What is the role of regional systems of interaction, communication, and the circulation of objects in building cultural patterns that are translocal (patterns with existence beyond the local that are (re)produced and experienced through local action)? Students read across anthropological subfields with a main focus on Meso-America as a culture area and supplemented by case studies from other world regions. We question how regional patterns emerge from interactions across space and time. For example, how do grammar and discourse features circulate within and across apparent linguistic and cultural boundaries? How did State-level social organization emerge from regional interaction of chiefdoms? And how can ethical systems such as kinship and marriage contribute to patterns that are distributed beyond the scale of human lives and individual memories? We also ask how “regions” are inferred through demographic and economic patterns of production and circulation that we can examine through historical anthropology and archaeology, and those interpretable through the bodily inscription like genetics, linguistics, and ritual performance? Students write regular responses to readings throughout the term, participate in class discussions, contribute readings for class discussions, and develop a final capstone thesis project which aims to integrate their engagement of Anthropology at UVA with the themes of the course.