Description
Book SynopsisAfter Monte Alban 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 Alban. 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 Alban establishes Postclassic Oaxaca's central place in the study of Mesoamerican antiquity. Contributors include Jeffrey P. Blomster, Bruce E. Byland, Gerardo Gutierrez, Byron Ellsworth Hamann, Arthur A. Joyce, Stacie M. King, Michael D. Lind, Robert Markens, Cira Martinez Lopez, Michel R. Oudijk, and Marcus Winter.
Table of ContentsContents; Preface; Section I. The Late Classic/Postclassic in Oaxaca'An Introduction; 1. Changing Cloud Formations: The Sociopolitics of Oaxaca in Late Classic/Postclassic Mesoamerica; Jeffrey P. Blomster; Section II. Chronology, Continuity, and Disjunction: Etic and Emic Perspectives; 2. Advances in Defining the Classic-Postclassic Portion of the Valley of Oaxaca Ceramic Chronology: Occurrence and Phyletic Seriation; Robert Markens; 3. The Postclassic Period in the Valley of Oaxaca: The Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Records; Michel R. Oudijk; 4. Heirlooms and Ruins: High Culture, Mesoamerican Civilization, and the Postclassic Oaxacan Tradition; Byron Ellsworth Hamann; Section III. Continuity and Abandonment of Houses in the Valley of Oaxaca: Lambityeco and Macuilxochitl; 5. The Classic to Postclassic at Lambityeco; Michael D. Lind; 6. Ethnohistory, Oral History, and Archaeology at Macuilxochitl: Perspectives on the Postclassic Period (800'1521 CE) in the Valley of Oaxaca; Robert Markens, Marcus Winter, and Cira Martinez Lopez; Section IV. Changing Power Relations and Interaction in the Lower Rio Verde Valley; 7. Domination, Negotiation, and Collapse: A History of Centralized Authority on the Oaxaca Coast before the Late Postclassic; Arthur A. Joyce; 8. Interregional Networks of the Oaxacan Early Postclassic: Connecting the Coast and the Highlands; Stacie M. King; Section V. Sacred History and Legitimization in the Mixteca Alta; 9. Legitimization, Negotiation, and Appropriation in Postclassic Oaxaca: Mixtec Stone Codices; Jeffrey P. Blomster; 10. Tree Birth, the Solar Oracle, and Achiutla: Mixtec Sacred History and the Classic to Postclassic Transition; Bruce E. Byland; Section VI. New Research Frontiers in Oaxaca and Eastern Guerrero; 11. Classic and Postclassic Archaeological Features of the Mixteca-Tlapaneca-Nahua Region of Guerrero: Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me the Classic Period Was Over?; Gerardo Gutierrez; 12. Classic to Postclassic in Four Oaxaca Regions: The Mazateca, the Chinantla, the Mixe Region, and the Southern Isthmus; Marcus Winter; List of Contributors; Index
