Location, location, location—it's the first rule of real estate. For a long time, it's been widely assumed that being close to resources drives settlement patterns, with cities generally founded near water and fertile land for growing crops. But a new paper by a husband-and-wife archaeological team questions that idea, using the example of an ancient city in what's now southern Mexico. The researchers argue that Monte Albán, the largest city in its region for more than a thousand years, wasn't situated near especially good farmland. But what it did have from the city's foundation was a defendable hilltop location and a more collective form of government that attracted people both to the settlement and its surrounding area.
"We wanted to understand why Monte Albán was founded where it was," says Linda Nicholas, the first author of the study inMonte Albán lies in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. It was founded in 500 BC, grew rapidly, and endured as the region's main metropolis for 1,300 years, longer than most, if not all, other prehispanic Mesoamerican cities.
Gary Feinman and crew member surveying ridge in southern part of the Valley of Oaxaca in the 1980s. Credit: Linda Nicholas, Field Museum "In the 1960s, archaeologists started to ask different questions about ancient societies beyond just collecting and categorizing artifacts," says Nicholas."When you excavate a site, you only get a picture of a very small part, and also it's both destructive and expensive."
Gary Feinman on survey in the 1980s, holding air photo under his arm as he takes notes on exposed architecture in a prehispanic mound. Credit: Linda Nicholas, Field Museum The residents of Monte Albán also were economically interdependent, exchanging craft goods and food in the risky environment for agriculture where they lived. Although no large food storage facilities have been found, there are indications that the city's residents participated in marketplace exchanges, which may have buffered the region's unpredictable rainfall. Cooperative defense and economic opportunity drew people from afar to early Monte Albán.
Monte Albán from the air; 100s of prehispanic residential terraces descend the slopes below the Main Plaza at the top of the hill. Credit: Linda Nicholas, Field Museum