Syntheses of regional scholarship, of the type commonly used in undergraduate area courses, attest to the state of overarching narratives about long-term processes of sociocultural change. Textbooks may seem like unprivileged places from which to formulate defined analytical and theoretical perspectives, given the expected emphasis on factual richness and broad coverage. Yet precisely, they provide a useful standpoint from which to assess the unspoken theoretical architecture residing between the lines of factual presentation. Aimed at a much broader public than the kind of literature directed at graduate students and academics (and hence having a potentially greater yet unquantifiable impact factor of sorts), archaeology textbooks deserve attention; thousands of students in North America (likely tens of thousands) read them each year in area courses that will be among their first, sometimes their only, exposure to anthropological perspectives on long-term processes of sociocultural change.

Two such texts, Ancient People of the Andes (Michael A. Malpass) and A Prehistory of South America: Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent (Jerry D. Moore), provide a window into how some of these perspectives are formulated for undergraduate audiences. These two are recent syntheses of the archaeology of the Central Andes and South America, respectively. The dissimilar choice of regional coverage is interesting in itself. Malpass situates his work within the classical geographical confines of the former Inca Empire, the Central Andes, with sporadic references to areas a bit north, south, and east. This book is the kind to choose for a standard Andean Archaeology course. Archaeologists with broader interests, such as those who themselves work outside of the Central Andes, will be pleasantly surprised by Moore's book, which casts a broader net that includes whole chapters and sections about the Northern Andes, the Amazon, and the Southern Andes. Malpass's focus on the emergence of social complexity in the Central Andes, specifically the transition from egalitarian to nonegalitarian societies, is slightly different from Moore's, which intends to compare diverse kinds of sociopolitical trajectories from a variety of regions (not all of which resulted in nonegalitarian societies). Both converge on the goal of presenting a vision of prehistory that addresses theoretical debates in the literature of their respective areas, and both state the inadequacy of conventional evolutionary narratives for effectively understanding the past in their chosen areas of study.

The goal of discussing the ancient societies of the Central Andes or South America through theoretical debates is fulfilled more effectively by Malpass than by Moore, even though Malpass's geographical focus would seem to lend itself more readily to a linear, period-by-period, descriptive story culminating with the feats of the Inca Empire. In fact, the period-by-period chapter sequence in his book mirrors that story exactly, and there are more than a couple of references to “more advanced” societies that sound straight from a conventional evolutionary theory glossary, but the intent to discuss the trajectory with reference to a wide array of theoretical issues is delivered effectively in most chapters. In turn, Moore's broader geographical focus would have lent itself to a long-awaited twist on that story, since after all, the Inca or state societies were not the culmination point of precolumbian trajectories in the vast regions outside of the Central Andes that are covered in his book. Yet, Moore's chapters are organized in a similar linear chronological structure and, in the end, outline a step-by-step precolumbian trajectory that ends with the Inca. An additional chapter on colonial period archaeology covers relevant themes that have been the province of recent historical archaeology research throughout the subcontinent. This chapter also addresses questions of heritage and patrimony as related to archaeological sites and collections in a variety of regions, bringing past into present at the end of the book. But as far as the precolumbian past goes, the feeling of having gone through a “progress-like” journey is not effectively offset by the inclusion of areas whose trajectories were not crowned by state-type developments. The intention to avoid precisely that is implicit in the effort to organize the book through chapters that are meaningful beyond their chronological significance (e.g., “Origins and Consequences of Agriculture in South America,” instead of a given time period). It is also implicit in the effort (if brief) to contextualize some of the problems of study within a broader literature, but remains for the most part dormant under thick layers of chronologically organized descriptions of sites, horizons, and material culture. Though at the end of most chapters Moore brings attention to a variety of trajectories throughout different areas, the comparative intent focuses on showing how what happened in one region is so different from what happened in another one, short of examining the reasons for said diversity. The way information is highlighted throughout the book, with “important” phases, periods, cultures, traditions, styles, sites, valleys, and authors boldfaced for reference, which vastly outnumber concepts, debates, theories, or hypotheses stressed in the same manner, takes away from the spirit of a problem-oriented, comparative narrative.

That textbooks of this kind adhere to such narratives and temporal protocol is not so much the problem as it is that a convenient temporal scale that understandably facilitates presentation takes precedence, as a vision of the past, over a more explicitly theoretical, problem-oriented exposition of Andean or South American archaeology. Once students begin to learn that precolumbian history is centrally about understanding what happens within stages, and that stages set the stage for “more advanced” stages, the ground for simultaneously deconstructing much-derided unilineal evolutionary frameworks is already undermined. Challenging this framework would require less emphasis on seemingly progressive temporal transitions and more emphasis on general debates that cross-cut “stages” and are relevant beyond the Andean scholarship (e.g., subsistence shifts, inequality, urbanism, craft specialization, intensification of production). These are treated to varying degrees by the two authors, especially by Malpass, but their potential is not fully exploited due to the tendency to formulate their relevance within specific temporal and regional contexts.

This tendency is also reflected in the salience given to ethnohistorical accounts for the later precolumbian periods, which comes as a surprise in textbooks written at a time when archaeological research has expanded to the point of not needing to be formulated in reference to the ethnohistorical record. To be fair, the treatment of ethnohistorical sources is not simplistic in either case, but it displaces archaeology from having a more authoritative voice on past matters. Extensive use of these sources is notorious in the treatment of the Inca Empire in each book—understandably so to an extent but unwarranted nowadays, given the richness of the recent archaeological scholarship on the Inca. For example, the transformational contribution of household and regional archaeology to the understanding of varied mechanisms and impacts of Inca expansion and its political and economic strategies is not directly addressed in either case, and the knowledge it has generated is used but sparingly; instead, the Inca chapter in Malpass's book opens with a discussion on sources (written ones first, archaeology second) where the author states his approach as a middle ground between the two but ultimately affords only a secondary role to archaeology: “I discuss the archaeology to verify, question, and elaborate on the chronicles” (p. 222). Moore's position is less explicit in that regard, but the outcome is similar; no wonder the Inca Empire is ultimately assessed as being “uniquely intriguing” (p. 420). Both chapters, being framed around questions raised primarily by ethnohistory, are mostly descriptive and hardly connected to broader debates about ancient imperialism. In Malpass's book, this reads like a narrative rupture, as the five previous chapters (from the Initial Period to the Late Intermediate Period) are richer in theoretical insights that outline the larger relevance of various problems of study and point to diverse interpretive scenarios that can be derived from the archaeological record. In the chapter about the Inca, as well as in other chapters, both authors admirably put together vast amounts of archaeological information from past and recent research. It would have been nice to see this effort mirrored in the treatment of perspectives, not just raw information, developed through archaeological research. Surprisingly, neither author discusses the contribution of archaeological research on gender in the last three decades, which has added depth and nuance to understandings of social inequality (a topic they both devote much attention to) in at least some times and places.

Area textbooks in archaeology teach more than facts; they convey underlying visions about the past and how to study it, about the nature and reasons for social change (e.g., the rise of social inequality); they are grand historical narratives in that sense. The authors of these two textbooks are aware of that and provide syntheses that amount to more than period-by-period synopses. Malpass's book offers ample opportunities for students to navigate various interpretive possibilities afforded by the archaeological record, and it can be a very useful educational tool in that sense (though it could have used more in the way of comparative insights). Moore's book presents a wide array of very dissimilar cases with much potential for a proper comparative perspective that, though not developed, enables readers to contemplate a variety of trajectories in ancient South America. Still, it should not be too much to expect that textbooks be formulated with an underlying logic that reflects the more sophisticated literature geared towards professional audiences (including that written by the authors of these textbooks). Undergraduate students can be challenged to think in a problem-oriented fashion even in their first year, and can learn a lot from an approach that more radically questions what is, for the most part, their (already) commonsense “progress-like” understanding of the human condition.