Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages

“An impressive volume that offers significant new data and fresh perspectives on changing practices, experiences, and identities in the early communities of ancient Mexico.”—Christopher A. Pool, University of Kentucky  
 
“Engages in discussions of identity in the past, presenting new research that is transforming how we understand the Mesoamerican Formative period.”—Cynthia Robin, author of Everyday Life Matters: Maya Farmers at Chan 
 
This volume examines shifting social identities, lived experiences, and networks of interaction in Mexico during the Mesoamerican Formative period (2000 BCE–250 CE), an era that helped produce some of the world’s most renowned complex civilizations. The chapters offer significant data, innovative methodologies, and novel perspectives on Mexican archaeology.
 
Using diverse and non-traditional theoretical approaches, contributors discuss interregional relationships and the exchange of ideas in contexts ranging from the Gulf Coast Olmec region to the site of Tlatilco in Central Mexico to the often-overlooked cultures of the far western states. Their essays explore identity formation, cosmological perspectives, the first hints of social complexity, the underpinnings of Formative period economies, and the sensorial implications of sociocultural change.
 
Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages is one of the first volumes to address the entirety of this rich and complex era and region, offering a new and holistic view. Through a wealth of exciting interpretations from international senior and emerging scholars, this volume shows the strong influence of cultural exchange as well as the compelling individuality of local and regional contexts over two thousand years of history.
 
Catharina E. Santasilia, adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of Tlatilco Uncovered. Guy David Hepp, associate professor of anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino, is the author of La Consentida: Settlement, Subsistence, and Social Organization in an Early Formative Mesoamerican Community. Richard A. Diehl, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alabama, is the author of several books, including The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization.