Scott R. Hutson's The Ancient Urban Maya: Neighborhoods, Inequality, and Built Form, and David M. Carballo's Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico add to the growing body of literature concerning the processes and products of complexity in ancient Mesoamerica. Attempts by scholars to understand urbanism in Mesoamerica have used models from other parts of the world, such as Ancient Greece and Cambodia; these attempts have exposed the inconsistencies between Mesoamerican traditions and those extremely disparate cultural traditions as much as they have elucidated processes of urbanism in the region. Hutson and Carballo trace out patterns of city-building. Hutson focusses on the Maya and the different sizes and forms of their urban centers, while Carballo reviews the cultures of Highland Mexico (predominantly the Tlaxcalans, Teotihuacanos, and Mexicas). Each author adds to the ongoing investigation of urbanism in the region, rather than forcing these developments to fit into molds from dramatically different roots.

These two volumes overlap in their discussion of urbanism, but they differ somewhat in focus. Hutson's volume explores Maya urbanism and urbanism in general, whereas Carballo's discusses the religion-imbued urban landscapes that developed hand in hand with more concentrated populations from the Preclassic through to the Postclassic and the way in which religious rituals were manifested in the centers of various highland cultures.

Hutson's volume is impressive in the clarity of his writing style, which carries the reader through a carefully crafted book about the ways in which archaeologists can approach the study of cities and urbanization. Hutson proposes a definition of cities, or “city-states” that can take account of the great diversity found in Maya polity centers where some were composed of populations in the low thousands, while others held over 60,000 (p. 58). The lessons in this book are applicable not only to the Maya, but to other cities of the pre-industrial world, and modern ones. Hutson states that his volume is about “why people choose to live in [cities] and how they make them livable,” (p. 4) and also, specifically, why the Maya chose to live in low-density cities and how this was suited to their environment. This book is intensely interesting, with carefully selected examples that help illustrate each of the ideas Hutson presents, from studies of the ecological contexts of ancient Maya cities to studies detailing how to identify neighborhoods, to methods for uncovering differences in wealth and inequality.

Hutson sets forth his definition of a city (p. 16), writing “settlements qualify as cities if they possess three of the following four characteristics: specialized functions, social differentiations, large size, and high density.” While studies have shown that living in cities often lowers the life expectancy of their inhabitants, as well as their quality of life, people are attracted to cities because they often represent increased economic opportunities (not the least of which may be access to marketplaces) and increased multiplicity, defined by Hutson as “unstructured contact with strangers,” which has the potential to create social networks, opening avenues to new experiences and new possibilities of success (pp. 21–22). He argues that people were also attracted to cities because of the elite architectural structures linked to gods and to the power of the rulers, and because of the ability to view and experience elaborate ceremonies.

The volume uses the site of Chunchucmil to explain Hutson's hypotheses regarding the analysis of urban environments. Mapping and excavations at this site by Hutson and his colleagues have documented one of the “highest density” precolumbian Maya cities (p. 97). In Chapter 4, co-written with Jacob Welch, the authors use spatial analysis to define the settlement pattern at Chunchucmil, whereby 14 sacbes or paths move out directly from the center without intersecting. They refer to this as a “hub-and-spoke pattern” (p. 102). Hutson and Welch then estimate the number of inhabitants of each of the clusters off of each spoke coming up with a great degree of diversity in size from 126 inhabitants up to 2,331.

Hutson avoids the term “commoner” instead using “elite and non-elite” because, as he explains, “commoner” is a term loaded with many assumptions, and the position of urban occupants are complicated by the networks in which they engage and the neighborhoods to which they belong. While cities may appear to be constructed to benefit the elites, the non-elites arrive there through their own agency, and cities may also hold benefits for them, such as larger markets for artisans and their goods. This careful exploration of the web of interactions found in ancient cities recalls the arguments of Carole Crumley (Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, Number 6, 1995) regarding the importance of attending to hetarchical relationships as well as hegemonic ones.

I would recommend this volume to any scholar teaching a graduate class on complexity or one concerning Mesoamerican political development. Hutson asks us to think about what draws humans to cities—where mortality is often higher and many resources may be scarce, and where the lives of people are more constricted and yet socially separated—stirring our own creative thoughts, and providing many answers.

David Carballo's volume assembles a large body of information concerning highland Mexican cities, their design, and their evidence of ritual activity. He focuses on the beginning of cities in the Formative period (600 BC–100 AD) when a three-tiered settlement hierarchy first appears, thereafter followed at some centers with a four-tiered hierarchy, and proceeds on with descriptions of what he terms ‘the second pulse” of city-building during the Classic period (AD 100–650; p. 1). Carballo uses historic accounts of the Postclassic city of Tenochtitlan to interpret practices found in earlier cities, such as Teotihuacan and La Laguna, Tlaxcala. Carballo's definition of a city is somewhat different from that of Hutson, describing it as “a human settlement type that is of greater scale (size and population) and of greater societal importance than settlements that would be classified as towns, villages or by other terms within a given cultural and historical context” (p. 8). Carballo's book is particularly useful to archaeologists who work in Highland Mexico, although it traces many traditions also found in Mesoamerica at large.

Echoing work by Carrasco (Religions of Mesoamerica, Waveland Press, Inc., 1990) and Cowgill (Ancient Teotihuacan: Early Urbanism in Central Mexico, Cambridge University Press, 2015), Carballo discusses the cosmological significance of the layout of Highland Mexican urban centers, and the manner in which religion supported the political order of such centers. Much work has also been conducted on the same themes in the Maya area (Freidel, Schele, and Parker, A Forest of Kings, William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993; Schele and Mathews, The Code of Kings, Scribner, 1998). His exploration of religion and its importance to societies is well constructed and engaging. His specific focus on cross-cultural and cross-temporal urban centers enables him to investigate and discuss the manner in which Highland centers differ and yet are the same.

While many authors have explored urbanism and the cosmological layout of highland centers, the strength of Carballo's work lies in his discussions of the excavations he directed at La Laguna, which provide in-depth information on the way this community practiced religion and formed its center to emphasize the beliefs its inhabitants espoused. The practices at La Laguna are similar to those found across Mesoamerica at many urban centers. The elites had special obsidian lancets to use in the offering of their blood, and they had finer trade goods and better access to greenstone than non-elites, or “commoners,” as Carballo terms them. In La Laguna's plaza center, an altar was uncovered with greenstone offerings, which Carballo proposes were part of fertility rituals devoted to the good of the community at large. The variations found in ritual actions, such as the specific offerings placed in and around urban altars, are interesting and add depth to our understanding of the diverse ways that Mesoamericans engaged in religious activities that had similar roots.

While the urban status of Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan has been more readily accepted, Maya cities have remained a source of debate. Hutson's careful research at Chunchucmil demonstrates that the Maya had cities, moving away from Ricketson and Ricketson's (Uaxactun, Guatemala: Group E–1926–1931, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937:15) suggestion that the ancient Maya centers were vacant ceremonial centers, an idea long-after echoed by archaeologists such as Thompson (The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization, University of Oklahoma Press, 1954) and those who followed him. Reading through these texts by Hutson and Carballo, one can appreciate the complexity of types of ancient urbanism found among Mesoamericans. Communities embraced a diversity of practices while all sharing similar religious concepts of pyramidal platforms as ritualized representations of mountains, and offerings of green stones as symbols of fertility. As both scholars make clear, cities existed along a continuum, with some small and less complex, and others larger and more diverse, and yet others somewhere in between. Cities were designed to reinforce the worldview of the elites and were crafted to both divide and bring together the populace, although the methods for forging community relationships vary. These books remind us of the importance of collecting as much information as possible if we are ever to understand the human experience of living in ancient urban centers.