(With Gary Feinman) Power and Regions in Ancient States: An Egyptian and Mesoamerican Perspective (Cambridge Elements: Ancient Egypt in Context), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2022. Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia, Gary Feinman

https://www.academia.edu/40679075/_With_Gary_Feinman_Power_and_Regions_in_Ancient_States_An_Egyptian_and_Mesoamerican_Perspective_Cambridge_Elements_Ancient_Egypt_in_Context_Cambridge_University_Press_Cambridge_2022?email_work_card=title This book aims to provide a comprehensive comparison about the basic organization of power in ancient Mesoamerica and Egypt. How power emerged and was exercised, how it reproduced itself, how social units (from households to cities) became integrated into political formations and how these articulations of power expanded and collapsed over time. The resilience of very particular areas (Oaxaca in Mesoamerica, Middle Egypt in the Nile Valley), to the point that they preserved a highly distinctive cultural personality irrespective of their integration into a state, may provide a useful guideline about the basics of integration, negotiation and autonomy in the organization of political formations and ancient states. Furthermore, both regions were crucial nodes in extensive economic networks. This offered many possibilities to accumulate wealth and power to their populations, but also attracted expansionist foreign powers eager to control such lucrative trading circuits. A final crucial point is that both societies developed very characteristic monumental manifestations of power, not only in their physical aspect (temples, tombs, plazas) but also in the way these monuments addressed a broader public seen as a significant actor and provider of legitimacy, that should then be integrated in public ceremonies that stressed the idea of community.