Arthur A. Joyce

I present a humanistic history of Ancient Oaxacan peoples using an interpretive perspective based on contemporary poststructuralist social theories that consider issues of power, identity, and ideology. This project synthesizes evidence from a variety of sources—archaeological, architectural, archival, iconographic, epigraphic, ethnographic, and paleoenvironmental—to examine the formation, development and collapse of the ancient cities and states of Oaxaca. This approach bridges archaeology and history by using ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and epigraphic data as keys to meaning that aid in the interpretation of ideologies and broader aspects of world view from the archaeological record.