In starting The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, I'm always more than a little curious how all these contributors get along (or bicker) as people, researchers, and academics.
There are dozens of people involved in a compiled book like this, and the ideas shared in there can sometimes span half a century. Research like this often is a debate between a living researcher at the start of their career and a dead one whose work looms over every discussion like a specter in a sheet. It would be a safe bet, though, that a bunch of these folks on this contributors list are colleagues and/or competition.
I imagine a plane trip packed with researchers for one expedition, landing only to run into another expedition at a small village where one guy from one group bought up all the bug spray and another guy all the pork belly from the butchers' and someone from each camp has to arrange a truce and a deal for the supply.
Or a conference where heated debates happen in breakout sessions. Or pranks are pulled between one university's delegates and another's.
I did read a lovely work some years ago that really humanized these folks, and I gladly recommend it. Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson.
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