Students and scholars of Mesoamerican archaeology have long awaited this volume, which reports the major achievements in the field since volumes II and III of the Handbook of Middle American Indians were published in 1965. To the volume editor’s credit, he selected a broad and exemplary sample of archaeological projects and asked their directors not only to summarize their findings, but also to evaluate how their conclusions have furthered our understanding of Mesoamerican prehistory. An introductory commentary by Gordon R. Willey precedes these ten summary reports. The concluding three chapters discuss some of the major theoretical issues in contemporary Mesoamerican archaeology: the origins of sedentary village life, the evolution of complex societies, and the rise of cities.
As a whole, the volume reflects the growing importance of problem-oriented research in Mesoamerican archaeology. The interdisciplinary, multileveled research designs of many of the contributors include significant theoretical and methodological innovations in their own right. Chief among them is the adoption of a regional perspective, evident in the Tehuacán Archaeological-Botanical Project (chap. 2), the Oaxaca Valley Prehistory and Human Ecology Project (chap. 3), the Valley of Oaxaca Settlement Pattern Project (chap. 4), the Basin of Mexico Settlement Survey Project (chap. 6), and the Tlaxcala-Puebla investigations (chap. 8). In particular, the research design sections of chapter 3 (“The Preceramic and Formative of the Valley of Oaxaca” by Kent V. Flannery, Joyce Marcus, and Stephen A. Kowalewski) should be required reading for students of New World and Old World archaeology alike.
Equally significant are the community-level investigations of some of Mesoamerica’s preeminent regional centers. They include the early Olmec center at San Lorenzo (chap. 5), the Central Mexican capitals of Teotihuacán (chap. 7) and Tula (chap. 9), and the great lowland Maya centers of Tikal (chap. 10) and Dzibilchaltun (chap. 11). René Millon, director of the Teotihuacán Mapping Project, contributes a particularly comprehensive and illuminating summary of the internal organization of that extraordinary city and of the processes responsible for the emergence and demise of the Teotihuacán state. Of the three final topical syntheses, Barbara L. Stark’s discussion of the rise of sedentary life in Mesoamerica (chap. 12) is the most comprehensive and the least redundant upon conclusions presented in the individual research reports.
