Mesoamerican Archaeology presents the results of a symposium held in 1972 at Cambridge University. It includes an introduction, by Gordon Willey, and 25 contributed papers that are very diverse in nature and with no central theme. Papers range from highly specific data presentations, such as Lawrence Feldman’s “Molluscs in Mayan Sites” and Thomas Lee’s article on ceramic chronology, to more theoretical and occasionally speculative papers. All of the papers will be of considerable interest to those persons somewhat knowledgeable about Meso-american archaeology, but the collection as a whole would not be very meaningful to the beginner or the general reader. New Approaches in the title is perhaps a misnomer—“recent findings” would be a better description. All of this will be brand new to some; two articles that struck me as new approaches are Adrian Digby’s identification of a pre-Columbian astronomical instrument, and George Cowgill’s computerized scheme for estimating population changes at Teotihuacán.
Hasso von Winning’s book is a well-produced presentation of the pottery figurines from pre-Columbian tombs in West Mexico, with 355 excellent photographs. The specimens are from numerous collections and are without archaeological provenience. However, the author has used archaeological data and stylistic analysis to provide a reliable indication of age and place of origin for the pieces illustrated. Of value are the illustrations of some forgeries, for these figurines are widely collected and widely falsified.
The book presents a sizeable portion of the total published corpus of tomb figures from West Mexico. It is an essential reference, and because of the many illustrations it has popular interest as well.
