Title:

Reframing the Precolonial Mesoamerican Past through an Obsidian Lens 

Guest Lecturer:

MacArthur Curator of Anthropology Gary M. Feinman (Field Museum of Natural History)

Abstract:

More than four decades ago, when I began my studies in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, the predominant conceptual perspectives framed the precolonial world as largely local, relatively static, dominated by closed socio-spatial units, and economically organized through top-down redistribution. Early on, as a participant in Valley of Oaxaca regional surveys, these perspectives never really squared with what we empirically recorded, a dissonant implication that only magnified with decades of excavations in domestic contexts in the region. Nevertheless, it was only later with the application of broadened technological tools focused on obsidian sourcing and the building of a comparative archive that we could more systematically assess and document the dynamic and multi-scalar character of Precolonial Mesoamerica. Here, drawing on a sample of more than 500,000 pieces of sourced obsidian, I outline some of the key findings of that research and how it underpins a necessary politico-economic reconceptualization of this premodern world.