COLLAPSE OF AN ECONOMIC TRADE SYSTEM (Rafferty, 1989)
It is suggested that the Lost City, located in the Great Basin, was an
Anasazi settlement that had a complex sociopolitical organization. The Lost
City was the apex a "two-tiered decision making hierarchy (Rafferty, 1989).
It is also suggested that the Lost City elite engaged in trade relationships
al the local, regional and panregionals levels that help to butters their
power and control over the Virgin Anasazi society and their cultural sphere
of influence.
The diagram below presents Rafferty's interpretation of the economic trade
system of the time and it sudden collapse after the fall of an important
trade partner from the South (The Huaxtecs).
Rare resources (turquoise, salt shell) is what helped to link Lost City to the Pan-Southwestern trading systems that seem to have been in existence in the 10th and 12th centuries A.D. It has been suggested that regional exchange involves the production of agricultural surpluses and the trade of this surplus is employed as a hedge against problems in the agricultural sector, In regional exchange agricultural products are converted into "hard" goods (e.g. turquoise), "during bad agriculture years, the non local goods can be converted back into subsistence products to satisfy population's nutritional requirements.
The Anasazi depended in this trade to overcome but agricultural periods. After the fall of the Huaxtecs the trade system collapse and the Anasazi had to leave.
Rafferty (1989) criticized the warfare theory further:
He says that the latest Anasazi sites in the Virgin region were not exclusively defensive and even if the Anasazi were aggregated into defensive locations it could be to protect themselves from each other because it would make no sense to go to war with trade partners.
Home,
Location
History
Mystery
Environmenatl stress
Collapse of an economic trade system
Warfare
Religion crisis
References