Mesoamerican Worlds Series
"After Monte Albán truly fills a void in current archaeological perspectives on the development of late Pre-Hispanic Oaxacan civilizations, placing them at the forefront of a new synthesis and at the same time highlighting a frontier of exciting research avenues for the future."
—Marilyn Masson, University at Albany (SUNY)
"This is without a doubt one of the best volumes ever to be produced on the ancient history of Oaxaca."
—Heather S. Orr, Western State College of Colorado
"After Monte Albán's eclectic offerings further our understanding of the Classic to Postclassic transition and reframe debates concerning fundamental understandings of complex sociopolitical organization and development in ancient Oaxaca."
—Marc N. Levine, Latin American Antiquity
After Monte Albán reveals the richness and interregional relevance of Postclassic transformations in the area now known as Oaxaca, which lies between Central Mexico and the Maya area and, as contributors to this volume demonstrate, achieved cultural centrality in pan-Mesoamerican networks. Large nucleated states throughout Oaxaca collapsed after 700 C.E., including the great Zapotec state centered in the Valley of Oaxaca, Monte Albán. Elite culture changed in fundamental ways as small city-states proliferated in Oaxaca, each with a new ruling dynasty required to devise novel strategies of legitimization. The vast majority of the population, though, sustained continuity in lifestyle, religion, and cosmology.
Contributors synthesize these regional transformations and continuities in the lower Rio Verde Valley, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Mixteca Alta. They provide data from material culture, architecture, codices, ethnohistoric documents, and ceramics, including a revised ceramic chronology from the Late Classic to the end of the Postclassic that will be crucial to future investigations. After Monte Albán establishes Postclassic Oaxaca's central place in the study of Mesoamerican antiquity.
Contributors: Jeffrey P. Blomster, Bruce E. Byland, Gerardo Gutiérrez, Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Arthur A. Joyce, Stacie M. King, Michael D. Lind, Robert Markens, Cira Martínez López, Michel R. Oudijk, Marcus Winter