Arthur A Joyce
Biographic Data
| ID | 82501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arthur A Joyce |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arthur A |
| FAMILY NAME | Joyce |
| SIGNATURE | JOYCE A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6769-3900 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 496 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The emergence of divine rulership in Formative Mesoamerica
The Power of Monuments in Ruin in Ancient Oaxaca
This article examines two ruined monumental architectural complexes in ancient Oaxaca: the Main Plaza of Monte Albán and the acropolis of Río Viejo. I consider how the material vibrancy of these ruins differed in ways that both brought together and destabilized communities. After its abandonment, the ruins of the Main Plaza, as well as the mountain on which it was built, continued to assemble substances important to human well-being, including ra…
The Vibrancy of Ruins in Ancient Mesoamerica
This article considers people’s relations with ruins in the Mesoamerican past from the perspective of two approaches within the ontological turn. The first examines ruins drawing on Indigenous ontologies, while the second involves the application of a new materialist perspective that incorporates Peircean semiotics. Both approaches view matter as animate and share a relational, nonbinary, and nonessentializing position. Research drawing on ethnog…
Landscape ecology, settlement, and land use in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, México: An unusual case for coastal Mesoamerica
This article examines the roles of coastal environments in prehispanic settlement patterns and land use within the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, México using interdisciplinary methods. We first compare population levels in the coastal zone—including areas by the estuaries and sea—to inland habitats such as the floodplain. Second, we discuss resource extraction and trade associated with the coastal zone. Excavations and a 224 km2 full-coverage s…
Preceramic Mesoamerica
The Symbolism, Use, and Archaeological Context of Masks in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico
The production and use of masks at multiple scales and in diverse contexts is a millennia-long tradition in Mesoamerica. In this paper, we explore some implications of Mesoamerican masking practices in light of materiality studies and the archaeology of the senses. We also discuss a collection of 22 masks, miniature masks and representations of masks from the lower Río Verde valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The iconography of these artefacts as …
Mapping agricultural assemblages in ancient Oaxaca from the domestication of maize to the collapse of Monte Albán
This article examines the religious and political significance of human involvements with maize in ancient Oaxaca using an approach that merges assemblage theory with Peircean semiotics. The article maps changes in an agricultural assemblage involving linked material and semiotic flows among rain, sun, earth, maize, and people from the adoption of domesticates in Oaxaca at about 4000 BCE to after the collapse of the city of Monte Albán at ca. 800…
Una perspectiva bioarqueológica del cambio social en el bajo Río Verde, Oaxaca, México
Durante los proyectos arqueológicos en el valle del bajo Río Verde en Oaxaca, México se han descubierto una serie de restos humanos pertenecientes a la parte tardía del periodo Formativo (400 a.C. - 250 d.C.) hasta el periodo Clásico temprano. A través de estos siglos, sucedieron cambios sociales importantes, incluyendo la propuesta de una posible conquista de la zona por los habitantes de Monte Albán y un episodio de centralización político segu…
Early Transformations of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza and Their Political Implications, 500 BC–AD 200
The bioarchaeology of the Cerro de la Cruz cemetery, Oaxaca, Mexico
Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas
This exciting collection explores the interplay of religion and politics in the precolumbian Americas. Each thought-provoking contribution positions religion as a primary factor influencing political innovations in this period, reinterpreting major changes through an examination of how religion both facilitated and constrained transformations in political organization and status relations. Offering unparalleled geographic and temporal coverage of…
Constituting Animacy and Community in a Terminal Formative Bundled Offering from the Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico
In this paper, we examine a Terminal Formative-period (150 bc–ad 250) bundled offering from the site of Cerro de la Virgen, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. The offering was emplaced below a prominent public building in the site's ceremonial centre and contained five stone objects, including a rain deity mask, a fragment of a second mask, a figurine of a deceased ancestor and two miniature table altars, as well as nine small cerami…
Alternative Pathways to Power in Formative Oaxaca
Economic growth in Mesoamerica: Obsidian consumption in the coastal lowlands
Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization: A Comparative Study of Religion and Politics in Later Formative Oaxaca
Stacie King's comment on "Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization \nA Comparative Study of Religion and Politics in Later Formative Oaxaca," where Arthur A. Joyce and Sarah B. Barber examine the interplay of religion and politics during the later Formative period of Mesoamerica through a comparison of two regions of southern Mexico: the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca
Reconstructing the formation and land use history of the Mound 2 depression at Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Political Transformations and the Everyday in Postclassic Oaxaca
We use excavations of low-status houses to explore Postclassic political and economic transformations in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca. Following the collapse of Classic period political institutions, commoners experienced greater economic and political autonomy. Residential excavations at Río Viejo indicate that commoners took advantage of the absence of regional authority to gain greater control over surplus craft products, especially cott…
Comentario. Reflexiones críticas sobre el estudio de la escritura pictográfica en México
Alluvial Stratigraphy and the Search for Preceramic Open-air Sites in Highland Mesoamerica
The Preceramic archaeological record of highland Mesoamerica is biased toward rockshelter sites. We advocate more fieldwork in streamside settings, where open-air sites are likely to be found for reasons related both to the systemic context of hunter-gatherer lifeways and to the geoarchaeological context of site burial and preservation. Predicting site location requires attention to the peculiar nature and behavior of incised ephemeral streams (b…
Communing with nature, the ancestors and the neighbors: Ancient ceramic musical instruments from coastal Oaxaca, Mexico
The Mesoamerican Formative period (1600 bce–ce 250) saw the establishment of sedentism, dietary transformations and the development of ceramic technologies for subsistence, artistic representation and the region's earliest preserved musical instruments. These instruments include aerophones such as whistles, ocarinas and flutes. In this paper, we describe sixty-three ceramic aerophones from mostly Formative period contexts in coastal Oaxaca, Mexic…
Polity And Ecology In Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca
"Encapsulating two decades of research, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca is the first major treatment of the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca, investigating its social, political, and ecological history. Tracing Formative period developments from the earliest known evidence of human presence to the collapse of Río Viejo (the region's first centralized polity), the volume synthesizes the archaeological and paleoecological evid…
From Flesh to Clay: Formative Period Iconography from Oaxaca’s Lower Río Verde Valley
Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca: An Introduction
Situational Inalienability and Social Change in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca
This paper examines the role of caches, burials, and mortuary offerings as forms of inalienable wealth in the lower Río Verde valley of Pacific coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Interred in socially meaningful places, bodies and objects were removed from circulation but remained integral to interactions among the living, acquiring "situational" inalienability. Tracing the history of caching and burial practices over the course of the later Formative period…
Shifting Patterns of Obsidian Exchange in Postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico
In this paper, we present a diachronic analysis of obsidian procurement patterns during the Postclassic period in the Lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. The study is based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and visual analysis of obsidian artifacts from excavated household contexts at Early Postclassic (a.d.800–1100) Río Viejo and Late Postclassic (a.d.1100–1522) Tututepec (Yucu Dzaa). We report the presence of at least six sources of obsidian imported t…
Ideology, Power, and Urban Society in Pre-Hispanic Oaxaca
Methodological Issues in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics
A recent study of Early Formative Mesoamerican pottery by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) yielded surprising results that prompted two critiques in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The INAA study indicated that the Olmec center of San Lorenzo was a major exporter of carved-incised and white pottery and that little if any pottery made elsewhere was consumed at San Lorenzo. The critiques purport to "overturn" the…
Formative Period Social Change in the Lower Rio Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article reports on archaeological and geomorphological research carried out by the 1988 Río Verde Formative Project in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. The research suggests that the region was only sparsely inhabited prior to 500 B. C. During the Late/Terminal Formative (400 B. C.-A. D. 250), however, survey data suggest that the lower Río Verde Valley experienced considerable population growth. Excavations at the sites of Cerro …
Lord 8 Deer "Jaguar Claw" and the Land of the Sky: The Archaeology and History of Tututepec
This article balances current understandings of the political landscape of Postclassic Mesoamerica through a conjunctive analysis of the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Mixtec Empire of Tututepec in the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. Tututepec has long been known from ethnohistoric sources as a powerful Late Postclassic imperial center. Until recently, however, little has been known of the archaeology of the site. We discuss the founding, …
Smokescreens in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics
We are glad that Sharer et al. (this issue) have dropped their original claim that the INAA data demonstrate multidirectional movement of Early Formative pottery. Beyond this, however, they offer nothing that might enhance understanding of Early Formative ceramic circulation or inspire new insights into Early Formative cultural evolution in Mesoamerica. Instead, their response contains fresh distortions, replications of mistakes made in their PNA…
Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast
Exchange Implications of Obsidian Source Analysis from the Lower Rio Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article considers the results of instrumental neutron-activation analyses of 61 obsidian artifacts recovered from excavations at four archaeological sites in the lower Río Verde valley on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Determinations of source locations of these artifacts permit the examination of changes in obsidian exchange patterns spanning the late Middle Formative to the Classic period. The results show that through most of this p…
Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization: A Comparative Study of Religion and Politics in Later Formative Oaxaca
Stacie King's comment on "Ensoulment, Entrapment, and Political Centralization \nA Comparative Study of Religion and Politics in Later Formative Oaxaca," where Arthur A. Joyce and Sarah B. Barber examine the interplay of religion and politics during the later Formative period of Mesoamerica through a comparison of two regions of southern Mexico: the lower Río Verde Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca
Ceramic Production and Exchange in Late/Terminal Formative Period Oaxaca
Patterns of Late/Terminal Formative period (ca. 500 B.C.-A.D. 300) ceramic exchange in Oaxaca are examined through instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Samples of 453 Late/Terminal Formative period sherds were submitted to the Missouri University Research Reactor for INAA to determine elemental composition. The sherds came from 20 excavated sites and two surveys in the following regions: the Valley of Oaxaca, Mixteca Alta, Mixteca Baj…
The Zapotec-Imperialism Argument: Insights from the Oaxaca Coast
Interregional Interaction and Social Development on the Oaxaca Coast
This article provides a synthetic examination of the role of external relations in the social, cultural, and political development of the Oaxaca Coast. The article deals primarily with the lower Río Verde valley and the southern Isthmus since these two regions have been the focus of archaeological research on the Oaxaca Coast; other areas of the coast are discussed when data permit. The data from the coast indicate that interregional relations we…
Prehispanic human ecology of the Río Verde drainage basin, Mexico
This article discusses the results of ten years of interdisciplinary archaeological research along the Río Verde drainage basin, Oaxaca, Mexico. In the highland valleys of the upper drainage basin we have documented six periods of significant geomorphic change. The first two were probably the result of climatic change during the mid‐Holocene. The four subsequent periods of landscape change are correlated with major shifts in demographics and huma…
Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico
"Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico examines the history of the rich and complex societies that arose and flourished in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Along with comparing patterns in the settlement, art, and architecture, and writing that developed in these regions, Joyce also uses contemporary social theory to challenge previous approaches and address many key problems in the archaeology of the Americas s…
Shifting Patterns of Obsidian Exchange in Postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico
In this paper, we present a diachronic analysis of obsidian procurement patterns during the Postclassic period in the Lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. The study is based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and visual analysis of obsidian artifacts from excavated household contexts at Early Postclassic (a.d.800–1100) Río Viejo and Late Postclassic (a.d.1100–1522) Tututepec (Yucu Dzaa). We report the presence of at least six sources of obsidian imported t…
Constituting Animacy and Community in a Terminal Formative Bundled Offering from the Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico
In this paper, we examine a Terminal Formative-period (150 bc–ad 250) bundled offering from the site of Cerro de la Virgen, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. The offering was emplaced below a prominent public building in the site's ceremonial centre and contained five stone objects, including a rain deity mask, a fragment of a second mask, a figurine of a deceased ancestor and two miniature table altars, as well as nine small cerami…
Communing with nature, the ancestors and the neighbors: Ancient ceramic musical instruments from coastal Oaxaca, Mexico
The Mesoamerican Formative period (1600 bce–ce 250) saw the establishment of sedentism, dietary transformations and the development of ceramic technologies for subsistence, artistic representation and the region's earliest preserved musical instruments. These instruments include aerophones such as whistles, ocarinas and flutes. In this paper, we describe sixty-three ceramic aerophones from mostly Formative period contexts in coastal Oaxaca, Mexic…
The social impact of anthropogenic landscape modification in the Río Verde drainage basin, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article examines the effects of anthropogenic landscape modification in the upper drainage basin of the Río Verde on environments and populations of the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. Archaeological and geomorphological research conducted by the Río Verde Formative Project indicates that Late Formative (400–100 B.C.) population growth and agricultural intensification in the Oaxaca and Nochixtlán valleys increased erosion and runoff …
Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas
This exciting collection explores the interplay of religion and politics in the precolumbian Americas. Each thought-provoking contribution positions religion as a primary factor influencing political innovations in this period, reinterpreting major changes through an examination of how religion both facilitated and constrained transformations in political organization and status relations. Offering unparalleled geographic and temporal coverage of…
Late Formative Community Organization and Social Complexity on the Oaxaca Coast
Excavations at Cerro de la Cruz on the western coast of Oaxaca exposed the remains of two residential terraces from the Late Formative Period (400–100 B.C.). Portions of 11 Late Formative structures were cleared, including probable residences, storehouses, and a public building. Burials yielded the remains of 84 individuals dated to the same period. Intrasite patterning of selected artifacts, architecture, and features as well as comparative data…
Mapping agricultural assemblages in ancient Oaxaca from the domestication of maize to the collapse of Monte Albán
This article examines the religious and political significance of human involvements with maize in ancient Oaxaca using an approach that merges assemblage theory with Peircean semiotics. The article maps changes in an agricultural assemblage involving linked material and semiotic flows among rain, sun, earth, maize, and people from the adoption of domesticates in Oaxaca at about 4000 BCE to after the collapse of the city of Monte Albán at ca. 800…
Alluvial Stratigraphy and the Search for Preceramic Open-air Sites in Highland Mesoamerica
The Preceramic archaeological record of highland Mesoamerica is biased toward rockshelter sites. We advocate more fieldwork in streamside settings, where open-air sites are likely to be found for reasons related both to the systemic context of hunter-gatherer lifeways and to the geoarchaeological context of site burial and preservation. Predicting site location requires attention to the peculiar nature and behavior of incised ephemeral streams (b…
The bioarchaeology of the Cerro de la Cruz cemetery, Oaxaca, Mexico
Political Transformations and the Everyday in Postclassic Oaxaca
We use excavations of low-status houses to explore Postclassic political and economic transformations in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca. Following the collapse of Classic period political institutions, commoners experienced greater economic and political autonomy. Residential excavations at Río Viejo indicate that commoners took advantage of the absence of regional authority to gain greater control over surplus craft products, especially cott…
Multiproxy paleoecological reconstruction of prehistoric land-use history in the western region of the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico
Paleoecological archives from three paleomeander sites and one archeological feature located in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico, are used to develop a spatial understanding of the patterns of prehistoric agricultural land use over the last ~3000 years. Multiproxy paleoecological data at each site (i.e. magnetic susceptibility, micro- and macroscopic charcoal, pollen and stable carbon isotopes) provide a history of land use. By examinin…
Theorizing Urbanism in Ancient Mesoamerica
In this article I consider recent research on urbanism in ancient Mesoamerica, especially over the past twenty years. I focus on the theoretical perspectives that archaeologists use to address cities, urbanism, and urbanization. I argue that despite some significant advances in how we understand urbanism, most research continues to be embedded within cultural evolutionist, functionalist, and elitist theoretical frameworks. I highlight approaches …
Population Pressure Theory, Elite Exploitation, and Reproductive Success
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The Nuclear Arms Race: An Evolutionary Perspective
This paper uses a Darwinian perspective to examine the nuclear arms race in the context of "arms races" in evolution and throughout human history. The rise of human "arms races," or escalatory intergroup competition, is traced to a variety of environmental triggers initiated during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene. These triggers removed extraspecific environmental constraints to escalatory intergroup competition in some areas of the world…
Formative Period Social Change in the Lower Rio Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article reports on archaeological and geomorphological research carried out by the 1988 Río Verde Formative Project in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. The research suggests that the region was only sparsely inhabited prior to 500 B. C. During the Late/Terminal Formative (400 B. C.-A. D. 250), however, survey data suggest that the lower Río Verde Valley experienced considerable population growth. Excavations at the sites of Cerro …
The social impact of anthropogenic landscape modification in the Río Verde drainage basin, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article examines the effects of anthropogenic landscape modification in the upper drainage basin of the Río Verde on environments and populations of the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. Archaeological and geomorphological research conducted by the Río Verde Formative Project indicates that Late Formative (400–100 B.C.) population growth and agricultural intensification in the Oaxaca and Nochixtlán valleys increased erosion and runoff …
Abandonment and the production of archaeological variability at domestic sites
Introduction Since the pioneering work of Robert Ascher (1961, 1968), archaeologists have stressed the importance of studying archaeological formation processes for understanding human behavior in the past (Binford 1981a, 1981b; Schiffer 1972, 1976, 1983, 1987; Wood and Johnson 1978). A systematic understanding of archaeological formation processes provides the inferential bridge between static patterns of the archaeological record and dynamic pa…
Interregional Interaction and Social Development on the Oaxaca Coast
This article provides a synthetic examination of the role of external relations in the social, cultural, and political development of the Oaxaca Coast. The article deals primarily with the lower Río Verde valley and the southern Isthmus since these two regions have been the focus of archaeological research on the Oaxaca Coast; other areas of the coast are discussed when data permit. The data from the coast indicate that interregional relations we…
Late Formative Community Organization and Social Complexity on the Oaxaca Coast
Excavations at Cerro de la Cruz on the western coast of Oaxaca exposed the remains of two residential terraces from the Late Formative Period (400–100 B.C.). Portions of 11 Late Formative structures were cleared, including probable residences, storehouses, and a public building. Burials yielded the remains of 84 individuals dated to the same period. Intrasite patterning of selected artifacts, architecture, and features as well as comparative data…
Social Inequality in Ancient Mesoamerica Mesoamerican Elites: An Archaeological Assessment. Diane Z. Chase , Arlen F. Chase
Exchange Implications of Obsidian Source Analysis from the Lower Rio Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico
This article considers the results of instrumental neutron-activation analyses of 61 obsidian artifacts recovered from excavations at four archaeological sites in the lower Río Verde valley on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Determinations of source locations of these artifacts permit the examination of changes in obsidian exchange patterns spanning the late Middle Formative to the Classic period. The results show that through most of this p…
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Ideology, Power, and Urban Society in Pre-Hispanic Oaxaca
Ideology, Power, and State Formation in the Valley of Oaxaca
Prehispanic human ecology of the Río Verde drainage basin, Mexico
This article discusses the results of ten years of interdisciplinary archaeological research along the Río Verde drainage basin, Oaxaca, Mexico. In the highland valleys of the upper drainage basin we have documented six periods of significant geomorphic change. The first two were probably the result of climatic change during the mid‐Holocene. The four subsequent periods of landscape change are correlated with major shifts in demographics and huma…
The Zapotec-Imperialism Argument: Insights from the Oaxaca Coast
On Oaxaca Coast Archaeology: Setting the Record Straight
Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast
Carved Monuments and Calendrical Names: The Rulers of Río Viejo, Oaxaca
This paper describes 15 stone monuments documented until the 1995 field season at Río Viejo, the largest settlement in the alluvial plains of the Río Verde drainage in Coastal Oaxaca from 100 B.C. to A.D. 1100. The monuments, all seemingly dating to the Classic period (A.D. 600–900), include mainly carved stelae that most often depict elaborately dressed human figures accompanied by their calendrical names. The large size of these monuments and t…
Lord 8 Deer "Jaguar Claw" and the Land of the Sky: The Archaeology and History of Tututepec
This article balances current understandings of the political landscape of Postclassic Mesoamerica through a conjunctive analysis of the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Mixtec Empire of Tututepec in the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. Tututepec has long been known from ethnohistoric sources as a powerful Late Postclassic imperial center. Until recently, however, little has been known of the archaeology of the site. We discuss the founding, …
Stratigraphic evidence for anthropogenically induced coastal environmental change from Oaxaca, Mexico
Previous interdisciplinary paleoenvironmental and archaeological research along the Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, showed that Holocene erosion in the highland valleys of the upper drainage basin triggered geomorphic changes in the river's coastal floodplain. This article uses stratigraphic data from sediment cores extracted from Laguna Pastoría, an estuary in the lower Río Verde Valley, to examine changes in coastal geomorphology potentiall…
Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers (review)
Reviewed by: Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers by Kent G. Lightfoot Arthur A. Joyce Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. By Kent G. Lightfoot. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Over the past 25 years cultural anthropology and archaeology have increasingly turned towards historical perspectives for both th…
Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast
Introduction - Jessica Joyce Christie Part 1. Identification of Palaces 1. Looking for Moche Palaces in the Elite Residences of the Huacas of Moche Site - Claude Chapdelaine 2. Landscape of Power: A Network of Palaces in Middle Horizon Peru - William H. Isbell 3. Lords of the Great House: Pueblo Bonito as a Palace - Stephen H. Lekson Part 2. Palaces as Active Stage Sets of Political Ideology 4. Sacred and Profane Mountains of the Pasion: Contrast…
Methodological Issues in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics
A recent study of Early Formative Mesoamerican pottery by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) yielded surprising results that prompted two critiques in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The INAA study indicated that the Olmec center of San Lorenzo was a major exporter of carved-incised and white pottery and that little if any pottery made elsewhere was consumed at San Lorenzo. The critiques purport to "overturn" the…
Smokescreens in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics
We are glad that Sharer et al. (this issue) have dropped their original claim that the INAA data demonstrate multidirectional movement of Early Formative pottery. Beyond this, however, they offer nothing that might enhance understanding of Early Formative ceramic circulation or inspire new insights into Early Formative cultural evolution in Mesoamerica. Instead, their response contains fresh distortions, replications of mistakes made in their PNA…
Ceramic Production and Exchange in Late/Terminal Formative Period Oaxaca
Patterns of Late/Terminal Formative period (ca. 500 B.C.-A.D. 300) ceramic exchange in Oaxaca are examined through instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Samples of 453 Late/Terminal Formative period sherds were submitted to the Missouri University Research Reactor for INAA to determine elemental composition. The sherds came from 20 excavated sites and two surveys in the following regions: the Valley of Oaxaca, Mixteca Alta, Mixteca Baj…
Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico
"Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos: Ancient Peoples of Southern Mexico examines the history of the rich and complex societies that arose and flourished in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Along with comparing patterns in the settlement, art, and architecture, and writing that developed in these regions, Joyce also uses contemporary social theory to challenge previous approaches and address many key problems in the archaeology of the Americas s…
Archaeology (34 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (34 works) · Geography (32 works) · Latin American history and culture (26 works) · History (25 works) · Art (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Politics (18 works) · Formative assessment (17 works)