Economic consumption and domestic economy in cholula's rural hinterland, Mexico

The limited excavation of rural houses in the Mexican highlands has made it difficult to understand the structure of urban- rural economic relationships during the Classic period (AD. 150 to 650), when many of the large cities at Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Monte Albdn first developed. This paper examines economic consumption at Operation 7, a Late Classic rural residence located II km outside of the large center of Cholula, Puebla. The results show that Cholula was not the only, or even the primary, distribution center for goods consumed at Operation 7. Multiple procurement networks were operating during the Late Classic period to provision rural households with the goods they used. The recovery of a large number of imported ceramics and other goods with strong Teotihuacan affinities suggests integrated market networks, rather than solar market systems, operated to circulate goods throughout rural areas in Central Mexico. Comparative analysis of domestic assemblages is employed to identify differences in economic consumption that can be used to reconstruct the participation of rural households in regional distribution networks centered on their urban neighbors.