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The Oxford Handbook of the Olmecs provides an up-to-date overview of research on this most elaborate of Mesoamerica's foundational cultures (ca. 1450-400 BCE). In 50 original chapters, it presents articles that discuss the theoretical and social significance of Olmec research, as well as empirical summaries of recent archaeological, art-historical, archaeometric, and environmental research. It also presents topical perspectives on Olmec economy, society, polity, and belief, in addition to forward-looking articles that reconsider the place of the Olmecs in Mesoamerican studies and anthropological archaeology.
Flannery and Marcus demonstrate that the rise of inequality was not simply the result of population increase, food surplus, or the accumulation of valuables but resulted from conscious manipulation of the unique social logic that lies at the core of every human group. Reversing the social logic can reverse inequality, they argue, without violence.
New case studies documenting ten thousand years of cuisines across the cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico, from the earliest gathered plants, such as guajes, to the contemporary production of tejate and its health implications. Among the richest culinary traditions in Mexico are those of the “eight regions” of the state of Oaxaca. Mesquite Pods to Mezcal brings together some of the most prominent scholars in Oaxacan archaeology and related fields to explore the evolution of the area’s world-renowned cuisines. This volume, the first to address food practices across Oaxaca through a long-term historical lens, covers the full spectrum of human occupation in Oaxaca, from the early Holocene to cont...
Households are, without question, the most important social units in human society. They are interactive social units whose primary concern is the day-to-day well being of their kith and kin. Households reproduce themselves and provide their members with the economic, psychological, and social resources necessary to live their lives. Although households vary enormously in size and organization, they are the fundamental social settings in which families are defined and cultural values are transmitted through a range of domestic activities and rituals. Despite their many functions, it is the range and productivity of their economic activities that determine the success, survival and well being of their members. Households are the primary production and consumption units in society and provide the vehicle through which resources are pooled, stored, and distributed to their members. Survival and reproduction is their business and the work they do determines their success.
Balkansky’s full-coverage survey of the Sola Valley, 65 km southwest of Oaxaca City, documents 120 sites. By combining his data with that of 13 other regions of Oaxaca, he produces a model for Zapotec state expansion that integrates colonization, diplomacy, and military conquest.
"Excavations at San José Mogote 2: The Cognitive Archaeology (2015) deals with every building and feature that can shed light on indigenous ritual, religion, and political ideology. Filling 432 pages and utilizing more than 400 photographs and line drawings, this book describes in detail more than 35 public buildings, including men's houses, one-room temples, a performance platform, two-room state temples, a ballcourt, and two types of palaces. These new empirical data allow the authors to reconstruct the evolution of complex Zapotec state religion from the simpler ritual features and buildings of Oaxaca's earliest sedentary communities. Many basic concepts of indigenous belief endured for thousands of years, but dramatic innovations signaled the periodic transformation of Zapotec religion to keep up with changes in society and politics."--
This volume, part of a series on the prehistory and human ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, focuses on Cerro Tilcajete, a secondary administrative center below Monte Albán, the capital of the prehispanic Zapotec state.