There is an incongruity between the stated topic of this book, as indicated by the title and the editors’ introduction, and the content of the chapters. Most of the chapters are interesting and useful contributions to Mesoamerican studies, but they tell the reader little about the processes of political communication implied by the title. I will summarize the 12 substantive chapters under four categories that do not follow the order of the chapters in the book.
Four chapters address aspects of the book’s theme directly. Joyce Marcus’s chapter on Monte Alban is the only chapter organized explicitly around urban political communication. She examines how processes of communication changed over time in relation to internal and external dynamics. David C. Grove and Susan D. Gillespie provide a modest and judicious analysis of polity, landscape, and art at Chalcatzingo. Their interpretations are more firmly grounded than most of the iconographic analyses in...