Linda Manzanilla

This book gives an overview of different factors involved in the emergence and change in early urban societies in fourth-millennium Mesopotamia and Egypt; pre-Shang China; Classie horizon Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya Area; and Middle Horizon societies in the Andean Region. These factors range from centralized storage and redistributive econo mies, agromanagerial models, mercantile network control, confliet and conquest, conversion of military commanders into administrators, political power through monumental cosmic reproduction, and elite power through ideological change. It discusses specific archaeological data useful in theoretieal construction. In the Introduction, a discussion of different developmental processes of urban societies is made. The Eastern Anatolian example emphasizes the role played by interregional exchange networks linking the Mesopotamian plains with the Syro-Anatolian regions. The emergence of an elite is related with the control of the movement of craft goods and raw materials, more than with the appropriation of subsistence goods. The Chinese example stresses the importance of conflict provoked by demographie pressures on resources. The Mesoamerican cases relate to vast urban developments and manu facturing centers, ideological importance of monumental planning, and changing behavior of elites. The Andean cases are related either to the transformation of theocratie leadership into military administrators oe to the agricultural intensification model.

Emergence and Change in Early Urban Societies

Claude Chapdelaine

With major differences in size, urban plans, and population density, the capitals of New World states had large heterogeneous societies, sometimes multiethnic and highly specialized, making these cities amazing backdrops for complex interactions. What do their houses tell us about specialization, ethnicity, and hierarchy? This book explores these issues, reviewing case studies from Mesoamerica (such as Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, Xochicalco, Tula, Sayil, Chac, Tikal, and Copan) and South America (such as Tiwanaku, Huacas de Moche, Huari, Chan Chan, and Cuzco).

A Study of Specialization, Hierarchy, and Ethnicity

Domestic Life in Prehispanic Capitals

Gary M. Feinman

Drawing on Kent Flannery's forty years of cross-cultural research in the area, the contributors to this collection reflect the current diversity of contemporary approaches to the study of cultural evolutionary processes. Collectively the volume expresses the richness of the issues being investigated by comparative theorists interested in long-term change, as well as the wide variety of data, approaches, and ideas that researchers are employing to examine these questions.

Linda Manzanilla

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