2011: A New Season For the 2011 season at the Mitla Fortress, the team will begin excavations at Terrace #276, located further downhill from the 2009-10 localities. Dr. Feinman hopes to find a residential complex that is more representative of a typical commoner’s residence. So far, the number and type of tools, as well as the debris littering each of the two previously explored households, indicate that stoneworking, fiber production, and turkey raising were important to this extended family for generations. Obtaining a wider sample of commoner’s houses across the site will allow the Museum team to assess whether most residents of the Mitla Fortress made their living in similar ways, and how they interacted with one another to produce their wares. For example, at El Palmillo, it appears that households formed an interdependent network specializing in various phases of cloth production. Some households focused on spinning plant fibers into yarn, while others concentrated on weaving the yarn into cloth. Perhaps similar patterns will be revealed for stoneworking or fiber processing at the Mitla Fortress. It may be that certain communities specialized in certain types of goods, as well. For example, while corncobs and kernels indicate maize was part of the local diet at El Palmillo, the area’s access to water likely could not sustain such a thirsty crop, particularly in dry years. However, El Palmillo’s population excelled in producing cloth made from agave—a plant that grows well in dry areas. It’s likely that residents produced surplus fiber and cloth to exchange for maize produced by neighbors living in wetter areas. It seems likely that a similar pattern of exchange for turkeys, stonework, and cloth will be revealed at Mitla, too. How these goods were exchanged from town to town is another question that Dr. Feinman’s team hopes to explore at the Mitla Fortress. At El Palmillo, the team discovered several ancient pathways that led from the base of the site to a large open plaza area, which may have acted as a marketplace where households and travelers exchanged their wares. Future expeditions will aim to uncover whether the Mitla Fortress also had a similar feature. Finding comparable patterns of craft specialization and exchange at the Mitla Fortress will also help evaluate the hypothesis that the economy of the Valley of Oaxaca during the Classic period was not entirely managed or controlled by the Monte Albán state, but was grounded in widespread household production and interdependence. How the region’s economy changed with the fall of Monte Albán during the subsequent Postclassic period is also a research focus of Dr. Feinman’s continuing study, as is the issue of how the rulers of Monte Albán and the palace-dwellers of the Mitla Fortress and El Palmillo derived revenues. To learn more about Zapotec economy and the ways in which it differed from other state-controlled Mesoamerican economies, check out these additional articles by Dr. Feinman, Linda Nicholas, and their colleagues: Market Exchange in Ancient Societies and Preindustrial Markets and Marketing: Archaeological Perspectives. Continue to Special Thanks.