Three world areas have sufficient high-quality survey data for making systematic regional comparisons. Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and the Southwest are compelling for having similar degrees of spatial variation in settlement patterns. These cases suggest that survey results in one region cannot be assumed for others and that the largest possible frames of reference are needed.
Mesoamerica
Surveys in the Basin of Mexico (1960-75), Valley of Oaxaca (1971-80), andMixteca Alta (1990-99) meet the criteria for macroregional analysis and offer the best example of sustained surveying from a core group of researchers. The Basin of Mexico surveys were ecologically focused, and designed to reconstruct the agricultural, settlement, and population history in the area around Teotihuacan. Settlement data were used to analyze microgeographic variation among interacting regions. The Valley of Oaxaca surveyors enlarged the focus, viewing sites as central places and applying spatial models derived from economics and geography to understand settlement patterns. The Valley of Oaxaca was modeled as a discrete functional region, Monte Albiin as its principal central place, and the Monte Albiin/valley survey area as the core region within Oaxaca. The Mixteca Alta’s contiguous full-coverage surveys are equivalent in area to the Valley of Oaxaca and its satellite regions, allowing comparative studies of the Mixtec and Zapotec civilizations from within a single universe of sites. Each of the three macroregions has shown differing urban forms and patterns of change in otherwise contemporary and interacting civilizations.
Mesopotamia
Urbanism in Mesopotamia has been a regional question since Robert McC. Adams’ pioneering surveys in the 1950s and 1960s. In a recent review of the survey literature, Wilkinson makes macroregional comparisons between the irrigated southern regions of the Tigris-Euphrates river basin (Iraq) with the latest survey results from northern Mesopotamia (Turkey, Syria). Few studies have attempted to compare urban trajectories over this vast area in the heartland of cities, but Wilkinson notes several recurrent patterns. Settlement changes were synchronous across Greater Mesopotamia, though subject to significant spatial variability. Some regions were abandoned entirely during certain periods only to be re-occupied later on, while adjacent regions could show the reverse pattern. This flux and instability on the large scale is especially apparent during the urbanization of the fourth and third milleniums BC. Surprisingly, settlement densities were higher during pre-urban Ubaid times in northern Mesopotamia. An important conclusion is that capital centers in the south such as Uruk should not be viewed as the unique sources of Mesopotamian civilization (see Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad).
Southwest
One of the major research issues in Southwestern archaeology concerns the Hohokam abandonment of southern Arizona. To address this question, Hill and others have drawn upon a macroregional database covering virtually every significant pueblo site in the four corners area (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah) and adjacent parts of Mexico dating from AD 1200-1700. The basic data on size, location, and date for every site with 12 or more rooms are shown on settlement pattern maps divided by 50-year increments. The Hohokam abandonment is usually attributed to extreme events, including warfare, disease, land degradation, and environmental change. However, the authors of this study refer to settlement changes throughout the Southwest, and observe that there was no mass exodus or rapid disappearance from Hohokam land. Rather, the decline was drawn out over a 150-year period (AD 1300-1450), and likely involved multiple factors none of which was immediately catastrophic (see Americas, North: American Southwest, Four Corners Region).
World History
