Postclassic Mesoamerican World

by Michael E. Smith

Edited by Michael E. Smith and Frances F. Berdan Anthropology and Archaeology The past two decades have seen an explosion of research on Postclassic Mesoamerican societies. In this ambitious new volume, the editors and contributors seek to present a complete picture of the middle and late Postclassic period (ca. AD 1100-1500) employing a new theoretical framework.

Mesoamerican societies after the collapse of the great city-states of Tula and Chichen Itza stand out from earlier societies in a number of ways. They had larger regional populations, smaller polities, a higher volume of long-distance trade, greater diversity of trade goods, a more commercialized economy, and new standardized forms of pictorial writing and iconography. The emerging archaeological record reveals larger quantities of imported goods in Postclassic contexts, and ethnohistoric accounts describe marketplaces, professional merchants, and the use of money throughout Mesoamerica by the time of the Spanish conquest. The integration of this commercial economy with new forms of visual communication produced a dynamic world system that reached every corner of Mesoamerica.

Thirty-six focused articles by twelve authors describe and analyze the complexity of Postclassic Mesoamerica. After an initial theoretical section, chapters are organized by key polities, economic networks, information networks, case studies, and comparisons. Covering a region from western Mexico to Yucatan and the southwestern Maya highlands, this volume should be in the library of anyone with a serious interest in ancient Mexico.

Genres: Archaeology

430 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

See also:

Michael E. Smith, author on international relations
Michael E. Smith (Derbyshire)

Michael Ernest Smith (born 1953) is an American archaeologist working primarily with Aztec and general Mesoamerican archaeology. He has written numerous scholarly articles about central Mexican archaeology as well as several books about the Aztecs, among them a widely used textbook (Smith 2003). He is currently Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He is known for stressing the importance of assessing archaeological evidence independently of the ethnohistorical sources, and advocating its use as a source of knowledge about the Aztecs.