Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History

I am amazed at the amount of knowledge and research tucked into this fascinating book. It will give me much pleasure to take my time in reading it. I couldn’t be more pleased.

This is a fantastic general overview of Mesoamerican archaeology: accurate, comprehensive (I mean REALLY comprehensive), clearly written, and brimming with illustrations.I used this book to study for my comprehensive exams in archaeology. I highly recommend it for that purpose, or as a guide to some of the regions that all too often get left out of general-audience books on Mesoamerica: West Mexico, Veracruz and the Huasteca, etc.This is a Thames and Hudson book and it feels like one--readers familiar with Fagan's "Ancient North America" or Coe's twin volumes, "Mexico" and "The Maya," can expect the same standards of publication and the same quantity of beautifully-reproduced line drawings, maps, and photographs. Toby Evans's book is better than Coe's, though: not only is it a single synthetic volume, but her writing is clearer and she does not use the text to grind axes or name-check her former graduate students.The text benefits from having only a small dose of theory, which when it does show up is mostly of the cultural ecology variety one would expect from an author with Toby Evans's Penn State affiliation.Throughout the book, there are special 1-2 page sections on all kinds of topics: pottery, exchange systems, birth and childhood among the Aztecs, chinampa agriculture, etc. These are especially useful for general readers--somebody planning a trip to Mexico, for instance--looking for some background on the details of life in prehistory, and not just what-happened-when.

If you are looking for light reading on the Aztec or Maya, there are better choices. But if you want a good bit of depth, then this is an excellent book. I was looking to reconnect with some studies I had done in Mesoamerica a number of years ago, and this served as an excellent text for me.I do admit that there were sections where my eyes did glaze over a bit, but those are the sections that as I progress with my re-connection to Mesoamerican archaeology that I will find very useful. Thus, this is a good book to read and then keep in your library for later reference too.

Susan Toby Evans' Ancient Mexico and Central America is excellent. She uses clear language and good organization to develop a structure study of the archeology of Mesoamerica. She includes many effective examples, with explanations. Understanding the past through archeology is always best viewed as an incomplete picture, with a constant need to incorporate new evidence into re-examining our current concepts and patterns. This text does a good job of presenting current thinking, while revealing that many parts of the puzzle are missing.

This textbook is a good textbook for my mesoamerica course. I am not an anthropology major, but I am taking the course as a gen-ed. Sometimes the books wording can be a little obtuse, but overall I think that the way the book explains things is pretty decent.

The book as a read is great if you like to learn about Mesoamerica and history of how certain civilations lived and thrived. The book in the condition that I bought it in was great. Couldn't really ask for a better copy and returning it was a breeze

Great book, interesting topic not often covered in the US. Renting off Amazon was actually my only option because my school didn't even care this. Saved my butt.

I bought this book NEW... and I’m typing this as I study for my Sociology 207 midterm — I just took the book out of the saran wrapping, and noticed half of Chapter 2 looks to be a horse’s lunch.

My son needed this book quickly for a class next week. The book arrive next day with no problems at all and was just as described. Would use this seller again.