Combining older findings with new data on 1,000 previously undescribed archaeological sites, this book presents the cultural evolution of the Mixteca Alta in an up-to-date chronological framework. The nuu - the kingdoms of the famous Mixtec codices - are traced back through the Post-Classic and Classic periods to their beginnings in the first states of the Terminal Formative, revealing their origin, evolution, and persistence through two cycles of growth and collapse. Challenging assumptions that the Mixtec were peripheral to better-known people such as the Aztecs or Maya, the book asserts that the nuu were a major demographic and economic power in their own right. Older explanations of multiregional or macroregional systems often portrayed civilisations as rising in a cradle or hearth and spreading outward. New macroregional studies show that civilisations are products of more complex interactions between regions, in which peripheries are not simply shaped by cores but by their interactions with multiple societies at varying distances from major centres. This book is a significant contribution to this emerging area of archaeological research.