| Abstract: |
Current neoevolutionary theory is inadequate to the analysis of past social change because it lacks a suitable behavioral theory and because its simple stage typology fails to account for variation amoung societies of similar complexity and scale. We propose a remedial program for neoevolutionary theory that will help it avoid these shortcomings. To accomplish this, we lay out a preliminary behavioral theory grounded in political economy, point to comparative situations from various world areas that illustrate the processes involved, and then apply the approach to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. We argue that a productive explanatory framework for Mesoamerica will be a dual-processual theory that elucidates the interactions and contradictions of two main patterns of political action, one exclusionary and individual-centered and the other more group-oriented.
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