The Mesoamerican Lab is directed by Richard Lesure, Associate Professor of Anthropology. His current project is The Origins of Social Inequality in Early Formative Mesoamerica, which is an investigation of sociopolitical dynamics in Mesoamerica’s earliest settled villages, dated from 1600 to 1000 BC. Professor Lesure’s fieldwork has focused on the large village site of Paso de la Amada, on the coast of Chiapas, Mexico.
The Construction of Value
Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.
