Colonial Exchange Systems and the Decline of Paquime

Abstract

Charles Di Peso has postulated that around A.D. 1060 a group of well organized Mesoamerican merchant-priests entered the Casas Grandes valley and established a new frontier trading town that came to be known archaeologically as Casas Grandes or Paquime. The town of Paquime represents a planned construction, with thick adobe walls, integrated apartments, underground drainage systems, staircases, square columned halls, ceremonial structures, plazas, and a staggered outer defense wall. The major items which the Casas Grandes merchants traded in exchange for the resources of the periphery seem to have been elaborate polychrome pottery, shell and copper products, and exotic feathers. The core states, by definition, have the power to manipulate exchange to their benefit. The core state is able to produce craft goods needed in the colonized periphery, such as tools, more cheaply than they can be produced locally.

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