MODELING PRE-COLUMBIAN MESOAMERICAN ECONOMIES FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA provides an overview of the last half-century of economic inquiry for this region. The book takes a comparative approach, reviewing the organization of pottery and stone tool production in the different societies that developed throughout this ecologically diverse area over time. Methods of transforming field and laboratory results into meaningful data useful for modeling economic patterns are evaluated. Distribution patterns for hard artifacts are appraised to explore how exchange was structured in the past and what mechanisms and institutions had developed to facilitate the circulation of basic goods. Various testing programs, and the analytical techniques they have employed, are reviewed and critically evaluated in terms of their lasting impact on archaeological thought. From the robustness of analytic techniques to the validity of theoretical underpinnings, a sequence of economic inquiry in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is outlined.

Dr. Kirk Damon Straight received his Ph.D. from the Anthropology Department at The Pennsylvania State University. He has worked in the Classic Maya lowlands for twenty-five years.