Coastal/highland interaction in prehispanic Oaxaca, Mexico: The perspective from San Francisco de Arriba

The objective of this dissertation is to clarify our understanding of coasta/highland interaction in prehispanic Oaxaca, Mexico. The form interregional interaction takes can range from indirect trade all the way to military conquest and I consider the material correlates of each before applying them to the data generated by the San Francisco de Arriba Archaeological Project. Rather than a relationship of domination as has been suggested by highland researchers, the archaeological investigation of San Francisco de Arriba and the surrounding Rio San Francisco Valley indicates more symmetrical relations with highland polities like Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca and Teotihuacan in the Basin of Mexico.; In this dissertation I question claims of Zapotec expansion southward to San Francisco de Arriba on the coast of Oaxaca. Instead, I argue that local elite were using trade contacts within the Valley of Oaxaca to further their own rise in power. Prestige items from the highlands, particularly gray ware ceramics, were used to support a deceptive ideology which legitimized growing status inequalities on the coast. Interaction with Teotihuacan later in the Early Classic period, while still undertaken for elite aggrandizement, achieved it by different means. Rather than for ideological justification, exchange with Teotihuacan was undertaken principally for material gain. Well-entrenched at this point, the coastal elite no longer needed to justify their positions, but rather were trying to solidify their wealth.; My interpretation of the data collected from San Francisco de Arriba and the surrounding valley fails to support a world-system approach which assumes domination of the periphery by the core and which fails because of its conflation of ideology, politics, and economics. Instead, my analysis underscores the views of other coastal researchers who argue that the effects of interregional interaction must be viewed as variable. The presence of highland-inspired ideologies on the coast without economic or political domination is the result not of domination, but the sharing of elite identities between regions.