David Carballo Publishes New Book
Our colleague David M. Carballo, Professor of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Latin American Studies at Boston University, has a new book in the Cambridge Elements series Anthropological Archaeology in the 21st Century titled Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica. Co-authored with Gary M. Feinman, the book’s official release date is January 31, 2024. The book tackles the challenge of understanding and promoting ways that people can work cooperatively and collectively towards shared goals.1 In the authors’ words:
Here we set out to consider a suite of interdisciplinary frameworks for how and why people work together to manage resources, cooperate as groups larger than families, and sustain governing institutions that are relatively trusted and more pluralistic, meaning providing a voice in decision-making to more people. We draw on cases from different parts of the world to illustrate key concepts so that they could apply to considerations of societal organization in any particular region or time period. In subsequent sections we narrow our focus to Mesoamerica, as a suite of case studies we know best, in order to outline the concepts more fully and apply them more concretely to specific social institutions and archaeological contexts.2
Prof. Carballo’s previous books include Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain and Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico.
