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Ancient Winds of Change: Climatic Settings and Prehistoric Social Complexity in Mesoamerica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Lewis C. Messenger Jr
Lewis C. Messenger Jr
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, Saint Paul, MN 55104, USA
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Abstract

A comparison of regional archaeological sequences for eastern and southern Mesoamerica should indicate if there were times of contemporaneous transcultural punctuated cultural developments. Punctuated developments in the form of cultural intensifications or destabilizations (cultural collapses) may imply external cultural stimulation, such as diffusion of ideas and/or technology, or natural external factors resulting from general climatic instability. Such information is relevant to understanding systems dynamics of cultural transformation from small-scale, egalitarian societies to ones characterized by stratification and ranked social orders.

Type
Articles
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 21 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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