Settlement, Subsistence and Social Complexity: Essays Honoring the Legacy of Jeffrey R. Parsons


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Series: Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives 1
ISBN: 978-1-931745-20-8
Publication Date: Jan 2006
Price: Hb $14.98, Pb $9.98, eBook $9.98
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Richard E. Blanton

This volume brings together the work of some of the most prominent archaeologists to document the impact of Jeffrey R. Parsons on contemporary archaeological method and theory. Parsons is a central figure in the development of settlement pattern archaeology, in which the goal is the study of whole social systems at the scale of regions. In recent decades, regional archaeology has revolutionized how we understand the past, contributing new data and theoretical insights on topics such as early urbanism, social interactions among cities, towns and villages, and long-term population and agricultural change, among many other topics relevant to the study of early civilizations and the evolution of social complexity. Over the past 40 years, the application of these methods by Parsons and others has profoundly changed how we understand the evolution of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilization, and now similar methods are being applied in other world areas. The book's emphasis is on the contribution of settlement pattern archaeology to research in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, but its authors also point to the value of regional research in South America, South Asia, and China. Topics addressed include early urbanism, household and gender, agricultural and craft production, migration, ethnogenesis, the evolution of early chiefdoms, and the emergence of pre-modern world-systems.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction by Richard E. Blanton, Mary Hrones Parsons, Luis Morett Alatorre, and Carla M. Sinopoli 
Chapter 2. Regional Survey at Vijayanagara, South Asia: New World Methodologies in Old World Urban Contexts by Carla M. Sinopoli
Chapter 3. Settlement Pattern Archaeology in the Teotihuacan Valley and the Adjacent Northeastern Basin of Mexico A.P. (After Parsons) by Thomas H. Charlton and Deborah L. Nichols
Chapter 4. Opting In and Opting Out: Tula, Cholula and Xaltocan by Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Chapter 5. The Tunanmarca Polity of Highland Peru and its Settlement System (AD 1350–1450) by Timothy Earle
Chapter 6. Early Chiefdom Communities Compared: The Settlement Pattern  Record for Chifeng, the Alto Magdalena, and the Valley of Oaxaca by Robert D. Drennan and Christian E. Peterson
Chapter 7. Past Lives in Different Places: The Origins and Relationships of Teotihuacan’s Foreign Residents by Michael W. Spence, Christine D. White, Evelyn C. Rattray, and Fred J. Longstaffe 
Chapter 8. Men, Women, and Maguey: The Houshold Division of Labor Among Aztec Farmers by Susan Toby Evans
Chapter 9. More Than Alluvial Land and Water: The Late Pre-Hispanic Emergence of Eastern Tlacolula, Oaxaca, Mexico by Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas 
Chapter 10. The Mesoamerican World of Goods and its Transformations by Richard E. Blanton, Lane F. Fargher, and Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza
Chapter 11. The Achievements of and Prospects for Survey Archaeology by Richard E. Blanton