These two recent books are gems for diametrically opposed reasons. The one authored by Marcus Winter is a synthetic booklet aimed at the nonspecialist interested in a general understanding of what is known of the archaeology in the Valley of Huajuapan de León, in the Mixteca Baja of Oaxaca. The one by Michael Lind is a thorough and detailed documentation, analysis, and interpretation, directed mostly to the specialist, of the excavations of a single mound at the ancient community of Lambityeco in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca.

Cerro de las Minas: Arqueología de la Mixteca Baja is actually in its third, expanded edition. It discusses a large portion of the prehispanic sequence framing changes in the material record in terms of increased levels of complexity, from foragers to early agricultural villages, and from chiefdoms to states. The organizing axis centers on Winter's explorations of Cerro de las Minas in the late 1980s. Although this settlement did not yield evidence predating early urbanism, Winter gives a semblance of what could be expected of future research in the valley of Huajuapan by summarizing what little is known of Paleoindian, Archaic, and Early Formative ways of life in the Mixteca Baja and the neighboring region of the Valley of Tehuacán. The highlights of the book are the Late Formative evidence from Cerro de las Minas (the Ñudeé phase, when urbanism becomes a regional phenomenon) and the Late Classic (or Epiclassic) occupation at Cerro de las Minas, when the site becomes the primary center in the Mixteca Baja, seemingly competing with other major regional players such as Diquiyú and Cerro de la Caja near Tequixtepec del Rey. There is also a broad and useful coverage of the Ñuiñe archaeological culture, including a brief consideration of the major changes that eventually led to the obsolescence of its characteristic style. This is followed by a new chapter based on data from the salvage excavation of a tomb at Cerro de la Red, Zapotitlán Palmas (north of the Huajuapan Valley), which enables Winter to address the Postclassic city-states.

Winter wrote a booklet that is accessible, well written, engaging, and illuminating. The series of color plates adds to its general appeal. The goal of writing for audiences other than archaeologists is central to the endeavor of relating the profession to the general public, raising interest in archaeology, and most importantly, empowering local communities to protect their historical patrimony. Today, as one can read in the news, the inhabitants of Huajuapan de León are known for “continuously donating antiquities to the local museum,” and the Museo Regional de Huajuapan has become a driving force in promoting the preservation of archaeological materials from Cerro de las Minas and beyond. I believe Winter's book, in its several editions, has contributed to this trend.

In Los Sumos Sacerdotes de Lambityeco, Lind has rescued from oblivion one of the most detailed, surgical interventions ever done on a Late Classic-period Zapotec site within the sphere of interaction of Monte Albán. It concerns the exploration of Mound 190 at Lambityeco, part of a project that between 1961 and 1974 was directed by the late John Paddock. After the death of Paddock in 1998, Lind began in earnest putting together all the evidence concerning the explorations of neighboring mounds 195 and 190. Part of this gargantuan effort was eventually published in The Lords of Lambityeco: Political Evolution in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Xoo Phase, by Lind and Urcid (2010, University Press of Colorado). But in that publication, key evidence from Mound 190 had not been assembled to Lind's satisfaction and was not included. Thus, Los Sumos Sacerdotes is the complement to the 2010 publication.

Most of the book is dedicated to the presentation, profusely illustrated, of the features, layouts, burials, and offerings associated with the six superimposed houses that formed the mound. There is also a chapter dedicated to the description of the crypt (tomb 2) used by the inhabitants of the first five houses. The final chapter is most interesting, because it attempts to explain what it all means.

In the 2010 publication we argued, based on the evidence from Lambityeco's Mound 195, that during the Late Classic, Monte Albán went from a hegemonic to a territorial state. What initially appeared to have been indirect rule of local elites, who through time amassed increased levels of material wealth as evinced by another series of superimposed houses, a crypt (tomb 6), and a mausoleum inscribed with an elaborate genealogical record, turned out ultimately to be direct control by Monte Albán and seemingly even the removal of the local rulers. The last occupations in Mound 195 literally “entombed” the previous series of houses and their tomb by building on top of them a monumental architectural complex in style and layout similar to those around the Main Plaza at Monte Alban. In Los Sumos Sacerdotes, Lind posits that the hegemonic state centered at Monte Albán used religion as a means to exert indirect control on its subject communities, including Lambityeco. By having local elites appoint their own paramount priests, chosen specifically in succession from the local rulers’ brothers, Monte Albán maintained an ideological grip on all its subject communities. For Lind, the evidence of standardization in the representation of the ubiquitous rain god, in both ceramic effigy vessels and stucco modeling, supports the idea of the existence of a state-sponsored religion.

Lind's explanatory model is insightful and invites much reflection, starting with the question of how to differentiate in the archaeological record between the presence of religious specialists and that of fervent devotees, especially if we have data from only one series of superimposed elite houses. Because effigy vessels with personifications of the rain deity occur in most of the known Zapotec tombs, are the large stucco busts of the rain god associated with the fourth house in Lambityeco's Mound 190 enough evidence to assume it was the residence of a paramount priest? The singularity of these busts also invites asking what Lind means by standardization. In addition to their size and material, the busts hold in one of their hands a motif (commonly interpreted as lightning) that is unique. I am unaware of its representations in the effigy vessels that personified the rain deity, whether dating to the Xoo phase or before. Can these details mean lack of standardization? Lind also uses the case of a small jar with no affixed face of the rain deity but with an affixed glyph C (the emblem of the rain deity) as an example of nonstandardization. And yet, in the Xoo phase hieroglyphic script, scribes commonly resorted to synecdoche. So, does the part for the whole necessarily imply nonstandardization? Another question, perhaps more relevant, is whether standardization implies state control. Commonly recognizable constellations of features allow us to recognize the imagery of the rain deity at different times, from the Late Formative to the Late Postclassic. Does this mean that the state controlled religion during earlier and later periods too? The imagery of the rain deity during the Late Postclassic is very consistent (or standardized?), and yet Lind characterizes the societies in Central Oaxaca during that time as (nonhegemonic) city-states. How is it that such a multiplicity of polities managed to have the imagery of the rain deity standardized? Actually, the consistency of such imagery goes even beyond the Central Valleys during the Late Postclassic. Certainly then, there must be other factors that can contribute to standardization in material culture. Lind's model also invites asking what could have been the role of women in ancient Zapotec religion and priesthood.

As one delves into the last chapter, it becomes clear that what Lind means by “evolution of Zapotec religion” is the transformation of the social mediations of religion, or the changes in the cultural institutions that facilitated the social practice of religion and the transgenerational transfer of religious knowledge. The key series of sacred propositions and the nature of religious thought continued in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca despite changes in the social scaffoldings: the covenant between mortals and deities through offerings, penitence by self-bleeding, sacrifice (of humans and nonhumans), the emphasis of the center and the four directions, on divinities related to rain, maize, death, and the sun, the emphasis on divination, and the recourse to shape-shifting and alter egos as means of maintaining societal conformance.

Despite their differences, there is a commonality to the books because both authors address the phenomenon of political transfiguration and settlement abandonment. Winter and Lind contend that what led to the “collapse” of the Ñuiñe and Zapotec “civilizations” around the ninth century AD was a series of environmental challenges brought about by droughts for which, as of yet, there is no archaeological evidence from anywhere in Oaxaca. The assumption is that, because evidence of such droughts has been found in the Maya area, perhaps those conditions similarly affected southwestern Mesoamerica. Yet, apparently the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which lies between Yucatan and Oaxaca, was not affected. It could be that the particulars of ocean currents, the jet stream, and other meteorological variables could affect different parts of Mesoamerica in a mosaic pattern, but even if evidence of droughts is eventually substantiated in Oaxaca, the modeling of such sociocultural transformation would still have to be multicausal.