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This article discusses the Ptolemaic legacy and Egyptian independence; the annexation of Egypt; and the first Roman prefects in Egypt. In contrast to earlier changes of ruler, the annexation of Egypt by Octavian represents a particularly lasting break in the country's history. Octavian was quickly able to stabilize Roman authority in the newly created province. As in the other provinces of the empire, a new, well-designed, and effective administration was speedily introduced. It was headed by the prefect, the direct representative of the emperor. To secure his rule, Octavian-Augustus also sought engagement with the priests, the elite of the country. This is evident in the numerous temples that were built, particularly in areas of strategic and economic importance.

This article reviews archaeological evidence of the Late Postclassic period in the Maya highlands. The Maya highlands contain a diverse and complex geography, a diversity that is represented in the material record. While archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence from the central Guatemalan highlands has long dominated discussion of the Late Postclassic period, research has shown that developments outside of this subregion were extremely variable and localized. A focus on the Quiché and Kaqchikel states has resulted in an important and rich body of evidence that has undeniable importance to Maya and Mesoamerica studies, as well as modern Maya peoples.

Interactions at the Aztec imperial edges varied considerably, with some marked by a general congruence of political, economic, and symbolic domains, suggesting that border-like conditions shaped interactions, while other boundary areas were more permeable frontiers where cultural domains overlapped and were interconnected, but differently bounded. Most previous characterizations of Aztec boundary interactions come from documents of the sixteenth-century Basin of Mexico or late sixteenth-century Relaciones Geográficas . Data from recent archaeological projects complement the rich ethnohistorical record, and several of these studies explicitly frame Aztec provincial relationships as a dynamic process of negotiation. This article presents summaries of this information for the western, southern, and eastern margins of the Aztec Empire.

The Aztec Empire was created within a setting of competing city-states ( altepetl ) that covered the landscape of central Mexico starting around 1100 ad . These small polities, ruled by kings ( tlatoani ) and a council of nobles, consisted of a modest urban center and the surrounding farmland. In a dynamic political setting, tlatoque (plural of tlatoani) sought to expand their areas of control, and by 1400 ad several small empires had been formed through conquest. Rebellions happened each time a subjected people had the feeling that the empire was weakened (e.g., at times of tlatoque succession). But the Aztecs were fast to respond and always put down these rebellions. The arrival of the Spaniards in 1519 presented a new occasion for some of the subjected people to rebel against the Aztecs, uniting themselves with the Spanish forces, and this time, they were stronger. The Aztec Empire fell at the hands of its Spanish and native enemies on August 13, 1521.

This article discusses the collapse of the Classic Mayan civilization of southern and eastern Mesoamerica. Archaeologists now commonly recognize that there are several dimensions to this general collapse: the disappearance of royal dynasties and their ideological underpinnings; the dissolution of larger sociopolitical patterns, most importantly the disappearance of nonroyal elites; and a demographic collapse that greatly reduced populations or eliminated them altogether. All these things were once commonly assumed to be closely linked, but it is increasingly evident that each one must be treated independently.

This article focuses on the concepts of collapse and regeneration employed by Mesoamericanists. Much mischief is caused by ambiguities about what it is that is supposed to be collapsing or regenerating. Most often, what is at issue is either the fragmentation of a large polity or the termination of a major cultural tradition. Mesoamericanists have not always clearly distinguished the fragmentation of polities from the termination of major cultural traditions. In discussing collapses and regenerations in Mesoamerica, it seems best to focus on political alternations, although migrations, demographic changes, and alterations of ethnic identities must be also considered. Scholars can, and will discuss the fates of cultural traditions, but they should make themselves clear on the distinction between that and the histories of polities.

This article focuses on the sources describing the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Historians all have continuously asked the same question: How was it possible for five hundred Spaniards to conquer a Mexican empire? In trying to resolve the question, historians have applied all kinds of methodological instruments but particularly they have critically analyzed the sources. All have recognized the obvious subjectivity of the main sources of Hernán Cortés, López de Gómara, and Díaz del Castillo. The response has been either to verify the information given by these authors with that of archival documents and other accounts by Spanish conquerors, or to confront the Spanish sources with indigenous ones. These have been very useful methods that have clarified many of the doubts and mistakes represented in the main sources, but they have always confirmed the main story line of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Far western Mexico has occupied an ambiguous position within Mesoamerican research, as the region both displays continuity with Mesoamerican culture and provides informative differences. This article demonstrates that the area has been an integral part of the societal networks that criss-cross Mesoamerica through four major transitions over the Pre-Columbian period. It discusses the origins of agricultural and maritime adaptations (7000–2000 bc ), the independent emergence of inequalities (2000–300 bc ), politics and power sharing among lineages (300 bc –500/600 ad ), and Epiclassic reorganization and the Postclassic expansion of trade networks (500/600–1520 ad ).

This article reviews the archaeological evidence of Classic and Postclassic Gulf Coast cultures, focusing on developments during the first and early second millennium ad . The Classic period civilizations seem to have risen progressively from a Preclassic background, a product of mainly isthmian interaction, but ceramics and lithics show a development up to some point parallel to the central plateau, a possible result of the highlands' interest in coastal resources and styles. The Gulf Coast way of life, as represented in settlement patterns and architecture is clearly a tropical lowland adaptation, with a dispersed population subsisting on a combination of agriculture, horticulture, forest husbandry, and extensive exploitation of sylvan and aquatic resources. In contrast, the Postclassic era witnesses major changes, as in most of Mesoamerica. The new cultures, while respecting the boundaries of the Classic period areas, appear to be the result of major foreign migrations.

This article discusses government, taxation, and law in Roman Egypt. The most striking feature of the Egyptian provincial government remains its overall structure, in particular the geographically defined division into many smaller, relatively independent, but nevertheless tightly run administrative units, and above all the strict hierarchy of offices with a proper chain of appeal and the prefect at the top. In the area of taxation, there was a plethora of varieties in Egypt itself. This is why it is by no means easy to determine which structural features (if any) may also be observed in other regions of the Roman empire. In the field of jurisdiction, the Romans apparently refrained from intervening too rigidly in the law and customs of the population.

This article examines two problems on pre-Hispanic Caribbean kinship and social organization through the application of independent archaeological data. First, it discusses the limitations for direct historic analogy with early Spanish descriptions of behaviors related to social organization, postmarital residence, and succession. The article describes the problems in applying ethnohistoric reconstructions of matrilineal social organization to the pre-Hispanic societies of the region. Second, it looks at explanations for stratification that underestimate the importance of the political–economical dynamics of kinship and social organization through which status hierarchies emerged.

This article reviews archaeological evidence of the Late Classic and Postclassic Mayan cultures in northern Yucatán. It suggests that one way of understanding the connections between Chichén Itzá, Mayapán, and Uxmal, as well as the exaggerated territories claimed for each, is to see them as regional Tollans, active in legitimizing the rulers and high elites of a wide network of client communities. As with Tula, the Feathered Serpent served as the paramount political symbol, but active political control may have been exerted over a fairly limited area, with only indirect influence beyond that. Later mention of these three as constituting the “League of Mayapán” may have resulted from the historical conflation of three sites similar in kind, though of different periods. If true, this may explain the presence of foreign influence (mostly imitated) as the local emulation and expression of a political ideology based in western Mesoamerica.

This article explores the parallels between the southwest of the United States and the northwest of Mexico (the Southwest/Northwest) and Mesoamerica. Parallels occur in cosmology, iconography, metaphor, and ritual. While a profound degree of shared cosmology, iconography, metaphor, and ritual between the two regions has been identified, the societies of the two regions remain qualitatively different. Resolving this paradox begins by realizing that the parallels between the two areas have different histories and origins. Some of them transcend both regions.

This article discusses the rise and historical dynamics of Mesoamerican states, the economic underpinnings of Mesoamerican states, and Mesoamerican statecraft and its diversity. Prehispanic Mesoamerican states were far from uniform over time and space, varying in both size and degree of political centralization. Whether (and how) the corpus of ancient Mesoamerican polities stands out from the preindustrial states in other global regions remains to be determined. Yet the macroregion's somewhat limited technological toolkit may have underpinned Mesoamerica's generally and comparatively small polity sizes as well as the development of sophisticated socioeconomic and ideological mechanisms that fostered interpersonal integration and collective action as opposed to strictly autocratic means of wielding power.

The terms “core,” “periphery,” and “frontier” conjure up spatial distinctions correlated with divisions among societies based on size, economic organization, and power. Leaders of core states are generally presumed to dominate developments within the smaller, poorer, less powerful societies arrayed around them. Territorial distinctions thus have important behavioral consequences. How those outcomes are understood depends heavily on the theoretical framework in which cores, frontiers, and peripheries are modeled. This article reviews the most prominent of these conceptual structures and the mechanisms of intersocietal interaction that they highlight (diffusion, trade, exploitation, and hybridity). It calls for a new approach to the study of cores, peripheries, and frontiers that does not presuppose the existence of these entities and the nature of interregional interactions generally.

Guided by neo-evolutionary perspectives, archaeologists traditionally viewed societal development as a series of progressive stages that comprised bands, tribes and chiefdoms, and states. Contemporary research regarding the formation of incipient political institutions draws on concepts from modern social theory that emphasizes the importance of agency and history as central dimensions in the constitution and transformation of human societies and their various political forms. By refocusing what one studies as “chiefdoms,” this article stimulates new avenues for investigating the social construction of identity and the emergence of cacicazgos in the Antilles. It also suggests that future research should be tempered by research questions that view aspects of social and political life as emergent, recursive, and historically situated processes.

This article concentrates on the characteristics specific to the Roman army in Egypt, providing an overview of the subject and emphasizing the developing insights of scholarship. The first element specific to the province of Aegyptus, as was also the case in every province of the empire, was the composition of the garrison, and in particular the units stationed there and their military engagements. Also specific to the exercitus Aegyptiacus (the Latin designation for the 'army of Egypt') were a few institutional regulations dating from Octavian's conquest and the form he gave to the province's administration. Finally, two kinds of source, namely the papyri and ostraca, are specific to the province.

The Late Classic period ended in 800 ad with the demise of the largest state, Monte Albán, in prehispanic Oaxaca, Mexico. What collapsed was not society but the political systems and elite classes that mismanaged factional competition and they were no longer supported by commoners as they engaged in increasingly exclusionary strategies. In the wake of the collapse of many forms of their power, elites searched for new strategies and initiated a new covenant with commoners, which reemphasized elites' roles in providing Earth and Rain with sacrifices as their ancestors were present at the First Sunrise—the creation of the current era. Individuals who figure as powerful ancestors in the heroic histories of Postclassic dynasties come from distant places, such as the idealized center encapsulated by the concept of “Tollan.” Important Postclassic Tollans include Cholula, Tula, Chichén Itzá, and Tenochtitlan; Classic Teotihuacan may have been the first Tollan.

This article reviews archaeological evidence from the southeastern fringe of Mesoamerica. Communities in all regions of the southeast fringe interacted—in different ways and with different degrees of intensity through time—with contemporaries to the west in Mesoamerica. The classificatory status of southeast fringe societies as part of the Maya world and Mesoamerica is much less the issue than the fact that they form an essential part of the context for understanding those areas. What is of greatest interest is the story that material remains have to tell about the societies of their makers and their relationships with communities to the north and west in Mesoamerica and with Central American societies to the south and east.