This volume, written in honor of Dan Healan's long career, is organized around themes of craft production, residential archaeology, and urbanization. Fourteen case studies span the Formative period to the present across northern Mesoamerica, from Veracruz to Zacatecas. The volume is divided into four sections, with a foreword by Nancy Healan, an introduction by the editors, a reflection by Dan Healan, and an epilogue by Robert Cobean. The foreword and epilogue reinforce a behind-the-scenes message of the volume: scholars are remembered by the quality of their research as well as the relationships they foster. The volume collects the work of partners, colleagues, and students. The papers are unified by careful attention to the collection and interpretation of archaeological data, and they reflect the enduring value of Healan's guidance as a teacher, mentor, and scholar.
The first section, entitled “Craft Production and Residential Archaeology in Mesoamerica,” comprises slightly less than half of the book. Faulseit, Feinman, and Nicholas set the tone with an investigation of household and community resilience in the Valley of Oaxaca (Chapter 2). The paper builds from Healan's hypothesis that the economy of Tula was split between two independent mechanisms—one that supplied household needs at a local level and another that supplied state needs at a larger scale. Faulseit and colleagues rightly note that Healan was an early challenger of views of Mesoamerican economies that emphasized top-down mechanisms of organization and control. Although ideas of multiple and interdependent economic spheres are mainstream today, this and other papers in the section demonstrate why it remains worthwhile to refine our understanding of economies that operate under different conditions. For example, Faulseit and colleagues use the political turmoil of the Late Classic to Early Postclassic transition in the Valley of Oaxaca to document disparities between the longevity of domestic and political economies. Based on ethnographic and ethnohistoric data, as well as excavations at four sites in the Tlacolula arm of the valley, they find that domestic economies persisted with little disruption at a time when the regional political economy deteriorated. Evidence of continuity in household organization, domestic ritual activity, and local economic behavior leads them to attribute local resilience to economic practices that were outside the purview of the state, such as household multicrafting and the social networks embedded in regional market systems.
Subsequent chapters present contrasting and complementary perspectives on the causes and consequences of the formation of economic systems. Williams (Chapter 3) applies a domestic economic perspective to his decades of ethnoarchaeological research among the Tarascan potters of Huáncito, Michoacán. This is a community of full-time and year-round potters who organize their labor at the household scale and depend on access to markets in order to get by. In contrast to the significance of multicrafting in the previous chapter, Williams finds that this community persists without multicrafting, which will remind Mesoamerican archaeologists that domestic economies are not one-size-fits-all. Similarly, Plunket and Uruñuela find little evidence of multicrafting across centuries of continuous occupation at the Formative site of Tetimpa, Puebla (Chapter 4). Pool examines evidence of ceramic production at the scales of households and local communities at the large, urban center of Matacapan, Veracruz (Chapter 5). Careful attention to the spatial distribution of different ceramic traits helps him identify “communities of practice” that represent groups of potters who shared technological traditions but may not have shared ties of kinship. Darras and Pelegrin use experimental techniques to test hypotheses about the organization of obsidian blade production within households in the Zacapu region in Michoacán (Chapter 6). Spatial patterns suggest a division of labor within, rather than among, families in an economy that was based more on intermittent crafting than multicrafting. The final chapter in this section—by Crider, Nichols, and Garraty—examines the circulation of pottery in the Teotihuacan Valley at a regional scale (Chapter 7). Direct evidence of ceramic production is notoriously scarce in Mesoamerica. Crider and colleagues show how careful analysis of compositional and distributional patterns can provide provocative, albeit indirect, data to investigate the production and circulation of pottery and other goods at smaller scales than previously expected.
The remainder of the book is divided into three sections that address the archaeology of Tula, West and Northwest Mexico, and the Postclassic period. Three chapters present new findings from the Tula Valley that are welcome additions to the scholarship on the region. These include Anderson's research at the Epiclassic site of Cerro Magoni (Chapter 8), Mehta's investigation of the Zapotec site of El Tesoro during the Classic period (Chapter 9), and Valdo's classification of Aztec pottery from Postclassic Tula (Chapter 10). Three chapters explore urbanization and social organization in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica. Xiuhtecutli's study of trade follows Healan's tradition of exploring nonpolitical aspects of economies and dives into the complexity of relationships among households and neighborhoods at Tepecticpac in the city of Tlaxcallan, Tlaxcala (Chapter 11). Pollard focuses on the relationships among power, social inequality, and ethnic solidarity in the emergence of the Tarascan state in Michoacán (Chapter 12). Bricker and Bricker provide the only substantial connection between the cultures of the central highlands and the Maya region (Chapter 13), a topic that I found noteworthy for its absence in the volume given the connections between Tula and Chichen Itza. Their comparison of the treatment of Venus in the Dresden Codex and several central Mexican codices reinforces the existing evidence of shared practices and beliefs across Mesoamerica. The final two substantive chapters focus on nonurban settlements in northern and western Mesoamerica and present previously unpublished analyses by Hernández on the settlement of the Ucareo Valley, Michoacán (Chapter 14), and by Oster on the ceramic chronology of Las Ventanas, Zacatecas (Chapter 15).
Across these diverse chapters, several cross-cutting themes appear. Household organization and domestic economies loom large, especially in terms of the acquisition and production of goods other than food. Nevertheless, the influence of communities and the roles of states and larger networks of economic and cultural influence inform a majority of the papers. Similarly, while Healan's expertise in the study of lithics is undeniable, more chapters focus on ceramics rather than stone tools as primary sources of evidence. I take these patterns as a reminder of how recognizing one area of knowledge, as in Cobean's reminiscence about whether Healan deserved the name “Mr. Obsidian,” can divert attention away from an individual's broader intellectual concerns and contributions.
In sum, the volume presents a valuable mix of old and new data that reminds readers that returning to “old” data can be productive, and reinforces the value of curating and publishing archaeological data. Specialists in northern Mesoamerica will find the volume particularly valuable for its presentation of new and previously unpublished findings. For those more interested in craft production and household economies, the volume will also be a welcome addition, especially in terms of the application of ideas such as resilience theory (Faulseit, Feinman, and Nicholas) and communities of practice (Pool). Most importantly, while many of the papers share a bottom-up orientation toward economic behavior, they do so without dogmatic commitment to a particular theoretical orientation or methodological approach. In this way, the volume reflects the success of Healan as a scholar for fostering curiosity, careful research, and support for the presentation of contrasting points of view.
