Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages

Catharina E. Santasilia, Guy David Hepp, Richard A. Diehl

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780813069296
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813070148
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

New perspectives on an important era in Mesoamerican history

 

This volume examines shifting social identities, lived experiences, and networks of interaction in Mexico during the Mesoamerican Formative period (2000 BCE–250 CE), an era that helped produce some of the world’s most renowned complex civilizations. The chapters offer significant data, innovative methodologies, and novel perspectives on Mexican archaeology.

Using diverse and non-traditional theoretical approaches, contributors discuss interregional relationships and the exchange of ideas in contexts ranging from the Gulf Coast Olmec region to the site of Tlatilco in Central Mexico to the often-overlooked cultures of the far western states. Their essays explore identity formation, cosmological perspectives, the first hints of social complexity, the underpinnings of Formative period economies, and the sensorial implications of sociocultural change.

Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages is one of the first volumes to address the entirety of this rich and complex era and region, offering a new and holistic view. Through a wealth of exciting interpretations from international senior and emerging scholars, this volume shows the strong influence of cultural exchange as well as the compelling individuality of local and regional contexts over two thousand years of history.

Contributors: Catharina E. Santasilia | Guy D. Hepp | Richard A. Diehl | Jeffrey P. Blomster | Philip (Flip) J. Arnold III | Patricia Ochoa Castillo | Christopher Beekman | Tatsuya Murakami | Jeffrey S. Brzezinski | Vanessa Monson | Arthur A. Joyce | Sarah B. Barber | Henri Noel Bernard| Sara Ladrón de Guevara| Mayra Manrique| José Luis Ruvalcaba

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages
• 2. Changing/Rearranging: Transformations in Identities and Sociopolitical Organization in Early Formative Oaxaca
• 3. Early Formative Gulf Lowlands Occupants: From Fictions to Factions
• 4. Full Bellies, Ringing Ears, and Smoke in Their Eyes: The Sensations of Social Change in Mesoamerica’s Early Formative Period
• 5. New Approaches to Jadeite Usage in Formative Mesoamerica: Identifying Olmec Portable Sculptures on the Gulf Coast
• 6. Beyond Contortionists: Archaeological Indicators of Ritual Activities at Tlatilco
• 7. Regional and Corporate Identities in Formative Period Western Mexico
• 8. Tlatilco: The People of the Lake
• 9. Refining the Middle Formative Chronology in Central Mexico: Implications for the Origins of the Central Mexican Urban Tradition
• 10. The Ceremonial Offerings of Cerro de la Virgen, Oaxaca: Identity, Politics, and Religious Practice at the End of the Formative
• 11. Reflections on the Mesoamerican Formative Period
• List of Contributors
• Index