In Memoriam: “Tom, We Hardly Knew Ye” – Thomas H. Charlton, 1938–2010

Mesoamericanists, historical archaeologists, and researchers concerned with craft specialization, rural-urban settlement pattern analysis, and the rise and fall of city states have recently and unexpectedly lost a dedicated colleague, enthusiastic fieldworker, and friend. Mexican archaeology has especially been deprived of one of its stellar fieldworkers, distinguished researchers, and mentor with the passing of Thomas H. Charlton, whom we all knew as Tom and never Thomas. Anthropologists and historians who focus on the Meseta Central and especially those concerned with the Late Postclassic and Colonial era during the past four and a half decades recognize the significant contributions he made to our understanding of Aztec prehistory, the Conquest, and the transition to the Colonial and Republican periods.

Although known as a prominent Mesoamerican archaeologist and ethnohistorian, and closely identified with the Basin of Mexico's Teotihuacan Valley and particularly the Aztec city-state of Otumba, his research and publications demonstrate his knowledge of Mesoamerica as well as settlement pattern analysis and the sociopolitical and economic parameters of ancient city states. His careful fieldwork, meticulous laboratory analyses, and exhaustive mining of archives allowed him to prepare numerous publications related to these topics..

As Mike Smith, a well-known scholar of the Aztec archaeology and ethnohistory, stated: “Tom Charlton knew more about Aztec ceramics than anyone else. He was always eager to learn more and to extend his understanding. He was generous with his knowledge, and he showed me (and my students) his collections both in his funky old lab at Cuauhtlatzinco and in the much nicer Teotihuacan Lab in San Juan. As a result, my understanding was greatly increased by our interactions over the years.” In late June 2010, Smith wrote, “Last week we did a massive re-classification of our Aztec III types (we have at least two varieties of local Aztec III black-on-orange, one of which is hard to tell from the Valley of Mexico type). The two bags of sherds within our type collection with labels saying ‘real Aztec III, Tom Charlton’ and ‘imitation Aztec III, Tom Charlton’ proved to be very helpful in our reclassification.” Indeed, Tom did know more about Aztec ceramics and its variations than anyone, but he also leaves a legacy of other important research in Mexico since 1963 as well as historic period archaeology in Iowa since 1974. Those who know Tom's contributions to Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory may not be aware of his important studies in Iowa, or his dedicated service to the anthropological communities in the United States and Mexico, his commitment to educating and training undergraduate and graduate students, and his keen sense of service to his department and the University of Iowa.

Thomas H. Charlton III was born August 17, 1938, in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, the son of Thomas H. (Harry) Charlton and Winnie (Taylor) Charlton. He received his B.A. in Anthropology in 1960 from the University of Toronto and a doctorate in Anthropology from Tulane University in 1966. His dissertation, Archaeological Settlement Patterns: An Interpretation, made use of his initial field research, both surface survey and excavations, in the Teotihuacan Valley. Robert Wauchope chaired Tom's dissertation committee, and Arden Ross King and Donald Robertson were also members of that committee. Tom focused on settlement data assembled during the earliest years of William Sanders's Teotihuacan Valley Project which had developed from a conference, “Co-ordinated Anthropological Research in the Valley of Mexico,” organized by Eric R. Wolf, held July 6–9, 1960, at the University of Chicago, and sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Anonymous 1960). In the dissertation, Tom reported on archaeological and modern settlement pattern surveys in the Cerro Gordo-North Slope region of the Teotihuacan Valley from the Preclassic through the post-Conquest up to 1964. He also analyzed 17 documents that he had located in the Archivo General de la Nación. Among the archaeological sites on the north slope of Cerro Gordo were Classic period sites (TC 40, 41, 42, and 46), Toltec sites (TT 31, 32, and 33), the Aztec site TA 40, and the contemporary communities of San Cristobal Colhuacán, Santa María el Alto, and—in the Middle Teotihuacan Valley—San Pablo Isquitán, close, but not yet focusing on the nearby town of Otumba which overlay an earlier Aztec community.

Characteristically, Tom thanked Bill Sanders for allowing accesses to the project's field and laboratory records, noting that “he shared liberally both his time and his data” (Charlton 1966:ii). Tom, like Bill, was always grateful to his professional colleagues, students, and fieldworkers for their assistance—a trait of a scholar and a gentleman—and Tom was both a gentle man and gentleman.

During his years at Tulane, Tom was a Teaching Assistant (September 1961–July 1962); he taught at the University of Toronto as a Lecturer (September 1964–June 1965) and then as Assistant Professor (July 1965–June 1966). He relocated to Grinnell College in Iowa where he was appointed as an Assistant Professor (September 1966–August 1967) before joining the University of Iowa's Department of Anthropology in 1967 where he would remain for 43 years. Tom moved through the academic ranks at the University of Iowa (Associate Professor, September l969-August 1980; and Professor, September l980–present) and was still teaching and conducting field research on the day of his untimely passing. He collapsed on the Old Capitol Mall at the University of Iowa while on an errand for his field school at Plum Grove, Iowa which had only a few days left in the field season; he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Tom is survived by his wife Cynthia (Cyndi) L. Otis Charlton, whom he married in Iowa City on February 29, 1976. She served as a pillar of support for Tom and was a help-mate, organizer, and colleague, as well as an accomplished and well-published scholar in her own right. He is also survived by a son Thomas H. Charlton, IV, of Calgary, Alberta, and his fiancée Karen Eldridge of Iowa City; two brothers: Eric C. Charlton and special friend Carol Burton of Calgary, Alberta, and William J. (Carol) Charlton of Bracebridge, Ontario, mother-in-law Lucille Otis of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, brother- and sister-in-law Brian and Diane Otis of Fairfax, Iowa, and a number of nieces and nephews. Tom IV (Tommy) and Karen would wed on October 17, 2010.

Tom Charlton's archaeological career began with fieldwork and excavations during the period 1956–1959 and 1964 conducted by the University of Toronto in Ontario under the direction of Bruce Drewitt in 1958 (who would later work on the Teotihuacan Mapping Project with René Millon) and with Walter Kenyon in the following year. Kenyon was a specialist in Ontario archaeology and his work led to a better understanding of European settlement and the developmental history of the Huron and Neutral nations and he became a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. Charlton's exposure to the archaeology of the period of European and native contact would in later years come into play in his studies of Aztec and Hispanic cultures in the Basin of Mexico. In 1961 Tom joined the British Honduras Project of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), working with William R. Bullard, Jr. and Mary Ricketson Bullard in the Belize Valley, particularly at the site of Baking Pot. One of the prime objectives of that fieldwork was to acquire a collection of provenienced artifacts for exhibition at the ROM.

However, in 1963 he began what was to become a lifelong career in the Basin of Mexico when he joined the Teotihuacan Valley Project directed by the late William T. Sanders (Figure 2) (Webster and Evans 2008). The professional staff—eventually including archaeologists, ethnographers, and ecologists—and a majority of the graduate and undergraduate students were from The Pennsylvania State University but there were also participants from Columbia University and the University of Michigan. The early focus of that research was to conduct a comprehensive surface survey for all periods (Formative/Preclassic through Colonial) supplemented by selected excavations at sites representing a range of time periods from Preclassic Cuanalan and Tezoyuca settlements to the Classic period village of Santa Maria Maquixco el Bajo and the early Postclassic Toltec site of Xometla. A significant component of the research strategy was to devise a relative chronology based on the analysis of excavated ceramics and map diachronic settlement patterns from the earliest times to the 1960s (Figure 3).

Figure 1. Thomas H. Charlton, August 17, 1938–June 2, 2010.

Figure 2. Jeff Parsons, Bill Sanders, John McCullough, and Tom Charlton at Tepexpan, Teotihuacan Valley, 1963. Photo courtesy of William G. Mather III, via Jeffrey R. Parsons.

Figure 3. Tom at work in the Teo Lab, c. 2000. Photo courtesy of Cynthia L. Otis Charlton.

Tom's colleagues during those early years included Dick Diehl and Jeff Parsons, participants during excavations in the 1961 and 1962 field seasons, and myself who joined them in 1962. The 1963 field season began the actual site survey and small-scale excavations during which Tom focused on the Aztec period in the rural Teotihuacan Valley and would later expand his research into the Basin of Mexico and beyond (Figure 4). Several times in 1963 and 1964 Tom and I traveled in his car from Teotihuacan to the United States (usually Brownsville, Texas) to renew travel documents and permits and we became good friends during these long trips. We talked about the fieldwork, ceramic typologies, archaeological method and theory, and a variety of other academic topics. However, our discussions frequently turned to the Great Lakes where Tom, a native of Scarborough (now encompassed within Toronto) on Lake Ontario, and I, who grew up on the southern shore of Lake Erie, would debate the merits of these two lakes, the dynamics aboriginal populations of the Great Lakes Basin, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, and whether the white fish from one lake was better than that from the other

Figure 4. Venado the Burro,Vicente, and Tom in the Teotihuacan Valley near Otumba, c. 1998. Photo courtesy of Cynthia L. Otis Charlton.

Tom was also involved in historical archaeology in Iowa since 1973 and participated in archaeological excavations at the Plum Grove Historic Site on Carroll Street in Iowa City beginning in the early 1970s until his passing. In 1972 the site was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP 73000731) and is currently maintained by the Johnson County Historical Society but owned by the State Historical Society of Iowa. The Plum Grove historic house was built in 1844 and served as the retirement home of Governor Robert Lucas and his family until his death in 1853, although his family remained there through 1866. It was also the childhood home of author Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd who was born there in 1868 and later became the home of a local Civil War hero, Jacob Carroll Switzer, and subsequently was occupied by immigrant and impoverished families. Purchased by the State of Iowa in 1943, the house and grounds have been the focus of detailed historic and archaeological research since 1974, much of which has been undertaken by Tom Charlton (1978–1980 and 1995–2010). Excavations have uncovered evidence of additions to the original house, the construction of outbuildings, and a butchering site.

Plum Grove also served as a site for the University of Iowa's Field School in Archaeology beginning in 1974 and most of the excavations, laboratory work, and training of undergraduate and graduate students was led by Tom. These students not only learned the basics of field excavation including the use of a transit and stadia rod, but also how to take soil samples, describe and draw features, and learn the skills of note taking and the use of standardized forms. They also learned how to interpret artifactual and ecological evidence, determine the socioeconomic statuses of the residents who had lived there, and the economic linkages of the region with national and international production and distribution patterns during the periods of occupancy. These students learned the craft and it is apparent that he was a splendid instructor for these neophytes, several of whom would become professional archaeologists. By 1996 the Plum Grove studies also led to the creation of a site guide book and seven permanent artifact displays at the site, as well as public outreach through interpretive lectures and tours from 1996 through 2005 often given by Tom or Cyndi. As a result, he leaves an enduring legacy in public archaeology and historical archaeology in Iowa. Cyndi Charlton and Tom's colleagues at the university now face the task of processing and housing the artifacts from the 2010 field season, cataloging them, and moving all of the collections to a new, undetermined repository.

Tom was not only generous with his time and concern for the historic archaeology of Iowa but also for anthropology as a discipline and for the University of Iowa. He was a long-time member of a number of professional organizations including the American Anthropological Association (elected as a Fellow), the Society for American Archaeology, the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Society for Archaeological Sciences, the American Ethnological Society, the Society for Economic Anthropology, and the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología. In addition, he was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Association for Field Archaeology, was an active participant in many meetings of the International Congress of Americanists, and was an associate of Current Anthropology. Tom's professional activities also included organizing and chairing several annual conferences of Midwest Mesoamerican Archaeologists that brought together scholars from that region to discuss a variety of topics in archaeology and ethnohistory.

He actively sought funding for his fieldwork and was successful in obtaining financial support from the Canada Council (1962–1963, 1966), Social Science Research Council of Canada (1963–1964), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1975–1976, 1981–1983, 1988–1989, and 1992–1993), the National Science Foundation (1968–1972, 1988–1990, and1997–2001), FAMSI—Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.—(1989–1999), SAR—School for Advanced Research—(2008), and more than 20 university grants for field research or travel to meetings or to present his research. The recent SAR grant allowed him to participate in the important seminar “Colonial and Postcolonial Change in Mesoamerica: Archaeology as Historical Anthropology,” September 27 to October 3, 2008 in Santa Fe, NM, co-organized and co-chaired by Rani Alexander and Susan Kepecs. This was an exciting and stimulating conference and he looked forward to the publication of the results.

In addition, Tom also served for many years as an invited panelist or reviewer of grant applications for the NEH and NSF, National Geographic, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. In addition, he was a manuscript reviewer for the editors of American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Current Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and Journal of Archaeological Sciences, and was serving a second five year term on the Editorial Board for Ancient Mesoamerica for Cambridge University Press (2001–2012). Beginning in 1992 he was a member of the Editorial Board of Monografias Mesoamericanas (Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, México) and from 2004 he served on the Editorial Board of the journal Cuicuilco (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México, Mexico). He also found time to assess manuscripts for Oxford University Press and Utah University Press, as well as the commercial publisher Allyn and Bacon (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Mike Smith, Xavier Noguez, Tom, and Raymundo Martínez at “Presentación de Libro” for Smith's Aztec City-state Capitals at Colegio Mexiquense in Zinacantepec, Edo de México, July 2008. Photo courtesy of “El Colegio Mexiquense.”

At the time of his passing, he taught a variety of courses at the University of Iowa, including an introduction to prehistory, comparative prehistory, as well as separate courses on the Aztecs and the Mayas, a seminar on archaeological method and theory, field research in archaeology, historical archaeology, and laboratory methods in historical archaeology. In 2009 he was developing a new course on Mesoamerican literature and mathematical systems, and had previously taught seminars on the history of archaeology and survey courses on historical archaeology, the archaeology of Mesoamerica, Hispanic America, and human origins.

As would be expected, he was the dissertation director and committee member of a number of graduate students, most recently Meredith Anderson and Erica Begun who had taken their Master's degrees in anthropology with him in 2006. Among Charlton's more than two dozen Masters students are science writer Kathryn Kristina (Kris) Hirst, who, since 1997, has authored the Internet portal “Archaeology: About.com” http://archaeology.about.com/; she holds a 1985 MA in Anthropology from the University of Iowa and wrote historical archaeology and subsistence systems on Honey Creek, Van Buren County, Iowa. He also directed the dissertation of Pamela J. Cressey who received her doctorate in August 1985 with a dissertation titled “The Alexandria, Virginia City-Site: Archaeology in an Afro-American Neighborhood, 1830-1910”and she previously obtained her M.A. in July 1973 for “The Early Colonial Obsidian Industry: Teotihuacan Valley” under his direction. Pam is now City Archaeologist for the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at The George Washington University. Also among his notable students is Donna J. Seifert who received her doctorate under his direction in 1997 for her dissertation “Archaeological Majolicas of the Rural Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico.” Donna became Principal Investigator, John Milner Associates, Inc. and has continued to be a major contributor to the profession on a variety of topics in historical archaeology. It is clear from emails and other correspondence that Tom made an impact on the lives of a number of his students and contemporaries.

In 2004 Tom chaired the doctoral committee for Raúl García Chávez at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, where Raúl's dissertation combined Mesoamerican archaeology, ethnohistory, archival research, and ceramic studies culminating in “De Tula a Azcapotzalco: Caracterización arqueológica de los altépetl de la Cuenca de México posclásico temprano y medio, a través del estudio cerámico regional.” A number of Charlton's Master's students focused their research on the Basin of Mexico and especially Teotihuacan, notable among these are Lenora Kay Pohlman's “Wealth and Occupational Specialization: Socioeconomic Stratification among Craft Producers at Aztec Otumba” (1995); Mary Jane McLaughlin's “The Archaeological Implications of the Spatial Distribution of Spindle Whorl Designs in the Aztec City-State of Otumba” (1994); Timothy S. Hare's “Lapidary Craft Specialists at Otumba (TA 80): A Case Study in the Organization of Craft Production in Late Aztec Mexico” (1994); Eric D. Saucedo's “Identifying City-State Polities in the Southern and Eastern Basin of Mexico: A Central Place Analysis of Aztec Settlement Types: (1994); Daniel A. Wiltfang's “Aztec and Postconquest Spindle Whorls of the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico: Markers of Technological Change” (1975); and 1975 Barbara E. Borg's “Archaeological Whitewares of the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico” (1975). Charlton also directed ten B.A. Honors theses from 1993 to 2010. In addition to advising undergraduate and graduate student majors he somehow found time for committee work, sitting on more than two dozen university (1972–2010) and 110 department (1968–2010) committees including promotion and tenure, and he and chaired the important University Human Subjects Review Committee, University Museum, and University Libraries committees at various times from 1979 to 2010. Tom was also a member of the Plum Grove Advisory Committee from 1992 until his passing.

Those who knew Tom well recognize that he conducted ethnological settlement pattern studies in and near the Teotihuacan Valley in 1964 and studied modern ceramic production in the Teotihuacan Valley from 1967 to 1985. He also researched archival documents and cartographic representations in the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City in 1964, 1966, and 1967. These investigations focused on post-conquest settlement pattern history in the Teotihuacan Valley and environs and Tom later expanded his studies to include local community archives in the Teotihuacan valley with the goal of correlating Aztec archaeological sites with Colonial settlements. I am personally most grateful for Tom's assistance during my initial archival studies of Basin of Mexico commercial routes and place names in 1964. We were able to have many useful documents and maps microfilmed by the AGN staff at a nominal fee. His archaeological and archival research and excavations in Postclassic Aztec and Colonial era sites resulted in many significant publications during more than 30 field seasons in Mexico. His ceramic analysis led to a refined chronology for the rural areas and a better understanding of craft specialization (including figurines, stone tools, and textiles), and settlement dynamics. For many years Tom and his wife, Cynthia Otis Charlton, conducted major research in the Otumba area of the Teotihuacan Valley, and more recently began studies of the Classic Teotihuacan settlements and pottery in that region.

Charlton has left an impressive record of research and publications on archaeology, ceramics, settlement patterns, craft specialization, and a variety of other topics elated to his studies in the Teotihuacan Valley, the Basin of Mexico, and other areas of Aztec influence in the Meseta Central. His research began with the surface surveys and excavations with the Teotihuacan Valley Project (June 1963–September 1964) that provided materials for his dissertation. Surface surveys and the analyses of post-Conquest museum collections were undertaken during field seasons in 1966 and 1967, and in 1968 included surveys and studies in Post-Conquest archaeology in the Upper Teotihuacan Valley (including the now well-known Aztec and colonial-era site of Otumba) with a continuation of these activities along with excavations in 1969. During field seasons from 1969 to 1974 he analyzed excavated and surface materials from the Teotihuacan Valley Project and René Millon's Teotihuacan Mapping Project prior his surface survey of trade routes in central Mexico in 1975 and 1976. These lead to the publication of a seminal article in Science (Charlton 1978). The Teotihuacan corridor to the Gulf Coast intrigued many scholars and ultimately led one of Sanders's students, the late Robert S. Santley, to begin investigations of Classic Teotihuacan-related sites on the Gulf Coast (Santley 2007).

In 1977 and 1978 Tom undertook an analysis of excavated and surface materials from pre-Conquest canal systems in the Upper Teotihuacan Valley. For the next 11 years (1979–1987) he spent summer field seasons analyzing excavated and surface materials and, in January 1987, returned to the modern town of Otumba in the Upper Valley to begin preliminary surface surveys in an Aztec site designated as TA 80, the Aztec city-state capital of Otumba. Collaborative research with Deborah L. Nichols (Dartmouth College) extending from June 1988 to September 1989 involved detailed surface surveys and meticulous excavations at the site.

From 1992 through 2008, Tom undertook collaborative research with Patricia (Paty) Fournier García (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia) and Cynthia Otis Charlton (Independent Scholar) on pre-Hispanic and Colonial materials from the Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan in downtown Mexico City. He continued collaboration with Paty Fournier and Cyndi Otis Charlton and Mexican colleagues Margarita Carballal Staedtler, María Flores, and María del Carmen Lechuga García (Salvamento-Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) on pre-Hispanic and colonial-era artifacts from Tlatelolco also in Mexico City. With NSF support from 1997 to 1999, Tom and Deb Nichols selected artifacts, soils, and obsidian source samples for neutron activation analysis. In addition, he directed NSF-funded surface surveys of central Mexican obsidian sources with Deb and Cyndi, and from 1989 through 2008 continued analyses of data recovered at Otumba. Tom served as field and laboratory director of surveys and excavations (November 1998-September 1999) at five rural Classic Teotihuacan period sites in the Teotihuacan Valley, with William T. Sanders (The Pennsylvania State University) and Cyndi Charlton. This led to the publication of Urban Influence at Rural Sites: Teotihuacán and Its Near Hinterlands (Charlton 2001). From 2001 through 2008, he initiated collaborative surveys, excavations, and artifact analyses as part of a salvage archaeology project at TC 83, a Classic period site in the Teotihuacan Valley, with Raúl García, Verónica Ortega, and Cyndi Charlton.

Lastly, from 2003 through 2008, Tom undertook collaborative preliminary investigations into Prehispanic land-use patterns and state boundaries in a lacustrine zone in the northeast Basin of Mexico with Osvaldo Sterpone (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia-Hidalgo).

Although undertaking studies of artifacts from Aztec period excavations in Mexico City and working on Upper Teotihuacan Valley Classic period sites, Tom focused on the Otumba TA 80 site for many field seasons (Figure 6). Otumba, the name is the Spanish corruption of the Nahua word “Otompan” meaning “land of the Otomi, had been a significant Aztec city-state in the Basin of Mexico that was the focus of Tom's research beginning with his discovery of important archival documents related to that community in the Archivo General de la Nación in the early 1960s. His meticulous archival studies, archaeological survey, and excavations in the modern community led to our understanding of how a village became a city-state. Its development spanned between CE 900 to its apogee during the Late Aztec period (1328–1520). Demographic estimates for Otumba ranged from 2,500 to 6,500 persons in the urban center and between 19,000 and 75,000 for the city-state. Otumba was one of a number of villages that arose in the Teotihuacan Valley after the decline of the Classic period center of Teotihuacan. Along with other polities in the Teotihuacan Valley, Otumba became a tributary of the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco and later allied with the Aztec/Mexica against the city-state of Texcoco in an effort to gain control over the Basin of Mexico. Under Aztec hegemony, Otumba became an important city-state of the empire due in part to its strategic position on major trade routes in the northeastern Basin of Mexico and its proximity to important obsidian and basalt sources. The territory occupied by Otumba included small and large hamlets and the urban center of Otumba which had an administrative center, elite residences, a pyramid plaza complex, a major market, and a variety of craft workshops. Professional long-distance merchants (pochteca), who occupied a significant role in Aztec society, also resided at Otumba.

Figure 6. Marty Biskowski and Tom at Ometusco, 2007. Photo courtesy of Jeffrey R. Parsons.

The archaeological research undertaken by Tom and Cyndi Charlton corroborated the archival record of colonial-era Otumba but also added immensely to our understanding of craft specialization and especially multi-crafting in a community. They documented the production of obsidian blades and ornaments such as beads and ear spools; basalt implements such as grinding stones (manos and metates); textiles made from imported cotton and locally-grown maguey fibers (inferred from pottery spindle whorls and bone weaving implements); and Aztec ceramic figurines, censers, and utilitarian pottery. Tom published extensively on the research undertaken on Otumba materials, often with his wife, Cyndi (Charlton Otis Charlton 1994), with Paty Fournier (Charlton, Fournier, and Cervantes 1995), among others (Charlton, Otis Charlton, and Sanders 2002). He was the coeditor with his long-time colleague Deborah Nichols of The Archaeology of City-States: Cross Cultural Approaches (1997), a volume that emerged from Tom' having regularly taught a course on the comparative evolution of civilizations since 1966, during which he perceived that while not completely universal, city-states were cross cultural and found globally. The book contained fresh, new essays derived from a 1992 symposium held at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and the editors solicited other chapters to expand the coverage of the earliest civilizations. Thirteen chapters provided salient examples from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Harappan India, China, Greece, and Okinawa, and there were two contributions on the Maya, two on the Andes, and two on the Postclassic Aztecs. One essay on the Aztec city-state system was by the late Mary Hodge while the other chapter, “Diachronic Studies of City-States: Permutations on a Theme – Central Mexico from 1700 b.c to a.d. 1600,” was by Charlton and Nichols. They also wrote the introductory chapter on the concept, development, and application of the city-state paradigm. This important work made a splendid textbook and was printed in cloth and paperback editions.

Tom Charlton published three edited volumes, as well as 40 peer-reviewed articles (most in the major English and Spanish-language Mesoamerican journals) and 42 book chapters (five others in press), in addition to 29 book reviews, 4 review essays, and 69 research reports. He also participated in 13 symposia and workshops and presented 142 oral presentations and two posters at professional meetings. Numbers do not tell the full story; these were thoughtful contribution solidly grounded in his archaeological, ethnological, and archival research spanning nearly 50 years. And a majority of the articles and book chapters focused on Teotihuacan and the Basin of Mexico. He was the sole author of peer-reviewed articles that appeared in a variety of professional journal, among them American Antiquity, Ethnohistory, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Man, and World Archaeology. Tom coauthored numerous articles to which he made substantial contributions that appeared in Ancient Mesoamerica, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, and World Archaeology. He would be surprised, but no doubt pleased, to learn that his thirty-page chapter, “Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Ethnology: Interpretive Interfaces” which appeared in Advances in Archaeological Methods and Theory (Charlton 1981), is on the required reading list (M.A. II: Group D, Paper VII: Ethnoarchaeology and Experimental Archaeology) for students seeking an M.A in Archaeology at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (India) (http://www.msubaroda.ac.in/arts/upload/MAArch-syllabus.doc )

The 2011 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Sacramento was the venue for a symposium in his honor and a memorial tribute. The symposium, held on April 2, 2011, “Archaeological Approaches to Indigenous post-conquest Developments in New Spain and Central America: Papers in Memory of Thomas H. Charlton,” was organized by Patricia Fournier, Rani T. Alexander, and Susan Kepecs, and chaired by Alexander. There were presentations by Jeffrey R. Parsons; Susan Toby Evans and Raúl Valadez Azúa; Patricia Fournier and M. James Blackman; Alejandro Pastrana; Martin Biskowski; Matt Liebmann; Elizabeth Terese Newman; Janine L. Gasco; Judith F. Zeitlin; Danny Zborover; Susan Kepecs and Rani Alexander; Joel Palka; and William R. Fowler. Patricia Fournier and Cynthia L. Otis Charlton were discussants. That same evening, a memorial to honor Tom, organized by Charles C. Kolb, included contributions by Jeffrey R. Parsons, who prepared a PowerPoint slide show on Tom at Teotihuacan, and there were oral presentations by Deborah Nichols, Mike Smith, Kim Goldsmith, and fellow Canadian Mike Spence, among others.

Tom Charlton was an extraordinarily prolific and valued scholar of Postclassic Mesoamerica and the Colonial period and left a legacy of articles in major journals, significant chapters in edited volumes, and technical reports, as well as unpublished manuscripts. His untimely passing interrupted projects in the Otumba region of the Basin of Mexico and at Plum Grove, Iowa. He loved archaeology, Lake Ontario, Mexico, mountains, books, stamps, and his Triumph sports car and had a soft spot for small animals, especially cats. One of my fondest memories is from the April 2006 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in another San Juan (Puerto Rico), when Tom and Cyndi, and my wife and I enjoyed several meals together and thought about and began planning the upcoming 50^th anniversary of the beginning of the Teotihuacan Valley project. We are diminished by the losses of Joe Marino, Bill Sanders, and now Tom.