Frances Berdan received her B.A. degree in geography at Michigan State University in 1965 and her Ph.D. degree in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. She has a long career in both ethnographic and archaeological field research, working in the American Southwest and Mexico. Berdan's research interests include ethnographic research in a Mexican peasant community, and archival and ethnographic research on the Aztecs and Spanish conquest in Mexico City and Seville, Spain. Berdan is currently a professor of anthropology and the coordinator of the Latin American Studies Progra...