Origins of the Nuu

Combining older findings with new data on 1,000 previously undescribed archaeological sites, Origins of the #xC3;#x18;uupresents the cultural evolution of the Mixteca Alta in an up-to-date chronological framework. The #xC3;#xB1;uu--the kingdoms of the famous Mixtec codices--are traced back through the Postclassic and Classic periods to their beginnings in the first states of the Terminal Formative, revealing their origin, evolution, and persistence through two cycles of growth and collapse. Challenging assumptions that the Mixtec were peripheral to better-known peoples such as the Aztecs and Maya, the book asserts that the #xC3;#xB1;uu were a major demographic and economic power in their own right. Older explanations of multiregional or macroregional systems often portrayed civilizations as rising in a cradle or hearth and spreading outward. New macroregional studies show that civilizations are products of more complex interactions among regions, in which peripheries are not simply shaped by cores but by their interactions with multiple societies at varying distances from major centers. Origins of the #xC3;#x18;uu is a significant contribution to this emerging area of archaeological research.

Stephen A. Kowalewski is a professor of anthropology at the University of Georgia and has done fieldwork in the Southwest, Georgia, and Mexico. Andrew k. Balkansky, an associate professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University, is currently excavating early village sites in the Mixteca Alta. Laura R. Stiver Walsh is carrying out excavations with the Proyecto Arqueolgico Yucundaa at the Pueblo Viejo of Teposcolula, Mixteca Alta. Thomas J. Pluckhahn, associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, is investigating early village societies of the Gulf Coast of the Southeastern United States. John F. Chamblee, a postdoctoral research associate with the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Project at the University of Georgia, is studying the historical ecology of land tenure in the southern Appalachian region. Vernica Prez Rodrguez, associate professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University, is doing fieldwork on urbanism at Cerro Jazmn and its impact on the surrounding landscape. Verenice Y. Heredia espinoza assistant professor at the Colegio de Michoacn, is conducting a regional survey in the core zone of the Teuchitln tradition in Jalisco, Mexico. Charlotte A. Smith, principal archaeologist and owner of archaeofacts.com, is currently synthesizing Mesoamerican macroregional settlement pattern data.