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Ball Courts and Political Centralization in the Casas Grandes Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael E. Whalen  and
Paul E. Minnis
Michael E. Whalen
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104
Paul E. Minnis
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019
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Abstract

Ball courts are well-known features of Mesoamerican societies and of the Hohokam culture of the American Southwest. In both cases, the courts are argued to have served a range of ritual, economic, and political purposes. Ball courts have long been known to exist in the northwestern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora as well as in the adjacent portion of New Mexico, although they have never been extensively described or interpreted. This paper presents a large, new set of ball court data for the area around the great Prehispanic center of Paquime (or Casas Grandes), Chihuahua. These data suggest that the region around Paquime may have been characterized by a relatively low level of political centralization, regardless of the social and economic alliances that existed among neighboring communities.

Resumen

Resumen

Juegos de pelota son aspectos bien conocidos de sociedades mesoamericanas, asi como de la cultura Hohokam del suroeste de los Estados Unidos. En ambos casos se considera que los juegos de pelota servían un rango de funciones rituales, económicas, y políticas. Desde hace mucho tiempo se ha conocido que juegos de pelota también se encuentran en el noroeste de México, en los estados de Chihuahua y Sonora asi como en partes adyacentes de Nuevo Mexico. Sin embargo, estas instalaciones nunca han sido extensivamente descritos o estudiados. Aquí presentamos datos nuevos sobre los juegos de pelota situados en los alrededores del gran centro prehispánico de Paquimé (o Casas Grandes), Chihuahua. Estos datos sugieren que dicha región podía haber sido organizada a un nivel relativamente bajo de centralización politica, no obstante las alianzas sociales y económicas que existían entre las comunidades vecinas.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , October 1996 , pp. 732 - 746
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1996

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