front cover of Cerro Danush
Cerro Danush
Excavations at a Hilltop Community in the Eastern Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico
Ronald K. Faulseit
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Monte Albán was the capital of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, ca. 500 BC–AD 600, but once its control began to wane, other sites filled the political vacuum. Archaeologists have long awaited a meticulous excavation of one of these sites—one that would help us better understand the process that transformed second-tier sites into a series of polities or señoríos that competed with each other for centuries.

This book reports in detail on Ronald Faulseit’s excavations at the site of Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl in the Valley of Oaxaca. His 2007–2010 mapping and excavation seasons focused on the Late Classic (AD 600–900) and Early Postclassic (AD 900–1300). The spatial distributions of surface artifacts—collected during the intensive mapping and systematic surface collecting—on residential terraces at Cerro Danush are analyzed to evaluate evidence for craft production, ritual, and abandonment at the community level. This community analysis is complemented by data from the comprehensive excavation of a residential terrace, which documents diachronic patterns of behavior at the household level. The results from Faulseit’s survey and excavations are evaluated within the theoretical frameworks of political cycling and resilience theory. Faulseit concludes that resilient social structures may have helped orchestrate reorganization in the dynamic political landscape of Oaxaca after the political collapse of Monte Albán.

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front cover of The Early Prehistory of Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan
The Early Prehistory of Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan
Excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Site of WF16 and Archaeological Survey of Wadis Faynan, Ghuwayr and Al Bustan
B. Finlayson
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2007

logo for Harvard University Press
Excavations at the Lake George Site, Yazoo Country, Mississippi, 1958–1960
Stephen Williams and Jeffrey P. Brain
Harvard University Press, 1983
This milestone volume describes and interprets excavations at one of the greatest late prehistoric sites in the southeastern United States. Lake George reached its zenith between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries A.D., during the florescence of the Mississippian culture. This is a detailed analysis of the site and its relationship to the corpus of Southeastern archaeology.
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front cover of WF16
WF16
Excavations at an Early Neolithic Settlement in Southern Jordan
Steven Mithen
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2018
WF16 is located in the spectacular Wadi Faynan area of southern Jordan. Evaluation of the site was undertaken between 1997 and 2006 with a monograph, detailing results of the evaluation, published in 2007 (Finlayson & Mithen 2007). Material remains at the site indicate that settlement occurred during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period, with a suite of radiocarbon dates indicating occupation between 11,600 and 10,200 BP (Before Present–before 1950). Originally defined by Kathleen Kenyon during excavation at Jericho in the 1950s, the PPNA is traditionally seen as the earliest manifestation of an agricultural economy in the world, with villages occupied by sedentary groups practicing some form of cultivation. The PPNA brought to an end more than two million years of hunting and gathering and laid the foundations for the first civilisations. Despite more than 50 years of research, our understanding of PPNA society has remained limited. The excavation of WF16 offers the potential to significantly enhance our understanding of the PPNA and the origins of the Neolithic.
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