Title: Colonial and postcolonial change in Mesoamerica : archaeology as historical anthropology /
Authors: Alexander, Rani T., 1962-; Kepecs, Susan, 1946-
Year: 2018
Subjects: Indians of Mexico Antiquities; Indians of Central America Antiquities; Archaeology and history Mexico.; Archaeology and history Central America.; Archaeology and history; Indians of Central America Antiquities.; Indians of Mexico Antiquities.; Central America; Mexico
Abstract: "This book offers a new account of human interaction and culture change for Mesoamerica that connects the present to the past. Social histories that assess the cultural upheavals between the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica and the ethnographic present overlook the archaeological record, with its unique capacity to link local practices to global processes. To fill this gap, the authors weigh the material manifestations of the colonial and postcolonial trajectory in light of local, regional, and global historical processes that have unfolded over the last five hundred years. Research on a suite of issues--economic history, production of commodities, agrarian change, resistance, religious shifts, and sociocultural identity--demonstrates that the often shocking patterns observed today are historically contingent and culturally mediated, and therefore explainable. This book belongs to a new wave of scholarship that renders the past immediately relevant to the present, which Alexander and Kepecs see as one of archaeology's most crucial goals"--
Contents: Colonial and postcolonial change in Mesoamerica : an introduction / Susan Kepecs and Rani T. Alexander -- Mexico City, Mérida, and the world : Kondratieff waves on the periphery / Susan Kepecs and Patricia Fournier García -- Commodities production and technological change / Susan Kepecs, Patricia Fournier García, Rani T. Alexander, and Cynthia L. Otis Charlton -- Agrarian ecology and historical contingency in landscape change / Rani T. Alexander, Janine Gasco, and Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Archaeologies of resistance / Rani T. Alexander, Susan Kepecs, Joel W. Palka, and Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Religion and ritual in postconquest Mesoamerica / Judith Francis Zeitlin and Joel W. Palka -- Sociocultural identities / Judith Francis Zeitlin, Patricia Fournier García, Joel W. Palka, and Janine Gasco -- Historical archaeology in the basin of Mexico : the Otumba case / Thomas H. Charlton and Cynthia L. Otis Charlton -- Material culture, status, and identity in post-independence central Mexico : urban and rural dimensions / Patricia Fournier García -- Indigenous communities, colonization, and interethnic interaction in Tehuantepec, 1450 to the present / Judith Francis Zeitlin -- Anthropogenic landscapes of Soconusco, past and present / Janine Gasco -- Cross-cultural interaction and Lacandon ethnogenesis in the southern Maya lowland frontier, AD 1400 to the present / Joel W. Palka -- Agrarian ecology in Yucatán, 1450-2000 / Rani T. Alexander -- The longue durée, from salt to sea cucumbers : Kondratieff waves in Chikinchel, on the very far periphery / Susan Kepecs -- The underlying aim of historical archaeology : a conclusion / Susan Kepecs and Rani T. Alexander.