Ronald M. Spores (born January 25, 1931) is an American academic anthropologist, archaeologist and ethnohistorian, whose research career has centered on the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. He is Professor Emeritus of anthropology at Vanderbilt University's College of Arts and Science, where he has been a faculty member for over four decades. Spores is most renowned for his scholarship conducted on the cultural history of the Oaxacan region in southwestern Mexico. In particular, he is considered a leading authority on the Mixtec culture, with many contributions towards investigating its archaeological sites, ethnohistorical documents, political enconomies, and ethnohistory in both the pre-Columbian and Colonial eras. He is currently Director of the Proyecto Arqueológico de la Ciudad Yucundaa Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca, sponsored by the Fundación Alfredo Harp Helu, the National Geographic Society, and INAH (2004–2010).
Spores obtained his undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Oregon in 1953. His graduate studies were undertaken at the Universidad de las Américas in Cholula, Mexico, where he obtained an M.A. in 1960. Spores continued graduate studies at Harvard, where he completed a Master's thesis in 1963 and his doctorate in anthropology in 1964.[1]
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Published works by Spores include:
Spores, Ronald, 2007 Ñuu Ñudzahui. La Mixteca de Oaxaca. La Evolución de la Cultura Mixteca Desde los Primeros Pueblos Preclásicos hasta la Independencia. Oaxaca: Instituto Estatal de Educación Pública del Estado de Oaxaca.
Spores, Ronald, 1984 The Mixtecs in Ancient and Colonial Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Spores, Ronald, 2008. "Excavations at Yucundaa, Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula," in Mixtec Writing and Society. Escritura de Ñuu Dzaui, ed. by Maarten Jansen and Laura van Broekhoven, pp. 253–285. Amsterdam: KNAW Press.
Spores, Ronald, and Nelly Robles García, 2007. "A Prehispanic (Postclassic) Capital Center in Colonial Transition: Excavations at Yucundaa Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca, Mexico," Latin American Antiquity 18 (3), pp. 333–353.
Spores, Ronald and Nelly Robles García, 2008. "Investigaciones arqueológicas en Yucundaa, el Pueblo Viejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca," Arqueología, pp. 155–173.