Early Mesoamerican Cities

Urbanism and Urbanization in the Formative Period

Michael Love, Julia Guernsey

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781108838511
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108983730
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One Introduction: Early Mesoamerican Cities, Urbanism, and Urbanization in the Formative Period
• Chapter Two Oaxaca's Formative Period Cities and Their Implications for Early Urbanism in Mesoamerica
• Chapter Three Early Urbanization in the Formative Gulf Lowlands, Mexico
• Chapter Four Patterns of Early Urbanism in the Southern Maya Lowlands
• Chapter Five The Role of Middle Preclassic Placemaking in the Creation of Late Preclassic Yucatecan Cities: The Foundations of Yaxuná
• Chapter Six The City over the City: Kaminaljuyu and Urbanism
• Chapter Seven The New Normal: Formative Period Cities on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica
• Chapter Eight The Nature of Early Urbanism at Teotihuacan
• Chapter Nine Art and Urbanity in Late Formative Mesoamerica
• Chapter Ten Landscape and Leadership in Mesoamerican Cities: A Comparative View
• Chapter Eleven Experimental Cities?
• References
• Index