The objective of Ancient Oaxaca is to understand and account for the sudden appearance of a new city on a mountain, Monte Albán, about 500 BC, and the consequences of that event, which in the following few centuries would transform almost every aspect of cultural life. These developments in the Valley of Oaxaca region were part of and contributed to the creation of the sociocultural formations that characterized the world system or civilization of Mesoamerica.

The Neolithic Revolution saw the invention of diverse political, economic, religious, and other social institutions in highland Oaxaca and across Early Formative Mesoamerica, including: varying forms and degrees of social differentiation in prestige, personhood, and social ranking; aggregation sites and large villages; dual organization, cosmology, and ritual practice; writing systems; and institutions for long-distance trade.

Monte Albán conforms to broader cross-cultural expectations, one pattern being the disembedded capital city; other expectations are measurable degrees of collective action in planned urban nucleation, modest social segregation by spatial separation, and city plan facilitating communication and large gatherings.

These analyses indicate that causality did not have a preferred scale of operation, so a multiscalar method is required; likewise, in both nonstate and state societies an expanded institutional approach reveals greater complexity than in theories that assume ruler or elite dominance. The case illustrates a coactive causal process in which collective action policies by the state resulted in population growth, urbanization, production intensity, market participation, and material standard of living across social sectors, which in turn fed back to the state-building process.

The founding of Monte Albán as a new political capital superseding the polities of its constituents immediately entailed urbanization, an expanding hinterland, migration, and population growth. Institution building was expressed by monumentality in public spaces, buildings, and stone sculpture.

Monte Albán endured for 1,200 years, much longer than other Mesoamerican cities. Perhaps the mix of cooperating interests and institutions present since its founding allowed society to respond to new challenges creatively and effectively. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

With its rich archaeological data from surveys and excavations, Monte Albán and its regional context in highland Oaxaca, along with cross-cultural comparative science, are useful for evaluating current theories about sociocultural evolution. Older theories and persistent ideas about only two paths to state building – premodern (Oriental) and modern democratic (Occidental) – are less effective as explanations than those that recognize alternative pathways, heterarchy, and multiple important institutions. Collective action theory shows significant promise.

The origins of the state in Oaxaca lie in the founding of Monte Albán, which in turn led to consequences much in evidence by the Late Formative (100 BC): hierarchy development, warfare, urban and rural demographic growth, social stratification, local irrigation projects and other new agricultural strategies, and an inclusive religious cult associated with fertility. Economic behavior changed with marketplace exchange, more output by craft specialists, and increased spending on house construction and portable goods (standard of living, economic growth).

Rural sociopolitical complexity in premodern states was quite extensive but variable. However, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists have been slow to recognize and study institutional complexity in rural contexts. Much ink has been spilled regarding economic relationships, “centralized” control, and “imagined communities” (e.g., Davis-Salazar, 2003; Earle & Spriggs, 2015; Flannery, 1972; Isbell, 2000; Kirch, 2010; Paris, 2014; Sanders & Price, 1968; Wright, 1977; Yaeger & Canuto, 2000). But the development of infrastructural power, especially collective power, in rural settlements and its relationship with regional or macroregional political structures has received only scant attention. With respect to contemporary cases, which provide important theoretical frameworks, anthropologists have taken a back seat to political scientists (e.g., Ostrom, 2015; see Lansing, 2012 for an important [partial] exception), whose focus has been on the management of common pool resources – a topic generally ignored by archaeologists. Unfortunately, neither political scientists nor anthropologists have invested much in understanding cooperation and public goods provisioning in rural settlements and landscapes. Conversely, we have made some initial forays into the issue of rural institutional complexity in premodern states and civilization (Blanton & Fargher, 2008); and here we expand to some degree on that discussion.

Monte Albán, one of Mexico’s earliest cities, was founded in the Valley of Oaxaca around 500 bc as a central fulcrum in a dynamic episode of change that grounds subsequent regional history. Proposed explanations for the establishment of Monte Albán are numerous and diverse; yet, to date, they tend to emphasize only the agency of the elite. Here, we offer new theoretical perspectives on the dynamic processes associated with this multifaceted, transitional episode. Adopting a multiscalar approach, we view this transition as the outcome of innovative social negotiations that yielded new opportunities and social contracts that ultimately advantaged both certain powerful individuals as well as larger segments of the population. The collective mode of governance that was instituted (ca. 500 bc) at this early Mesoamerican city proved to be resilient, enduring for more than a millennium, despite challenges, adjustments, and changes over time.