COMPLEXITY, HIERARCHY, AND SCALE: A CONTROLLED COMPARISON BETWEEN CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO, AND LA QUEMADA, ZACATECAS Ben A. Nelson Archaeologists have held a length)>debate around the question of complex sociopolitical organization in the prehistoric American Southwest. Recent theor): though, urges scholau to "unpack" the properties of complexity. In this paper a south- western regional center is compared w,ith one on the northern Mesoamerican periphery in terms ofproperties generally asso- ciated with sociopolitical complexity: population size, labor investment in monumental construction, extent of road sjlstems, mortuary practices, and symbolism of integrative,facilities. Contraty to the conception of Mesoamerican societies as la,ger and more politically centralized, Chaco Canyon appears to have been organized at a larger scale than La Quemada. Yet it is argued that La Quemada was more hierarchicalLy structured. Correctlv evaluating complexity in both nature and degree is not onlv theoreticallv sign~ficant, but has implicationsfor particular models of long-distance interaction between such large centers. Hace tiempo que 10s arqueologos disputan la complejidad de organizacion politica en las sociedades del suroeste de 10s Estados Unidos, regi6n que algunos estudiosos consideran como parte de MesoamCrica. Teorias recientemente planteadas indican la necesidad de deconstruir la complejidad, en este estudio un centro regional de dicha regibn es comparado con otro en la ,fiontera septentrional de Mesoamirica, en cuanto a unas caracteristicas que generalmente son vinculadas a la com- plejidad de la organizacidn politica: tamatio de poblacion, mano de obra invertida en las construcciones monumentales, e~tensidn de 10s sistemas de caminos, costumbres,funerarias, y simbolismo arquitectdnico. Contrario a lo que seria esper- ado, parece ser que Chaco Canjlon fue organizado a una escala mayov, sin embargo, La Quemada manlfiesta una estructura social mas jerarquica. Esta contradicci6n indica que 10s arquedlogos, a pesar de ser acertados en ident~ficar la escala y la jrrarq~ria como dimensiones importantes de la complejidad, necesitan considerarlas como dimensiones independientes. La it~terpretacidn correcta tanto del grado como de la naturaleza de la complejidad es significativa teoricamente, y tambiCn tiene implicaciones para las infirencias sobre la interaccidn a larga distancia entre tales centros. C onsiderable concern has arisen around the of southwestern populations is evaluated by com- issue of "sociopolitical complexity" in the parison with their culturally related and presum- American Southwest, especially regarding ably more powerful neighbors in northwest the existence of decision-making hierarchies in Mexico. The regional centers of Chaco Canyon, regional centers such as Chaco Canyon. One New Mexico, and La Quemada, Zacatecas approach to this problem is to consider south- (Figure l), are taken as examples of political cen- western populations comparatively instead of ters in the two regions. attempting to make inferences about absolute lev- One reason why these two polities are interest- els of scale and integration. Such comparison ing to compare is that they have been linked could be undertaken on a global or continental together by archaeologists who postulate a trade basis or restricted to groups of similar historical route or "trade structure" that brought turquoise tradition. In this paper the political organization from the American Southwest to central Mexico Ben A. Nelson . Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402 American Antiquity, 60(4), 1995, pp. 597-618. Copyright G by the Society for American Archaeology