A spatial method for integrating data of different types

Systematically recording archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and other information in a geographical-temporal frame has great advantages. The method allows the logical ordering of disparate facts, error checking, making connections that might otherwise go undetected, better comparison, manipulating temporal and spatial scales, and specifying the fields within which causal processes do and do not operate. The application of this spatial method in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, generated new hypotheses about the late prehispanic-earlies colonial transition; it brings us closer to a single history, as opposed to segregated prehistory and history.