Economic Institutions in Ancient Greece and Mesoamerica

Ancient and Medieval Economic Thought and Institutions

For most of history, economics did not have a separate identity apart from social thought in general. Even as late as the eighteenth century, Adam Smith viewed economics as a subset of jurisprudence. This makes the search for fIrst principles of economic reasoning more difficult, not because the intellectual cupboard of antiquity was bare, but because the subject boundaries between the social s...

Cranial Surgery in Ancient Mesoamerica

In turn, the anthropological definition of trepanation is an intentional and planned opening of the skull, carried out with instruments designed for this purpose (Campillo 1994:41-42; Pahl 1993:20-22). This operation is distinct from cephalic surgery, which is destined to operate on the tissues inside the skull. Not included in this definition are posthumous cranial apertures, like trophy skull...

Neighborhoods and Districts in Ancient Mesoamerica

All cities known to social scientists and historians have neighborhoods. People living in urban settings universally organize important aspects of their lives on a spatial scale that is intermediate between the household and the city. Urban authorities also tend to organize administrative ac­ tivities such as tax collection and record keeping on a similar scale. The spatial relationship between...

States and Empires in Ancient Mesoamerica

Ancient Mesoamerican polities are an important source of data for considerations of state development, despite internal debate over their size and complexity. We review complex political units, usually referred to as “states” and “empires,” in ancient Mesoamerica and reach the following conclusions: these polities tended to be hegemonic, rather than territorial, in composition; they melded ritu...

Plants in Ancient Greece