At the Margins of the Monte Alban State: Settlement Patterns in the Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico

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Abstract
A recent systematic archaeological survey in the Ejutla Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico, enables us to examine long-term settlement-pattern changes in this small region and its shifting Prehispanic relation with the larger, adjacent Valley of Oaxaca. Throughout the sequence, Ejutla was settled less densely than Oaxaca, though the degree of difference varied through time. Ejutla was not a simple microcosm of Oaxaca; rather the former region shifted from a sparsely inhabited frontier to a more-dependent periphery that maintained different degrees of autonomy over time. Through a multiscalar examination of this contiguous area larger than a single valley, new perspectives are gained concerning political and economic relations and processes at the macroregional scale for the southern highlands of ancient Mesoamerica.