Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.
1. Introduction: Early Mesoamerican Cities, Urbanism, and Urbanization in the Formative Period Michael Love; 2. Oaxaca's Formative Period Cities and their Implications for Early Urbanism in Mesoamerica Arthur A. Joyce; 3. Early Urbanization in the Formative Gulf Lowlands, Mexico Christopher A. Pool and Michael L. Loughlin; 4. Patterns of Early Urbanism in the Southern Maya Lowlands Marcello A. Canuto and Francisco Estrada-Belli; 5. The Role of Middle Preclassic Placemaking in the Creation of Late Preclassic Yucatecan Cities: The Foundations of Yaxuná Travis W. Stanton and Ryan H. Collins; 6. The City over the City: Kaminaljuyu and Urbanism Bárbara Arroyo; 7. The New Normal: Formative Period Cities on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica Michael Love and Robert M. Rosenswig; 8. The Nature of Early Urbanism at Teotihuacan Saburo Sugiyama; 9. Art and Urbanity in Late Formative Mesoamerica Julia Guernsey and Stephanie M. Strauss; 10. Landscape and Leadership in Mesoamerican Cities: A Comparative View Monica L. Smith; 11. Experimental Cities? Norman Yoffee.
Michael Love is Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Northridge. He is the author of Early Complex Society in Pacific Guatemala and editor of The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic. Julia Guernsey is the D.J. Sibley Family Centennial Faculty Fellow in Prehistoric Art at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica and Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica.
