Ripples in the Chichimec Sea: New Considerations of Southwestern-Mesoamerican Interactions
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?
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