In Collision of Worlds, David Carballo, a professor of archaeology at Boston University, takes on the gargantuan task of interweaving archaeologically based knowledge with the field of history, with the goal of illuminating the conquest of Mexico in new ways. We have long needed just such a book, and I imagine that for many years historians will consult this volume whenever they need to understand more about archaeology's contributions to the study of early Mexico. Early on, the author provides a pithy reminder of what archaeologists can do for historians: “At its best, archaeology is cross-cutting and can incorporate information from other specialties in order to look at the broad scale of change in human societies over millennia, while also being able to zoom into the cultural minutiae of a particular moment in time when an individual person made or used something—a hearth, a clay figure, an article of...

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