Using more than 300 illustrations, the authors present an encyclopedic analysis of the many types of pottery found in the Oaxaca Valley in the Early Formative period. From details of sherd profiles and tempers to discussions of the growth of various villages, this volume is an exhaustively thorough treatment of the topic and represents decades of archaeological fieldwork in the region.

The culmination of over a decade of research, Enduring Monuments traces the architectural life histories of monumental complexes and public spaces of the Pukara site in the Lake Titicaca Basin. Using data from three distinct areas—the Qalasaya complex, the Central Pampa, and the Northern Platform—Elizabeth A. Klarich provides a powerful diachronic and comparative perspective for understanding social and political transformations during the Late Formative period in Peru.
 
In the early twentieth century, Peruvian archaeologists Luis E. Valcárcel and Julio C. Tello visited Pukara and shared images of its multicolored pottery and unique stone sculptures with colleagues across the world. A number of both small-scale and multiyear field projects have followed, with goals of refining Lake Titicaca Basin cultural chronologies, tracking Pukara-style material culture in the south-central Andes, restoring the structural integrity of the Qalasaya, and documenting the reoccupations of Pukara by Colla, Inca, and early Spanish colonial populations. Enduring Monuments synthesizes the findings of these diverse projects and shares the results of fieldwork and artifact analysis by the Pukara Archaeological Project since 2000.
 
Using a “building biography” approach that tracks initial construction, major remodeling, and subsequent expansion efforts during the Middle and Late Formative periods (400 BC–AD 200), Klarich highlights transformations in material culture, settlement patterns, social hierarchy, and daily practices at Pukara and contemporaneous sites across the Titicaca Basin and situates Formative period Pukara within the vast anthropological and archaeological literature addressing monumentality, ritual practice, and incipient urbanism in complex societies in South America and beyond.
 

This book reports the results of an archaeological survey undertaken in southwestern Iran by a remarkable researcher: Dr. F.G.L. Gremliza. The author, Abbas Alizadeh, presents Gremliza’s survey data and provides an analysis of the developmental implications.

Toward a Small Data Archaeology presents an interpretive and methodological framework—a “small data” archaeology—elucidated through a case study at Xaltocan, Mexico. Aligned closely with Indigenous feminist principles by engaging directly with descendant communities that resist abstract, large-scale syntheses and instead emphasize deep, localized understanding of ancestral lives intertwined with their landscapes, this framework repositions archaeological inquiry by focusing on individual household contexts. Drawing on diverse lines of evidence from molecular archaeology and geochemistry to Bayesian statistics, Lisa Overholtzer uncovers the detailed social identities, economic practices, and ritual behaviors that defined everyday life in Xaltocan.

Xaltocan served as the Otomí city-state capital before being conquered by the Tepanecs, subsequently incorporated into the Aztec empire, and finally integrated into the vast Spanish colonial sphere. In reconstructing long-term household histories that bridge the pre-Hispanic and early Colonial periods, this book resists narratives that define Indigenous peoples solely through the lens of conquest and subordination. Instead, it presents richly detailed reconstructions of familial relationships and social networks, achieved through the rigorous analysis of artifacts, ecofacts, human remains, and ancient DNA. This meticulous and community-collaborative approach not only maximizes insights available from a limited archaeological record but also honors the ethical imperative to work with descendant communities.
 
Toward a Small Data Archaeology offers an innovative reexamination of the past by privileging the intricate, household-level narratives of Indigenous communities over the homogenizing tendencies of broad-scale "big data" approaches. By peopling the past, Overholtzer redefines methodological boundaries within archaeology, produces reconstructions and narratives that are more in line with Indigenous philosophies, and offers a compelling vision for a future in which historical narratives are reconstructed through a lens that is both deeply scientific and inherently humane.