Ancient Mexico & Central America : archaeology and culture history /

Aztec expert Evans (anthropology, Penn State Univ.) edited (with David Webster) Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia (CH, Apr'01) and coauthored (with Webster and William Sanders) a textbook, Out of the Past: An Introduction to Archaeology (1993), that emphasizes Mesoamerica. Evans's new culture history covers, unlike previous efforts, Mesoamerica and Central America (Northwest Mexico through Panama) c. 20,000 BCE-CE 1600. Cultural, ecological, and sociocultural paradigms derive from Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization (Sanders and Barbara Price, 1968). Logically organized, this new volume contains 20 well-written chapters supplemented by 459 splendid illustrations (80 in color), 21 maps, five chronological tables, 800 basic references, and a detailed 19-page index. Initial chapters explicate models and chronology, provide an overview, and cover Archaic and Initial Formative periods. Part 2 emphasizes Olmec and Middle to Terminal Formative regional cultures; Part 3 considers Classic period Teotihuacan and Maya; Part 4 documents Late and Epi-Classic Maya, central and west Mexico, and the Toltecs; and Part 5 emphasizes the Aztecs (but is deficient on Tarascan culture), concluding with early New Spain. This expensive, highly illustrated, superbly documented work (designed as a textbook and reference work) is comprehensive and current, supplanting all other compendia. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates and above. C. C. Kolb National Endowment for the Humanities

In his all-encompassing synthetic history of Native American cultures of the vast region comprising Mexico and Central America today, Evans (anthropology, Pennsylvania State Univ.) traverses many thousands of years, from the earliest hunter-foragers to the sophisticated, urbanized societies encountered by the Spaniards. With vast reading and dogged inclusiveness, Evans has produced what must be the most informative single-volume survey of Pre-Columbian social evolution available. The reader will not only learn about the current understanding of better-known peoples like the Maya and Aztec but will also be thoroughly immersed in the scholarship surrounding obscure and sometimes peripheral societies and sites. Less than perfectly attentive readers might be overwhelmed by the adherence to an outline that is "horizontally" structured according to stages of societal development and further subdivided into not always intelligible "phases" that "vertically" characterize a myriad of geographic regions. The textbook-like scaffolding and strong tendency toward repetition further diminish the work. Nevertheless, there is no denying the usefulness of the redactions of recent archaeological studies; the many inserts on topics of pervasive import, like maize and the ballgame; the excellent gathering of reference maps; the detailed bibliography; and the 459 illustrations. All of these qualities are more than sufficient to recommend this valuable reference resource to collections attentive to the needs of serious students and sophisticated travelers.-Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.