ACCOUNTING FOR THE PREHISTORIC LONG-DISTANCE MOVEMENT OF GOODS WITH AMEASURE OF STYLE

A sharing of stylistic attributes is taken to be a measure of social a nd political relationships. By calculating a coefficient of stylistic association between peoples of distant regions, a crude but useful ind icator of the temper of sociopolitical relationships is derived which can help account for otherwise puzzling changes in the long-distance i nterchange of economically valuable goods. In a trial application of t his analytical procedure, attributes of ceramic style were used to est imate the strength of relationships between the southern Isthmus of Te huantepec and four neighboring regions of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. T he results provided an explanation for variations in the non-local sou rces and quantities of obsidian procured by the inhibitants of the sou thern Isthmus over a 1500-year span of time.