ABSTRACT
Between 1500 and 800 b.c., Mesoamerica made the transition from semi-sedentary food-collecting and primitive cultivation to the threshold of early state formation. From central Mexico to northern Honduras, this half-millennium was characterized by stable villages of pole-and-thatch or wattle-and-daub houses, sometimes accompanied by mounds which enclosed high-status burials or served as platforms for temples. There are a number of methodologies through which one could approach a reconstruction of social organization in Formative Mesoamerica. It could be attempted through studying the social systems of contemporary or near-contemporary peoples on the margins of Mesoamerica, whose way of life may bear some resemblance to that of the Formative. In the case of the “contagiously distributed” villages on the Guatemalan coast, each household had access to all means of production utilized in the area, and the exploitive tasks performed by any one community were probably “carbon copies” of the tasks performed by every other community.
