UC Santa Cruz

The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology collectively surveys the state of method, theory, and historical reconstruction in the archaeology of the American Southwest, a region that encompasses the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico. Part I is comprised of an extended introductory chapter that traces the intellectual development of the discipline from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Archaeological research in the Southwest—like that in any other region—is fundamentally a historical undertaking, and yet there has never been an explicit consideration of Southwest historiography. Part I redresses this situation. Part II inaugurates a set of inquiries into the “shape of history,” exploring the conceptual frameworks guiding archaeological accounts of the past, the intersections between archaeological and descendant perspectives, and the varied culture histories in each major subregion of the Southwest. Part III then turns to consider the “stuff of history” through a series of chapters focused on the material culture, landscapes, and ecologies that serve as the evidentiary bases for historical reconstructions. Together, the contributions provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the discipline and its findings, they chart out the contemporary practice of archaeology in the region from diverse perspectives, and they advocate for a new attention to the craft of historical narration in archaeological scholarship.