft work-
shops from the comparison. Excavations at Xochicalco
show that ceramic objects were often recycled within
the household where breakage occurred. Equally impor-
tant is whether imported ceramics were the focus of ex-
change or arrived at the site simply as containers for
consumables such as resins, honey, or salt. Lateral re-
cycling between households is much more likely when
ceramics were imported as containers than when they
were the primary object of procurement. At Xochicalco
ceramics were probably imported both as serving ves-
sels and as containers for other goods, although there
seems to be no difference in their distribution between
houses of different rank.
Feinman is troubled by the homogeneity of imported
ceramics found in elite and ordinary residences, since it
is counterintuitive with regard to the assumptions we
make about rank and wealth. Unfortunately, ethnogra-
phers do not measure things in the same way or face the
same kinds of problems that archaeologists do. If I had
included raw counts of ceramics in the tables they
would have shown that larger elite houses consistently
had more vessels than smaller, ordinary houses. How-
ever, I felt that it was necessary to standardize ceramic
collections in terms of household area and ratio mea-
sures, because otherwise houses with more and larger
surface collections would always have had more mate-
rial than houses with fewer and smaller collections.
Archaeology uses standardized sampling strategies to
control for these types of collection biases. When
ethnographers present household inventories it is usu-
ally in terms of a frequency list or inventory, and this is
difficult to reconstruct archaeologically without careful
excavations combined with unusual conditions of site

abandonment. What ethnographic studies show is that
wealthy households often have more expensive items
and a greater quantity of moderately priced items than
poor households. Unfortunately, what they do not do is
convert these counts into values for the number of
household inhabitants, the roofed-over floor space, or
other standardized measures that are the foundation for
archaeological interpretation. Clearly this is a method-
ological challenge that we need to consider as socioeco-
nomic theory is reformulated and tested using archaeo-
logical data.
Hassig raises the very important point that markets
varied in size and frequency and this should produce dif-
ferences in the assemblages of households provisioned
by them. Differences might be found in the provi-
sioning effects of periodic versus permanent markets
and the variable involvement in market exchange by ur-
ban versus rural households. We know very little about
the penetration of urban marketplaces into the econo-
mies of their surrounding rural populations. Recent but
somewhat limited data from Teotihuacan (Santley, Ker-
ley, and Barrett 1995) and the comments here by Winter
for Monte Albán suggest that distribution around even
some of the largest market centers was not as complete
as current models would suggest. I concur with Blanton
and Winter that this is an issue that future research will
need to address.
Carrasco points out the complexity of the ethnohis-
toric situation and raises several points that need fur-
ther comment. I definitely believe that marketplaces
were under the supervision and political control of
elites. However, the fact that periodic markets operated
on a variety of different (20-, 13-, and 5-day) cycles
linked to the religious calendar led to competition be-
tween markets in adjacent towns, a point discussed pre-
viously by Hassig (1982). My point was that no political
attempt was made to restructure market schedules to
increase efficiency or reduce competition between mar-
kets in adjacent towns. Periodic markets were tied to
the religious calendar, and this meant that even though
governments might fall and political boundaries
change, market scheduling would continue undisturbed
with the continued observance of the religious cycle.
My conclusion that Axayacatl moved the market from
Acatzingo to Tepeaca as a political measure draws also
upon information included in Martı́nez (1984).
Hicks asks why I focused on imported rather than lo-
cal ceramics. For the distributional approach to be effec-
tive, we need to know where products were produced
so that we can evaluate how the distance between pro-
duction and consumption locales affected the procure-
ment and distribution of goods. Direct procurement or
procurement through tequitl was not an option for im-
ported ceramics as it was for local ceramics. As a result,
the occurrence of imports in houses reflects their value
and availability in the marketplace rather than procure-
ment through nonmarket means. All we know about
Xochicalco’s locally made ceramics is that they were
not produced at the site. Imported ceramics occur in
both elite and ordinary houses because they were rela-
h i r t h Identifying Marketplace Exchange 473
tively inexpensive and available to all consumers in the
Xochicalco marketplace. (For a more complete discus-
sion of the distribution of local ceramics at Xochicalco,
see Cyphers and Hirth n.d. and Hirth n.d.)
The commentators have provided a stimulating set of
perspectives on the distributional approach and my use
of it to evaluate marketplace exchange at Xochicalco
during the Epiclassic. Many criteria influence the con-
sumption decisions of domestic and nondomestic social
units. To study ancient societies, however, we must op-
erationalize concepts and causal variables in material
terms useful for archaeological analysis. What I have
shown is that the comparative analysis of assemblage
inventories from contemporaneous consumption units
(households, civic-ceremonial structures, etc.) provides
investigators with a way to reconstruct aspects of the
prehistoric economic system. I hope that future work
will expand the approach to allow finer-grained analysis
of distributional systems.
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