The Transition to Statehood in the New World (New Directions in Archaeology) - Hardcover

Jones, Grant D.; Kautz, Robert R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521240751 ISBN 13: 9780521240758

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1981

Synopsis

This 1982 collection of eight original anthropological essays provides an exciting synthesis of theory and practice in one of the key issues of contemporary cultural evolutionary thought. The contributors ask why complex, highly stratified societies emerged at several locations in the New World at the same point in prehistory. Focusing primarily on the initial centers of civilization in Mesoamerica and the Andean region, they consider the sociopolitical, environmental and ideological factors in state formation. The essays discuss the prehistoric conditions and processes that simulated the development of the first state-level societies in Mesoamerica and Peru, and explore the difficulties archaeologists must face in their direct analysis of physical remains. In general, the contributors recognize a growing need for better archaeological solutions to the question of state origin and for more sensitivity to the problems as well as to the possibilities of ethnographic analogy.

About this title

Book Description:

This 1982 collection of eight original anthropological essays provides an exciting synthesis of theory and practice in one of the key issues of contemporary cultural evolutionary thought. The contributors ask why complex, highly stratified societies emerged at several locations in the New World at the same point in prehistory.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0521240751
• ISBN 13: 9780521240758
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240