Archaeologists across the Midwest have pooled their data and perspectives to produce this indispensable volume on the Native cultures of the Late Woodland period (approximately A.D. 300–1000). Sandwiched between the well-known Hopewellian and Mississippian eras of monumental mound construction, the Late Woodland period has received insufficient attention from archaeologists, who have frequently characterized it as consisting of relatively drab artifact assemblages. The close connections between this period and subsequent Mississippian and Fort Ancient societies, however, make it especially valuable for cross-cultural researchers. Understanding the cultural processes at work during the Late Woodland period will yield important clues about the long-term forces that stimulate and enhance social inequality.
Late Woodland Societies is notable for its comprehensive geographic coverage; exhaustive presentation and discussion of sites, artifacts, and prehistoric cultural practices; and critical summaries of interpretive perspectives and trends in scholarship. The vast amount of information and theory brought together, examined, and synthesized by the contributors produces a detailed, coherent, and systematic picture of Late Woodland lifestyles across the Midwest. The Late Woodland can now be seen as a dynamic time in its own right and instrumental to the emergence of complex late prehistoric cultures across the Midwest and Southeast.
This is the first book in 40 years to consider systematically the nature and extent of Southwestern Mesoamerican interactions.
Is the Southwest simply the northernmost extent of Mesoamerica or is it an independent entity that developed on its own with only occasional borrowings from Mesoamerica? This question is the basis for a debate that extends to the very beginnings of archaeological investigation in the Southwest.
Mathien and McGuire have brought together 12 papers and two commentaries that challenge this long-standing and perhaps misleading central question. Reality, suggest their 13 contributors, lies not at these polar opposites but along a continuum of interactions and economic connections on a number of geographic levels. These papers raise a series of sophisticated issues that are both theoretical and empirical. Can models such as Wallerstein’s be used to study the prehistory of the Southwest and Mesoamerica and by implication other prehistoric economic systems? When is a region peripheral and when is it external? How may the boundaries of large economic systems be determined?
For more than 25 years the Peabody Museum has been publishing The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions under the editorial and artistic direction of Mayanist Ian Graham. The goal of this unique series of folio volumes is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world.
Each volume in the series consists of three fascicles, which examine an individual site or group of neighboring sites and include maps of site location and plans indicating the placement monuments within each site. Each inscription is reproduced in its entirety in both photographs and line drawings. The text of each volume presents descriptive information about the sites and monuments and their associated artifacts.
