Archaeological Survey in the Coastal Chontalpa de Oaxaca, México

Classic Period Political Landscape

As Zeitlin has argued, the eastern Oaxacan coast was probably an extension of the peripheral coastal lowland interaction sphere (Zeitlin 1993:122 ff.). Accordingly, the presence of ballgame courts and paraphernalia would reflect a situation of neighboring peer polities that competed with each other, using the ballgame and associated rituals to channel rivalries between neighbor communities. Such a scenario would suit the Classic period settlement pattern at the Río Huamelula, where the neighboring sites of Huamelula, Hualampamo, Hualakgoce yielded related artifacts and architecture and appear to overlap chronologically. Adjacent sites at Los Cocos and Mazatán, as well as Bocana Copalita, outside the PARH survey area also yielded ballgame courts or related stone sculpture (Brockington and Long 1974; personal observation 1999).

There is no evidence that any of these small polities had the capacity to exercise political control over the entire coastal region. Further, there is no indication of a direct control from outside polities, such as highland Monte Albán (see Joyce 1993:74; Marcus and Flannery 1996:206-207). It still needs to be examined what role the Isthmian regional center of Saltillo (see Zeitlin and Zeitlin 1990) played at the eastern Oaxacan coast. Pottery and obsidian imports, as well as some aspects of the ritual ballgame may have been introduced into the PARH area via Saltillo. The Classic Period large polity of Río Viejo at the western coast (see Joyce 1993), apparently did not leave any distinguishable marks on the material culture at Río Huamelula sites.

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