Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Etlatongo is a beautiful example of how an anthropologically-oriented archaeologist will lay out a major problem - in this case, the nature of the relationship between Oaxaca's Mixteca Alta and the Olmec heartland - and proceed to solve it by means of meticulous excavations. Blomster has written a fine archaeological monograph with grace and logic."
About the Author
Born and raised in eastern Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Blomster received his undergraduate education at Washington and Lee University, Virginia, and his graduate degrees at Yale University. He has been involved in archaeological projects throughout the eastern United States (Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, as well as the Southwest, where he served as an archaeologist and educator for Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, a non-profit research and educational organization. Most of Blomster¿s research, however, has been in Mexico ¿ specifically Oaxaca, where he has pursued his interests in early social complexity and interregional interaction in the Mixteca Alta, a mountainous region north of the Valley of Oaxaca. He is currently teaching at Brandeis University, in Waltham, MA.
Table of Contents
Foreword. Preface. 1. The Mixtecs of Oaxaca: An Introduction to Complexity, Interaction, and Formative Mesoamerica. 2. Desigining Research for the Nochixtlan Valley, or: Why I Went to the Mixteca Alta. 3. Community and Change: Etlatongo through Time. 4. Middle Cruz Social Complexity and Village Life at Etlatongo: A Formative Primer and Sampler. 5. Two Middle Cruz Occupations: Higher Status or Public Space? 6. Interregional Interaction at Etlatongo: Ceramic Style, Compositional Analysis and Radioactive Fire-Serpents. 7. Life and Death at Late Formative Etlatongo: Ancestors and the Yucuita Phase. 8. Conclusions: Complexity and Interregional Interaction at Etlatongo.