A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY87 start with S start with S
The ceque system of Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, was perhaps the most complex indigenous ritual system in the pre-Columbian Americas. From a center known as the Coricancha (Golden Enclosure) or the Temple of the Sun, a system of 328 huacas (shrines) arranged along 42 ceques (lines) radiated out toward the mountains surrounding the city. This elaborate network, maintained by ayllus (kin groups) that made offerings to the shrines in their area, organized the city both temporally and spiritually.
From 1990 to 1995, Brian Bauer directed a major project to document the ceque system of Cusco. In this book, he synthesizes extensive archaeological survey work with archival research into the Inca social groups of the Cusco region, their land holdings, and the positions of the shrines to offer a comprehensive, empirical description of the ceque system. Moving well beyond previous interpretations, Bauer constructs a convincing model of the system's physical form and its relation to the social, political, and territorial organization of Cusco.
In a special precinct dedicated to ritual sacrifice at Huaca de la Luna on the north coast of Peru, about seventy-five men were killed and dismembered, their remains and body parts then carefully rearranged and left on the ground with numerous offerings. The discovery of this large sacrificial site—one of the most important sites of this type in the Americas—raises fundamental questions. Why was human sacrifice so central to Moche ideology and religion? And why is sacrifice so intimately related to the notions of warfare and capture?
In this pioneering book, Steve Bourget marshals all the currently available information from the archaeology and visual culture of Huaca de la Luna as he seeks to understand the centrality of human sacrifice in Moche ideology and, more broadly, the role(s) of violence in the development of social complexity. He begins by providing a fully documented account of the archaeological contexts, demonstrating how closely interrelated these contexts are to the rest of Moche material culture, including its iconography, the regalia of its elite, and its monumental architecture. Bourget then probes the possible meanings of ritual violence and human sacrifice and their intimate connections with concepts of divinity, ancestry, and foreignness. He builds a convincing case that the iconography of ritual violence and the practice of human sacrifice at all the principal Moche ceremonial centers were the main devices used in the establishment and development of the Moche state.
Between A.D. 750 and 1385, people gathered rocks from the tops of the terraces and rearranged them in grids of varying size and shape, averaging about 4 meters to 5 meters square. The grids captured rainfall and water accumulated under the rocks forming the grids. Agave was planted among the rocks, providing a dietary supplement to the maize and beans that were irrigated on the nearby bottom land, a survival crop when the staple crops failed, and possibly a trade commodity when yields were high. Stunning photographs by Adriel Heisey convey the vastness of the grids across the landscape.
In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young’s family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a “wild” woman made “tame” who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization.
Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from obscurity and reconstructs her complex life before, during, and after captivity. This true story from the American past resonates deeply in the current moment, attentive as it is to killing epidemics and racial injustices. In telling Sally’s story, Kerns presents a new narrative of the American West.
A significant work of neotropical archaeology presenting evidence of early hunter-gatherers who produced fiber-tempered ceramics.
Few topics in the development of humans have prompted as much interest and debate as those of the origins of pottery and agriculture. The first appearance of pottery in any area of the world is heralded as a new stage in the progress of humans toward a more complex arrangement of thought and society. Cultures are defined and separated by the occurrence of pottery types, and the association of pottery with mobility and agriculture continues to drive research in anthropology. For these reasons, the discovery of the earliest fiber-tempered pottery in the New World and carbonized remains identified as maize kernels is exciting.
San Jacinto 1 is the archaeological site located in the savanna region of the north coast of Colombia, South America, where excavations by led by the authors have revealed evidence of mobile hunter-gatherers who made pottery and who collected and processed plants from 6000 to 5000 B.P. The site is believed to show an early human adaptation to the tropics in the context of significant environmental changes that were taking place at the time.
This volume presents the data gathered and the interpretations made during excavation and analysis of the San Jacinto 1 site. By examining the social activities of a human population in a highly seasonal environment, it adds greatly to our contemporary understanding of the historical ecology of the tropics. Study of the artifacts excavated at the site allows a window into the early processes of food production in the New World. Finally, the data reveals that the origins of ceramic technology in the tropics were tied to a reduction in mobility and an increase in territoriality and are widely applicable to similar studies of sedentism and agriculture worldwide.
When Abraham Lincoln moved to Illinois’ Sangamo Country in 1831, he found a pioneer community transforming from a cluster of log houses along an ancient trail to a community of new towns and state roads. But two of the towns vanished in a matter of years, and many of the activities and lifestyles that shaped them were almost entirely forgotten. In The Sangamo Frontier, archaeologist Robert Mazrim unearths the buried history of this early American community, breathing new life into a region that still rests in Lincoln’s shadow.
Named after a shallow river that cuts through the prairies of central Illinois, the Sangamo Country—an area that now encompasses the capital city of Springfield and present-day Sangamon County—was first colonized after the War of 1812. For the past fifteen years, Mazrim has conducted dozens of excavations there, digging up pieces of pioneer life, from hand-forged iron and locally made crockery to pewter spoons and Staffordshire teacups. And here, in beautifully illustrated stories of each dig, he shows how each of these small artifacts can teach us something about the lifestyles of people who lived on the frontier nearly two hundred years ago. Allowing us to see past the changed modern landscape and the clichés of pioneer history, Mazrim deftly uses his findings to portray the homes, farms, taverns, and pottery shops where Lincoln’s neighbors once lived and worked.
Drawing readers into the thrill of discovery, The Sangamo Frontier inaugurates a new kind of archaeological history that both enhances and challenges our written history. It imbues today’s landscape with an authentic ghostliness that will reawaken the curiosity of anyone interested in the forgotten people and places that helped shape our nation.
Ancient Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was of outstanding importance: in the Lydian period it held the residence of the kings and subsequently, under Persian rule, the satraps. Throughout antiquity it remained an administrative center. Travelers of modern times and archaeological excavations have revealed, from the city site and its surroundings, inscriptions written mostly in Greek, some in Latin. Their texts deal with all kinds of subjects: decrees, public honors, civil and sacred laws, letters, epitaphs, and more.
In the corpus “Sardis VII 1” (1932) W. H. Buckler and D. M. Robinson published all inscriptions (228 items) known up to 1922, after which year excavation at Sardis came to a halt because of the Greek-Turkish war. Since excavation resumed in 1958, a portion of the Greek and Latin inscriptions has been published in various, widely scattered places; another portion, containing important texts discovered during the last ten years, was until now unpublished. The aim of this monograph is to present in a comprehensive corpus the entire epigraphic harvest (485 items) made in Sardis and its territory since 1958. Each inscription is accompanied by a description of the monument, bibliography, translation, and commentary; indices, concordances, photographs, and maps complement the collection.
Ponder questions of the united monarchy under Saul and David in light of current historical and archaeological evidence
Reconstructing the emergence of the Israelite monarchy involves interpreting historical research, approaching questions of ancient state formation, synthesizing archaeological research from sites in the southern Levant, and reexamining the biblical traditions of the early monarchy embedded in the books of Samuel and Kings. Integrating these approaches allows for a nuanced and differentiated picture of one of the most crucial periods in the history of ancient Israel. Rather than attempting to harmonize archaeological data and biblical texts or to supplement the respective approach by integrating only a portion of data stemming from the other, both perspectives come into their own in this volume presenting the results of an interdisciplinary Tübingen–Tel Aviv Research Colloquium.
Features:
- Essays on Israel's monarchy by experts in biblical archaeology and biblical studies
- Methods for integrating archaeology and biblical traditions in reconstructing ancient Israel's history
- New research on the sociopolitical process of state formation in Israel and Judah
This volume explores political change in chiefdoms, specifically how complex chiefdoms emerge and collapse, and how this process—called cycling—can be examined using archaeological, ethnohistoric, paleoclimatic, paleosubsistence, and physical anthropological data. The focus for the research is the prehistoric and initial contact-era Mississippian chiefdoms of the Southeastern United States, specifically the societies occupying the Savannah River basin from ca. A.D. 1000 to 1600. This regional focus and the multidisciplinary nature of the investigation provide a solid introduction to the Southeastern Mississippian archaeological record and the study of cultural evolution in general.
Many studies have focused on the degree to which the prevalence, nature, and conduct of conflict has varied across time and space. This volume focuses not only on such operational considerations but on cognitive and experiential issues, analyzing how the Maya understood and explained conflict, what they recognized as conflict, how conflict was experienced by various groups, and the circumstances surrounding conflict. By offering an emic (internal and subjective) understanding alongside the more commonly researched etic (external and objective) perspective, contributors clarify insufficiencies and address lapses in data and analysis. They explore how the Maya defined themselves within the realm of warfare and examine the root causes and effects of intergroup conflict.
Using case studies from a wide range of time periods, Seeking Conflict in Mesoamerica provides a basis for understanding hostilities and broadens the archaeological record for the “seeking” of conflict in a way that has been largely untouched by previous scholars. With broad theoretical reach beyond Mesoamerican archaeology, the book will have wide interdisciplinary appeal and will be important to ethnohistorians, art historians, ethnographers, epigraphers, and those interested in human conflict more broadly.
Contributors:
Matthew Abtosway, Karen Bassie-Sweet, George J. Bey III, M. Kathryn Brown, Allen J. Christenson, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, Elizabeth Graham, Helen R. Haines, Christopher L. Hernandez, Harri Kettunen, Rex Koontz, Geoffrey McCafferty, Jesper Nielsen, Joel W. Palka, Kerry L. Sagebiel, Travis W. Stanton, Alexandre Tokovinine
The continuing work of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has focused on community life in the northern Southwest during the Great Pueblo period (AD 1150– 1300). Researchers have been able to demonstrate that during the last Puebloan occupation of the area the majority of the population lived in dispersed communities and large villages of the Great Sage Plain, rather than at nearby Mesa Verde. The work at Sand Canyon Pueblo and more than sixty other large contemporary pueblos has examined reasons for population aggregation and why this strategy was ultimately forsaken in favor of a migration south of the San Juan River, leaving the area depopulated by 1290.
Contributors to this volume, many of whom are distinguished southwestern researchers, draw from a common database derived from extensive investigations at the 530-room Sand Canyon Pueblo, intensive test excavations at thirteen small sites and four large villages, a twenty-five square kilometer full-coverage survey, and an inventory of all known villages in the region. Topics include the context within which people moved into villages, how they dealt with climatic changes and increasing social conflict, and how they became increasingly isolated from the rest of the Southwest.
Seeking the Center Place is the most detailed view we have ever had of the last Pueblo communities in the Mesa Verde region and will provide a better understanding of the factors that precipitated the migration of thousands of people.
This data-rich monograph provides new and stimulating perspectives on the Hohokam people and their mortuary practices. It breaks new ground by using the knowledge of descendent peoples to generate archaeologically testable hypotheses; demonstrating the need for mortuary analyses conducted at a regional scale; and synthesizing of the interaction of beliefs, ideology, social organization, and ecology in determining Hohokam mortuary practices. Various chapters discuss body treatment, mortuary furniture and goods, mortuary architecture, and cemeteries, and numerous figures help document the variability of Hohokam practices.
The study synthesizes data from various excavations, applied archaeology, and cultural resource management projects. With its review of past research and ethnographic accounts along with line drawings of mortuary features and artifacts, Sending the Spirits Home provides tools for the adoption of standardized protocols needed to facilitate cross-project comparisons on which future regional syntheses can be based. Although written for archaeologists, the book does not require a specialist’s knowledge to appreciate its insights into these early people of the Southwest.
Keith W. Kintigh demonstrates how changing agricultural strategies and developing mechanisms of social integration contributed to these population shifts. In particular, he argues that occupants of the earliest large pueblos relied on runoff agriculture, but that gradually spring-and river-fed irrigation systems were adopted. Resultant strengthening of the mechanisms of social integration allowed the increased occupational stability of the protohistorical Zuni towns.
Using the ethnography of Pueblo peoples and seventh-century European manuals of metallurgy, Thomas addresses how the situated agency of indigenous practitioners incorporated within colonial industries shaped the metallurgy industry in the Spanish colonial period. The resulting analysis investigates how economic, technical, and social knowledge was communicated, contested, and transformed across the social and cultural boundaries present in early colonial communities. Viewing these transformations through an ethnohistorical lens, Thomas builds a social and historical context within which to understand the decisions made by colonial actors at the time.
The Moche people who inhabited the north coast of Peru between approximately 100 and 800 AD were perhaps the first ancient Andean society to attain state-level social complexity. Although they had no written language, the Moche created the most elaborate system of iconographic representation of any ancient Peruvian culture. Amazingly realistic figures of humans, animals, and beings with supernatural attributes adorn Moche pottery, metal and wooden objects, textiles, and murals. These actors, which may have represented both living individuals and mythological beings, appear in scenes depicting ritual warfare, human sacrifice, the partaking of human blood, funerary rites, and explicit sexual activities.
In this pathfinding book, Steve Bourget raises the analysis of Moche iconography to a new level through an in-depth study of visual representations of rituals involving sex, death, and sacrifice. He begins by drawing connections between the scenes and individuals depicted on Moche pottery and other objects and the archaeological remains of human sacrifice and burial rituals. He then builds a convincing case for Moche iconography recording both actual ritual activities and Moche religious beliefs regarding the worlds of the living, the dead, and the afterlife. Offering a pioneering interpretation of the Moche worldview, Bourget argues that the use of symbolic dualities linking life and death, humans and beings with supernatural attributes, and fertility and social reproduction allowed the Moche to create a complex system of reciprocity between the world of the living and the afterworld. He concludes with an innovative model of how Moche cosmological beliefs played out in the realms of rulership and political authority.
Archaeologists today are interpreting Native American religion and ritual in the distant past in more sophisticated ways, considering new understandings of the ways that Native Americans themselves experienced them. Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America broadly considers Native American religion and ritual in eastern North America and focuses on practices that altered and used a vast array of material items as well as how physical spaces were shaped by religious practices.
Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents.
Case studies, arranged chronologically, cover time periods ranging from the Paleoindian period (13,000–7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the protohistoric/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas.
Contributors
Sarah E. Baires / Melissa R. Baltus / Casey R. Barrier / James F. Bates / Sierra M. Bow / James A. Brown / Stephen B. Carmody / Meagan E. Dennison / Aaron Deter-Wolf / David H. Dye / Bretton T. Giles / Cameron Gokee / Kandace D. Hollenbach / Thomas A. Jennings / Megan C. Kassabaum / John E. Kelly / Ashley A. Peles / Tanya M. Peres / Charlotte D. Pevny / Connie M. Randall / Jan F. Simek / Ashley M. Smallwood / Renee B. Walker / Alice P. Wright
In the 1800s, when California was captivated by gold fever, a small group of Chinese immigrants recognized the fortune to be made from the untapped resources along the state’s coast, particularly from harvesting the black abalone of southern and Baja California. These immigrants, with skills from humble beginnings in a traditional Chinese fishing province, founded California’s commercial abalone industry, and led its growth and expansion for several decades. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, their successful livelihood was stolen from them through targeted legislation of the U.S. and California governments.
Today, the physical evidence of historical Chinese abalone fishing on the mainland has been erased by development. On California’s Channel Islands, however, remnants of temporary abalone collecting and processing camps lie scattered along the coastlines. These sites hold a treasure trove of information, stories, lifeways, and history. Braje has excavated many of these sites and uses them to explore the history of Chinese abalone fishing, presenting a microcosm of the broader history of Chinese immigrants in America—their struggles, their successes, the institutionalized racism they faced, and the unique ways in which they helped to shape the identity of the United States.
Traces the sources of power and large-scale organization of prehistoric peoples among Archaic societies.
By focusing on the first instances of mound building, pottery making, fancy polished stone and bone, as well as specialized chipped stone, artifacts, and their widespread exchange, this book explores the sources of power and organization among Archaic societies. It investigates the origins of these technologies and their effects on long-term (evolutionary) and short-term (historical) change.
The characteristics of first origins in social complexity belong to 5,000- to 6,000-year-old Archaic groups who inhabited the southeastern United States. In Signs of Power, regional specialists identify the conditions, causes, and consequences that define organization and social complexity in societies. Often termed "big mound power," these considerations include the role of demography, kinship, and ecology in sociocultural change; the meaning of geometry and design in sacred groupings; the degree of advancement in stone tool technologies; and differentials in shell ring sizes that reflect social inequality.
Looking through this window, authors Christine and Todd VanPool find a world centered on shamans who took spiritual journeys to consort with supernatural creatures. The shamans called upon horned serpents to bring rain, the lifeblood for farmers living in the Chihuahuan desert; dealt with snakes that held powers more potent than their bites; and raised, sacrificed, and buried macaws as ritual offerings to ensure water and fertility.
These findings challenge long-held beliefs about Southwestern religion and force a reconsideration of the importance of shamanism in the development of social differentiation in societies around the world.
American archaeology was forever scarred by an 1893 business proposition between cowboy-turned-excavator Richard Wetherill and socialites-turned-antiquarians Fred and Talbot Hyde. Wetherill had stumbled upon Mesa Verde’s spectacular cliff dwellings and started selling artifacts, but with the Hydes’ money behind him, well—there’s no telling what they might discover. Thus begins the Hyde Exploring Expedition, a nine-year venture into Utah’s Grand Gulch and New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon that—coupled with other less-restrained looters—so devastates Indigenous cultural sites across the American Southwest that Congress passes first-of-their-kind regulations to stop the carnage. As the money dries up, tensions rise, and a once-profitable enterprise disintegrates, setting the stage for a tragic murder.
Sins of the Shovel is a story of adventure and business gone wrong and how archaeologists today grapple with this complex heritage. Through the story of the Hyde Exploring Expedition, practicing archaeologist Rachel Morgan uncovers the uncomfortable links between commodity culture, contemporary ethics, and the broader political forces that perpetuate destructive behavior today. The result is an unsparing and even-handed assessment of American archaeology’s sins, past and present, and how the field is working toward atonement.
Northwestern Plains prehistory and early history as told by human bones is vivid and dramatic. The skeletal and burial record spans thousands of years, a wide geographic expanse, and contains important evidence of human existence in this vast region of North America. This book helps clarify the emerging picture.
Most of the contributions assembled here were initially presented as part of a symposium at the Plains Conference in Oklahoma City in 2003. Twenty-one preeminent scholars, working across many fields within bioarchaeology and skeletal biology—including paleopathology, dental pathology, and human osteology—bring their expertise to bear not only on prehistoric Native American burials, but on numerous other case studies. They look at specific Wyoming samples of pioneer-era burials, Indian War–era casualties, historic Chinese burials, and remains from the Benick Ranch and the Korell-Bordeaux sites. Reports on Crow Indian mummies from Montana and military burials from Missouri and Nebraska continue the exploration into recent historic times.
Human burials provide a rich source of information about people’s lives—who they were, what activities they pursued, and how they may have participated in rituals of death and mourning. This volume is an authoritative statement on both the skeletal biology and bioarchaeology of the entire Northwestern Plains.
Isaac Royall (1677-1739) was the largest slave owner in Massachusetts in the mid- eighteenth century, and in this book the Royall family and their slaves become the central characters in a compelling cultural-historical narrative. The family's ties to both Massachusetts and Antigua provide a comparative perspective on the transcontinental development of modern ideologies of individualism, colonialism, slavery, and race.
Alexandra A. Chan examines the critical role of material culture in the construction, mediation, and maintenance of social identities and relationships between slaves and masters at the farm. She explores landscapes and artifacts discovered at the site not just as inanimate objects or “cultural leftovers,” but rather as physical embodiments of the assumptions, attitudes, and values of the people who built, shaped, or used them. These material things, she argues, provide a portal into the mind-set of people long gone-not just of the Royall family who controlled much of the material world at the farm, but also of the enslaved, who made up the majority of inhabitants at the site, and who left few other records of their experience.
Using traditional archaeological techniques and analysis, as well as theoretical per- spectives and representational styles of post-processualist schools of thought, Slavery in the Age of Reason is an innovative volume that portrays the Royall family and the people they enslaved “from the inside out.” It should put to rest any lingering myth that the peculiar institution was any less harsh or complex when found in the North.
Alexandra A.Chan currently works in cultural resource management as an archaeolog- ical consultant and principal investigator. As assistant professor of anthropology at Vassar College, 2001-2004, she also developed numerous courses in historical archaeology, archaeological ethics, comparative colonialism, and the archaeology of early African America. She was the project director of the excavations at the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, 2000-2001, and continues to serve on the Academic Advisory Council of the museum.
New in Paper!
Excavated in 1974, the Sloan site in northeast Arkansas is the earliest recognized cemetery in the New World, containing the graves of a small group of Native Americans who died over ten thousand years ago. Although no skeletons were found in the acidic soil, the number, size, and quality of its artifacts attest to the presence of a far more complicated and sophisticated culture than had previously been thought to exist during the Dalton period.
Bringing together the work of thirteen eminent scholars, Dan F. Morse describes and assesses the assemblage of points, adzes, scrapers, abraders, and other stone artifacts as an indicator of the territorial stability of late Pleistocene peoples. The tools show that hunter-gatherer-fisher populations lived in small, semipermanent villages, hunted and butchered white-tailed deer, processed and ate vegetables, and made dugout canoes. And they buried their dead in cemeteries, a practice previously associated only with the rise of horticultural societies. Many of the tools are unused, suggesting ritual interments and a well-developed system of trade with groups in rockier areas.
Including an overview of the Dalton period in the southeastern United States and a discussion of the region’s geologic and vegetal prehistory—and newly supported by extensive high-quality image galleries now available at the website of the Arkansas Archeological Survey (see inside cover)—this comprehensive study of the Sloan artifacts provides a multifaceted assessment of a site rich in information about the technology of a single prehistoric society.
Pipes lend themselves to anthropological as well as archaeological analysis in part because they are more ceremonial than utilitarian. Thus, while their styles and provenance can reveal something about trade relationships, cultural transfer, and aesthetic influences, they also provide important information about the nature of ritual in a particular society. As the contributors demonstrate, pipes offer a window through which to view the symbolic, ideological, and political roles that smoking has played in North American societies from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century.
The eleven essays included range widely over time and region, beginning with a case study of pipes and mortuary practices in the Ohio Valley during the Early Woodland Period. Subsequent chapters examine stone pipes from coastal North Carolina during the Late Woodland Period and the role pipes played in interregional interaction among protohistoric Native American groups in the Midwest and Northeast. Other essays explore the variety of cultural and political uses of pipes during the period of European contact. The final section of the book focuses on smoking in Euro-American contexts of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
The innovative interpretive approaches taken by the contributors and the broad historical perspective will make The Culture of Smoking a model for examining other categories of material culture, and the volume will be welcomed by anthropologists and historians as well as archaeologists.
Sean M. Rafferty is associate professor of anthropology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Rob Mann is the southeast regional archaeologist for Louisiana and is based in the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University.
Contributors examine material evidence, historical records, and iconography, productively criticizing the claim that children are invisible in the archaeological record and elucidating an ancient childhood comprising multiple and complex identities. They explore the methodological and theoretical difficulties created when investigating childhood - a category defined by each culture - in the archaeological record.
Sure to appeal widely to New World and Old World archaeologists and anthropologists, The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica will open up new avenues of research into the lives of this previously overlooked yet remarkably large population.
Contributors include Traci Ardren, Ximena Chávez Balderas, Billie Follensbee, Byron Hamann, Scott R. Hutson, Rosemary A. Joyce, Stacie M. King, Jeanne Lopiparo, Patricia McAnany, Geoffrey G. McCafferty, Sharisse D. McCafferty, Juan Alberto Román Berrelleza, Rebecca Storey, Rissa M. Trachman, Fred Valdez Jr.
Through the study of glaze-painted pottery, archaeologists are beginning to understand that pots had “social lives” in this changing world and that careful reconstruction of the social lives of pots can help us understand the social lives of Puebloan peoples. In this book, fifteen contributors apply a wide range of technological and stylistic analysis techniques to pottery of the Rio Grande and Western Pueblo areas to show what it reveals about inter- and intra-community dynamics, work groups, migration, trade, and ideology in the precontact and early postcontact Puebloan world.
The contributors report on research conducted throughout the glaze producing areas of the Southwest and cover the full historical range of glaze ware production. Utilizing a variety of techniques—continued typological analyses, optical petrography, instrumental neutron activation analysis, X-ray microprobe analysis, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy—they develop broader frameworks for examining the changing role of these ceramics in social dynamics. By tracing the circulation and exchange of specialized knowledge, raw materials, and the pots themselves via social networks of varying size, they show how glaze ware technology, production, exchange, and reflected a variety of dynamic historical and social processes.
Through this material evidence, the contributors reveal that technological and aesthetic innovations were deliberately manipulated and disseminated to actively construct “communities of practice” that cut across language and settlement groups. The Social Life of Pots offers a wealth of new data from this crucial period of prehistory and is an important baseline for future work in this area.
Contributors
Patricia Capone
Linda S. Cordell
Suzanne L. Eckert
Thomas R. Fenn
Judith A. Habicht-Mauche
Cynthia L Herhahn
Maren Hopkins
Deborah L. Huntley
Toni S. Laumbach
Kathryn Leonard
Barbara J. Mills
Kit Nelson
Gregson Schachner
Miriam T. Stark
Scott Van Keuren
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
Patricia Crown and Deborah Nichols
2. Dismembering the Trope: Imagining Cannibalism in the Ancient Pueblo World
Randall H. McGuire and Ruth Van Dyke
3. An Outbreak of Violence and Raiding in the Central Mesa Verde Region in the 12th Century AD
Brian R. Billman
4. Chaco Horrificus?
Wendy Bustard
5. Inscribed in the Body, Written in Bones: The Consequences of Social Violence at La Plata
Debra L. Martin, Nancy Akins, Bradley Crenshaw, and Pamela K. Stone
6. Veneration or Violence: A Study of Variations in Patterns of Human Bone Modification at La Quemada
Ventura R. Pérez, Ben A. Nelson, and Debra L. Martin
7. Witches, Practice, and the Context of Pueblo Cannibalism
William H. Walker
8. Explanation vs. Sensation: The Discourse of Cannibalism at Awat’ovi
Peter Whiteley
9. Devouring Ourselves
George J. Armelagos
References Cited
About the Contributors
Index
A timely, comprehensive reevaluation of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.
One of the most venerable concepts in Southeastern archaeology is that of the Southern Cult. The idea has its roots in the intensely productive decade (archaeologically) of the 1930s and is fundamentally tied to yet another venerable concept—Mississippian culture. The last comprehensive study of the melding of these two concepts into the term Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) is more than two decades old, yet our understanding of the objects, themes, and artistic styles associated with the SECC have changed a great deal. New primary data have come to light that bear directly on the complex, requiring a thorough reanalysis of both concepts and dating. Recent publications have ignited many debates about the dating and the nature of the SECC.
This work presents new data and new ideas on the temporal and social contexts, artistic styles, and symbolic themes included in the complex. It also demonstrates that engraved shell gorgets, along with other SECC materials, were
produced before A.D. 1400.
Drawing on archaeological evidence ranging back to the late Pleistocene as well as extensive documentation from the historic period, contributors show how Southeastern Mesoamericans created unique identities, strategically incorporating cosmopolitan influences from cultures to the north and south with their own long-lived traditions. These populations developed autochthonous forms of monumental architecture and routes and methods of exchange and had distinct social, cultural, political, and economic traits. They also established unique long-term human-environment relations that were the result of internal creativity and inspiration influenced by local social and natural trajectories.
Southeastern Mesoamerica calls upon archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, ethnohistorians, and others working in Mesoamerica, Central America, and other cultural boundaries around the world to reexamine the role Indigenous resilience and agency play in these areas and in the cultural developments and interactions that occur within them.
Contributors: Edy Barrios, Christopher Begley, Walter Burgos, Mauricio Díaz García, William R. Fowler, Rosemary A. Joyce, Gloria Lara-Pinto, Eva L. Martínez, William J. McFarlane, Cameron L. McNeil, Lorena D. Mihok, Pastor Rodolfo Gómez Zúñiga, Timothy Scheffler, Edward Schortman, Russell Sheptak, Miranda Suri, Patricia Urban, Antolín Velásquez, E. Christian Wells
Covering 19 years of excavations, this volume provides an invaluable collection of Moore's pioneering archaeological investigations along Alabama's waterways.
In 1996, The University of Alabama Press published The Moundville Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore, which covered a large part of Moore's early archaeological expeditions to the state of Alabama. This volume collects the balance of Moore's Alabama expeditions, with the exception of those Moore made along the Tennessee River, which will be collected in another, forthcoming volume focusing on the Tennessee basin.
This volume includes:
Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Alabama River (1899);
Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Tombigbee River(1901);
a portion of Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Northwest Florida Coast (1901);
The So-Called "Hoe-Shaped Implement" (1903);
Aboriginal Urn-Burial in the United States (1904);
A Form of Urn-Burial on Mobile Bay (1905);
Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Lower Tombigbee River (1905);
Certain Aboriginal Remains on Mobile Bay and on Mississippi Sound (1905);
a portion of Mounds of the Lower Chattahoochee and Lower Flint Rivers (1907);
a portion of The Northwest Florida Coast Revisited(1918).
Craig Sheldon's comprehensive introduction focuses both on the Moore expeditions and on subsequent archaeological excavations at
sites investigated by Moore. Sheldon places Moore's archaeological work in the context of his times and against the backdrop of similar investigations in the Southeast. Sheldon discusses practical matters, such as the various assistants Moore employed and their roles in these historic expeditions. He provides brief vignettes of daily life on the Gopher and describes Moore's work habits, revealing professional and personal biographical details previously unknown about this enigmatic archaeologist.
These essays demonstrate how various combinations of research strategies, conceptual frameworks, and data can afford a new look at a geographical area and its settlement. The contributors offer views on the evolution of backcountry communities by addressing such topics as migration, kinship, public institutions, transportation and communications networks, land markets and real estate claims, and the role of agricultural development in the emergence of a regional economy. In their discussions of individuals in the backcountry, they also explore the multiracial and multiethnic character of southern frontier society.
Yielding new insights unlikely to emerge under a single disciplinary analysis, The Southern Colonial Backcountry is a unique volume that highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to the backcountry while identifying common research problems in the field.
The Editors: David Colin Crass is the archaeological services unit manager at the Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Steven D. Smith is the head of the Cultural Resources Consulting Division of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Antrhopology.
Martha A. Zierden is curator of historical archaeology at The Charleston Museum.
Richard D. Brooks is the administrative manager of the Savannah River Archeological Research Program, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Antrhopology.
The Contributors: Monica L. Beck, Edward Cashin, Charles H. Faulkner, Elizabeth Arnett Fields, Warren R. Hofstra, David C. Hsiung, Kenneth E. Lewis, Donald W. Linebaugh, Turk McCleskey, Robert D. Mitchell, Michael J. Puglisi, Daniel B. Thorp.
Recent research has provided a wealth of broadly based new data that have expanded the understanding of this region and its influence on greater Mesoamerica. In The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic, prominent contributors debate whether the southern region was indeed "Maya" or instead a region of intense multiethnic interaction, with speakers of many languages and many sources of identity. The chapters address a host of advanced developments to which this area can lay claim--urbanism and city-states, the earliest Maya writing, and the origin of the Maya calendar--as well as additional issues including the construction of social and cultural identities, economic networks of early complex societies, relationships between the Maya and the Olmec, and a comprehensive discussion of the ancient city of Kaminaljuyu and its relationship to other cities in the region.
With contributions from well-known archaeologists, Southwest Archaeology in the Twentieth Century reviews the histories of major archaeological topics of the region during the twentieth century, with particular attention to the vast changes in southwestern archaeology during the later decades of the century. Included are the huge influence of field schools, the rise of cultural resource management (CRM), the uses and abuses of ethnographic analogy, the intellectual contexts of archaeology in Mexico, and current debates on agriculture, sedentism, and political complexity.
By looking back at the previous century of study, this book provides an authoritative retrospective of intellectual trends as well as a synthesis of current themes in the arena of the American Southwest.
Pithouses are the earliest identifiable domestic architecture in many areas of the world, and can provide insights into the origins of communities--a fundamental component of past and present societies. In this book, Lisa Young and Sarah Herr invite archaeologists to explore the development of communities using information from pithouse sites in the American Southwest.
Using regional and topical syntheses to investigate the formation of pithouse communities, contributors to this volume examine the complex relationship between the economic transition to agricultural dependence and the social changes associated with sedentism. They discover that during this transformation, peoples' relationship with the landscape changed in ways that affected their use of space, community organization, and cultural identity.
Employing various theoretical perspectives, these contributions analyze changes in pithouses, site layout, communal architecture, and settlement patterns to investigate the development of place-based communities. Chapters look at community formation strategies in populous regions like the northern San Juan Basin, the southern Colorado Plateau, Mimbres/southern Mogollon, and Hohokam Basin and Range and compare them with social structures in more sparsely populated regions like the northeast Hohokam peripheries, the Arizona Transition Zone, the Cibola region, southeast New Mexico, and the northern Rio Grande. The book also includes thematic discussions of panregional economic change, the complex relationship between house and household, and the demographic shifts accompanying the Neolithic Demographic Transition.
An essential book for students and archaeologists interested in the origins of communities, Southwestern Pithouse Communities is also an important comparative resource for scholars interested in social change during the transition to settled village life.
Space-Time Perspectives on Early Colonial Moquegua looks at the encounters between existing populations and newcomers from successive waves of colonization, from indigenous expansion states (Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inka) to the foreign Spaniards, and the way each group “re-spatialized” the landscape according to its own political and economic ends. Viewing these spatializations from political, economic, and religious perspectives, Rice considers both the ideological and material occurrences.
Concluding with a special focus on the multiple space-time considerations involved in Spanish-inspired ceramics from the region, Space-Time Perspectives on Early Colonial Moquegua integrates the local and rural with the global and urban in analyzing the events and processes of colonialism. It is a vital contribution to the literature of Andean studies and will appeal to students and scholars of archaeology, historical archaeology, history, ethnohistory, and globalization.
When European explorers began their initial forays into southeastern North America in the 16th and 17th centuries they encountered what they called temples and shrines of native peoples, often decorated with idols in human form made of wood, pottery, or stone. The idols were fascinating to write about, but having no value to explorers searching for gold or land, there are no records of these idols being transported to the Old World, and mention of them seems to cease about the 1700s. However, with the settling of the fledgling United States in the 1800s, farming colonists began to unearth stone images in human form from land formerly inhabited by the native peoples. With little access to the records of the 16th and 17th centuries, debate and speculation abounded by the public and scholars alike concerning their origin and meaning.
During the last twenty years the authors have researched over 88 possible examples of southeastern Mississippian stone statuary, dating as far back as 1,000 years ago, and discovered along the river valleys of the interior Southeast. Independently and in conjunction, they have measured, analyzed, photographed, and traced the known history of the 42 that appear in this volume. Compiling the data from both early documents and public and private collections, the authors remind us that the statuary should not be viewed in isolation, but rather as regional expressions of a much broader body of art, ritual, and belief.
New research into Numic archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography is significantly changing the understanding of migratory patterns, cultural interactions, chronology, and shared cultural-religious practices of regionally defined Numic branches and non-Numic populations of the American West. Contributors examine case studies of Ute and Shoshone material culture (ceramics, lithics, features and structures, trade and seasonal migration), chronology (dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence), and subsistence systems (hunting camps, game drives, faunal and botanical evidence of food sources). They also delineate different hunter-gatherer “ethnic groups” who co-occupied or interacted within one another’s territories through trade, raiding, or seasonal subsistence migrations, such as the Late Fremont/Ute and the Shoshone or the early Navajo/Ute and the Shoshone.
With a strong emphasis on diverse cases and new and original archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic lines of evidence, Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear interweaves anthropological theory and innovative applications of leading-edge scientific methodologies and technologies. The book presents a cross-section of field, laboratory, and ethnohistoric studies—including indigenous consultation—that explore past, recent, and ongoing developments in Numic cultural history and prehistory. It will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology, as well as private and government cultural resource specialists and museum staff.
Contributors:
Richard Adams, John Cater, Christine Chady, David Diggs, Rand Greubel, John Ives, Byron Loosle, Curtis Martin, Sally McBeth, Lindsay Montgomery, Bryon Schroeder, Matthew Stirn
By studying the ceramic traditions of the Guale Indians, Rebecca Saunders provides evidence of change in Native American lifeways from prehistory through European contact and the end of the Mission period.
Demonstrating the importance of these subterranean spaces to Maya archaeology, contributors provide interpretations of archaeological remains that yield insights into Maya ritual and cosmology. Compiling the best current scholarship in this fast-growing area of research, Stone Houses and Earth Lords is a vital reference for Mayanists, Mesoamerican specialists, and others interested in the human use of caves in the New World. Contributors include: Juan Luis Bonor, James E. Brady, Robert Burnett, Allan B. Cobb, Pierre Robert Colas, Cesar Espinosa, Sergio Garza, David M. Glassman, Christina T. Halperin, Amalia Kenward, Andrew Kindon, Patricia McAnany, Christopher Morehart, Holley Moyes, Vanessa A. Owen, Shankari Patel, Polly Peterson, Keith M. Prufer, Timothy. W. Pugh, Frank Saul, Julie Saul, Ann M. Scott, Andrea Stone, and Vera Tiesler.
Explores the impact of European colonization on Native American and Pacific Islander technology and culture
This is the first comprehensive analysis of the partial replacement of flaked stone and ground stone traditions by metal tools in the Americas during the Contact Era. It examines the functional, symbolic, and economic consequences of that replacement on the lifeways of native populations, even as lithic technologies persisted well after the landing of Columbus. Ranging across North America and to Hawai'i, the studies show that, even with wide access to metal objects, Native Americans continued to produce certain stone tool types—perhaps because they were still the best implements for a task or because they represented a deep commitment to a traditional practice.Chapters are ordered in terms of relative degree of European contact, beginning with groups that experienced brief episodes of interaction, such as the Wichita-French meeting on the Arkansas River, and ending with societies that were heavily influenced by colonization, such as the Potawatomi of Illinois. Because the anthology draws comparisons between the persistence of stone tools and the continuity of other indigenous crafts, it presents holistic models that can be used to explain the larger consequences of the Contact Era.
Marvin T. Smith, of Valdosta State University has stated that, “after reading this volume, no archaeologist will ever see the replacement of lithic technology by metal tools as a simple matter of replacement of technologically inferior stone tools with their superior metal counterparts. This is cutting-edge scholarship in the area of contact period studies.”
Welcoming 800,000 visitors each year, Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric monument in all of Europe. It has inspired modern replicas throughout the world, including one constructed entirely of discarded refrigerators. This curious structure is the subject of cult worship, is a source of pride for Britons, and offers an intellectual challenge for academics. It has captured the imagination and the attention of thousands of people for thousands of years.
Over the centuries, “experts” have tried to discover the meaning behind Stonehenge. While each new theory contradicts earlier speculation, every new proposal attributes a purpose to the site. From bards of the twelfth century to Black Sabbath, from William Blake to archaeologists of the twenty-first century, Stonehenge has embodied a wealth of intention. Was it designed for winter solstice, for goddess worship, or as a funerary temple? While all have been suggested, even “proven,” the mystery continues.
Through the eyes of its most eloquent apologists, Rosemary Hill guides the reader on a tour of Stonehenge in all its cultural contexts, as a monument to many things—to Renaissance Humanism, Romantic despair, Victorian enterprise, and English Radicalism. In the end, the stones remain compelling because they remain mysterious—apparently simple yet incomprehensible—that is the wonder, the enchantment, of Stonehenge.
A crucial text for any university course on the interaction of archaeology and the Bible
The world of early Christians was not a world lived in texts; it was a world saturated with material reality and concerns: what, where and when to eat or drink; how to present oneself in the space of bodily life and that of death; how to move from one place to another; what impacted status or the adjudication of legal charges. All these and more controlled so much of life in the ancient world. The Christians were not immune from the impact of these realities. Sometimes they absorbed their surrounds; sometimes they quite explicitly rejected the material practices bearing in on them; frequently they modified the practice and the rationale to create a significant Christian alternative. The collection of essays in this volume come from a range of international scholars who, for all their different interests and critical commitments, are yet united in treasuring research into the Greek and Roman worlds in which Christians sought to make their way. They offer these essays in honor of one who has made a lifetime's work in mining ancient material culture to extract nuggets of insight into early Christian dining practices: Dennis E. Smith.
Features
- Rich examples of method in the utilization of ancient material culture for biblical interpretation.
- Thirteen essays with a response from Dennis E. Smith
- Maps, diagrams, and plates
The chapters employ a wide range of data classes, demonstrating the versatility and productivity of the approach for fashioning rigorous inferences in history, historical archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and prehistory. By illustrating the strong case approach with convincing case studies from behavioral archaeology, the editors aim to alert the archaeological community about how the process of archaeological inference can be improved.
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
Within the general structure-and-process theme of this compendium, the authors have focused on either intrasite problems (those dealing with the formation and structure of a site, type of site, or type of feature) or intersite problems (those dealing with behavioral organization and process as developed from comparative site data). These papers, from a broad range of specialists, present a comprehensive study of southeastern archaeology.
Section I: Intrasite Structure and Formation Processes
Formation Processes for the Practical Prehistorian: An Example from the Southeast, J. Jefferson Reid
The Form, Function, and Formation of Garbage-filled Pits on Southeastern Aboriginal Sites: An Archaeobotanical Analysis, Roy S. Dickens Jr.
Feature Zones and Feature Fill: More Than Trash, Jack H. Wilson Jr.
Social Implications of Storage and Disposal Patterns, H. Trawick Ward
The Form and Function of South Carolina's Early Woodland Shell Rings, Michael B. Trinkley
A New Way of Looking at Old Holes: Methods for Excavating and Interpreting Timber Structures, Alexander H. Morrison II
Section II: Intersite Comparisons and Regional Chronology
Archaeology and the Archaic Period in the Southern Ridge-and-Valley Province, Jefferson Chapman
Intersite Assemblage Variability in the Lower Little Tennessee River Valley: Exploring Extinct Settlement Systems Through Probabilistic Sampling, R. P. Stephen Davis Jr.
Lithic Scatters in the South Carolina Piedmont, Veletta Canouts and Albert C. Goodyear III
Tradition and Typology: Basic Elements of the Carolina Projectile Point Sequence, Billy L. Oliver
Model and Sequence in the Maryland Archaic, Kit W. Wesler
Spheres of Cultural Interaction across the Coastal Plain of Virginia in the Woodland Period, Keith T. Egloff
Early Hopewellian Ceremonial Encampments in the South Appalachian Highlands, John A. Walthall
Deep Water and High Ground: Seventeenth-Century Settlement Patterns on the Carolina Coast, Stanley South and Michael O. Hartley
Epilogue: Joffre Lanning Coe: The Quiet Giant of Southeastern Archaeology, James B. Griffin
In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars—Czech and American archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, geologists, and biologists—report on the results of the investigations from 1980 through the 1990s at Stránská skála, a complex of open-air loess sites on the outskirts of the Brno Basin in the Czech Republic.
The volume presents in-depth studies of the geology, paleopedology, frost processes, vegetation, fauna, and archaeological features of Stránská skála that break new ground in our understanding of early modern humans in central Europe.
Focusing on the enigmatic monumental center at Chaco Canyon, the book provides a historical analysis of how Southwest archaeology confined itself, how it can break out of those confines, and how it can proceed into the future. Lekson suggests that much of what we believe about the ancient Southwest should be radically revised. Looking past old preconceptions brings a different Chaco Canyon into view: more than an eleventh-century Pueblo ritual center, Chaco was a political capital with nobles and commoners, a regional economy, and deep connections to Mesoamerica. By getting the history right, a very different science of the ancient Southwest becomes possible and archaeology can be reinvented as a very different discipline.
Notes
https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2019/04/Lekson-Notes.pdf
Enslaved Africans and their descendants comprised a significant portion of colonial Virginia populations, with most living on rural slave quarters adjacent to the agricultural fields in which they labored. Archaeological excavations into these home sites have provided unique windows into the daily lifeways and culture of these early inhabitants.
In this deeply researched and multifaceted study, Marco G. Meniketti demonstrates how the landscape of the small Caribbean island of Nevis preserves and reveals artifacts and evidence of the highly complex and interrelated seventeenth- to nineteenth-century “Atlantic Economy,” comprising early capitalist sugar production, the African slave trade, and European settlement.
Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation is based on twelve seasons of meticulous archaeological field work and documentary research. Although Nevis was once a bustling hub of the British colonial project, the emigration of emancipated slaves and abandonment by European planters left large swathes of Nevis vacant. Reclaimed by forests and undisturbed by later waves of economic development, the island—dotted with fascinating ruins, debris from the sugar industry, windmills, chimneys, and multistoried great house—provided Meniketti with an ideal subject for archaeological inquiry.
Through intensive archaeological and landscape surveys of multiple key plantation sites, Meniketti traces the development of Nevis from its initial European settlement in 1627 to its central role as a British mercantile hub and a laboratory and prototype of capitalist sugar cultivation. His nuanced analysis explains the backdrop of European political and economic rivalries, of which the colonial agro-industrial enterprises were the physical manifestations, and makes telling comparisons with Dutch and French archaeological sites. The work also compares and contrasts the adoption of capitalist modes of sugar production and socialization at wealthy and middling plantation sites.
Supported with a wealth of photos, tables, and maps, Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation offers a vital case study of one island whose environment and archaeological record illuminates the complex webs of Atlantic history.
This classic compendium of ancient Indian artifacts from the entire southeastern United States remains an indispensable reference source for professionals and enthusiasts alike.
From utilitarian arrowheads to beautiful stone effigy pipes to ornately-carved shell disks, the photographs and drawings in Sun Circles and Human Hands present the archaeological record of the art and native crafts of the prehistoric southeastern Indians. Painstakingly compiled in the 1950s by two sisters who traveled the eastern United States interviewing archaeologists and collectors and visiting the major repositories, Sun Circles and Human Hands is remarkable for its breadth of illustration of Indian-made artifacts and its comprehensive documentation. Although research over the last 50 years has disproven many of the early theories reported in the text—which were not the editors' theories but those of the archaeologists of the day—the excellent illustrations of objects no longer available for examination have more than validated the lasting worth of this popular book.
Broadly acclaimed when it first appeared, this new printing has the added value of Knight's foreword, which places the work in its proper context. Useful to museums, state and national parks, school libraries, gift stores, archaeological agencies, and private collections, Sun Circles and Human Hands is a rich pictorial survey accessible to anyone interested in early American Indian culture.
The last prehistoric cultures to inhabit the Middle Ohio Valley (ca. A.D. 1000–1650) are referred to as Fort Ancient societies, which exhibited a wide variety of Mississippian period characteristics. What is less well-known and little understood are the social processes by which Mississippian characteristics spread to Fort Ancient communities. Through a comprehensive study of SunWatch, one of the few thoroughly excavated Fort Ancient settlements, the author focuses on the development of village social structure within a broad geographic and temporal framework, recognizing border areas as particularly dynamic contexts of social change. As a fundamental study of social patterning of Fort Ancient villages, this work reveals the interrelationships of small social units in culture change and social structure development and provides a full reconsideration of the Mississippian dimensions of Fort Ancient societies and a model for future investigations of larger patterning in the lateprehistory of the region.
The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, Victoria Reifler Bricker, well-known cultural anthropologist, was selected to be series editor.
This first volume of the Supplement is devoted to the dramatic changes that have taken place in the field of archaeology. The volume editor, Jeremy A. Sabloff, has gathered together detailed reports from the directors of many of the most significant archaeological projects of the mid-twentieth century in Mesoamerica, along with discussions of three topics of general interest (the rise of sedentary life, the evolution of complex culture, and the rise of cities).
The book details the items recovered archaeologically, including ale and soda bottles, cartridges, packing crates, and a horseshoe and ceramic doll. It also addresses the army’s knowledge of this area and how the supply depot fit into the broader military campaign. This book connects archaeology and history to explore how the American military planned, maneuvered, and operated on the northern plains from the end of the Civil War through 1876.
Archaeology in the Southwest is increasingly directing its attention south of the international border as it becomes clear that a picture of the pre-hispanic Southwest is incomplete without taking the Mexican Northwest into account.
Surveying the Archaeology of Northwest Mexico presents an overview of recent work in Sonora and Chihuahua, comprising a sort of professional tour of the area. The chapters offer fresh insights into the formation of centers such as Paquimé, Cerro de Trincheras, and the Rio Sonora cabaceras. Contributors explore relations between these centers, individual internal organization of the various identifiable polities, and the relation of the whole northwest Mexican region to better-known adjacent ones. The volume underscores that northwest Mexico was not a dependent hinterland but was inhabited by many independent groups throughout prehistory.
In Surviving Spanish Conquest: Indian Fight, Flight, and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Karen F. Anderson-Córdova draws on archaeological, historical, and ethnohistorical sources to elucidate the impacts of sixteenth-century Spanish conquest and colonization on indigenous peoples in the Greater Antilles. Moving beyond the conventional narratives of the quick demise of the native populations because of forced labor and the spread of Old World diseases, this book shows the complexity of the initial exchange between the Old and New Worlds and examines the myriad ways the indigenous peoples responded to Spanish colonization.
Focusing on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the first Caribbean islands to be conquered and colonized by the Spanish, Anderson-Córdova explains Indian sociocultural transformation within the context of two specific processes, out-migration and in-migration, highlighting how population shifts contributed to the diversification of peoples. For example, as the growing presence of “foreign” Indians from other areas of the Caribbean complicated the variety of responses by Indian groups, her investigation reveals that Indians who were subjected to slavery, or the “encomienda system,” accommodated and absorbed many Spanish customs, yet resumed their own rituals when allowed to return to their villages. Other Indians fled in response to the arrival of the Spanish.
The culmination of years of research, Surviving Spanish Conquest deftly incorporates archaeological investigations at contact sites copious use of archival materials, and anthropological assessments of the contact period in the Caribbean. Ultimately, understanding the processes of Indian-Spanish interaction in the Caribbean enhances comprehension of colonization in many other parts of the world. Anderson-Córdova concludes with a discussion regarding the resurgence of interest in the Taíno people and their culture, especially of individuals who self-identify as Taíno. This volume provides a wealth of insight to historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and those interested in early cultures in contact.
The Mesa Verde region is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world and is an area fraught with complexities, anomalies, and layers of histories. Sushi in Cortez is a collection of essays by an interdisciplinary group of academics, artists, and cultural observers that explores this diverse landscape and heritage by combining and sharing the differing perspectives provided by various disciplines. Poetry, film, environmental philosophy, nature photography, native Pueblo perspectives, and archaeology are used to touch on the common questions people ask about the value of their work and lives as well as the value of visiting ancient sites such as Mesa Verde. The authors share personal stories about the difficulties, joys, confusions, and epiphanies they experienced as they crossed the boundaries of their professional lives, coming to understand how incomplete any single rendition of place can be. Find additional images on our website www.uofupress.com.
Take a look inside the authors’ Mesa Verde experience in this short film,“Location Fracture” by Melinda Levin.
The volume focuses primarily on the Precolumbian Maya but offers several analogous case studies outside the ancient Maya world that illustrate the pervasiveness of water’s role in sustainability, including an ethnographic study of the sustainability of small-scale, farmer-managed irrigation systems in contemporary New Mexico and the environmental consequences of Angkor’s growth into the world’s most extensive preindustrial settlement. The archaeological record offers rich data on past politics of climate change, while epigraphic and ethnographic data show how integrated the ideological, political, and environmental worlds of the Maya were.
While Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond stresses how lessons from the past offer invaluable insight into current approaches of adaptation, it also advances our understanding of those adaptations by making the inevitable discrepancies between past and present climate change less daunting and emphasizing the sustainable negotiations between humans and their surroundings that have been mediated by the changing climate for millennia. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in climate change, sustainability, and water management in the archaeological record.
Contributors: Mary Jane Acuña, Wendy Ashmore, Timothy Beach, Jeffrey Brewer, Christopher Carr, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Carlos R. Chiriboga, Jennifer Chmilar, Nicholas Dunning, Maurits W. Ertsen, Roland Fletcher, David Friedel, Robert Griffin, Joel D. Gunn, Armando Anaya Hernández, Christian Isendahl, David Lentz, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Dan Penny, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Michelle Rich, Cynthia Robin, Sylvia Rodríguez, William Saturno, Vernon Scarborough, Payson Sheets, Liwy Grazioso Sierra, Michael Smyth, Sander van der Leeuw, Andrew Wyatt
This classic volume on the evocative and enigmatic pottery of the Mimbres people has become an irreplaceable design catalogue for contemporary Native American artists. Burt and Harriet (Hattie) Cosgrove were self-trained archaeologists who began excavating Mimbres materials in 1919. When their meticulous research came to the attention of Alfred V. Kidder of the Peabody Museum, he invited them to direct the Mimbres Valley Expedition at the Swarts Ranch in southern New Mexico on behalf of the Peabody.
Working in the summers of 1924 to 1927, the Cosgroves recovered nearly 10,000 artifacts at the Swarts site, including an extraordinary assemblage of Mimbres ceramics. Like their original 1932 report, this paperbound facsimile edition includes over 700 of Hattie Cosgrove’s beautiful line drawings of individual Mimbres pots. It also presents a new introduction by archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc, who reviews the eighty years of research on the Mimbres that have followed the Cosgroves’ groundbreaking study. The Peabody’s reissue of The Swarts Ruin once again makes available a rich resource for scholars, artists, and admirers of Native American art, and it places in historical context the Cosgroves’ many contributions to North American archaeology.
From the late eighteenth century to early 1836, the heart of the Florida sugar industry was concentrated in East Florida, between the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean. Producing the sweetest sugar, molasses, and rum, at least 22 sugar plantations dotted the coastline by the 1830s. This industry brought prosperity to the region—employing farm hands, slaves, architects, stone masons, riverboats and their crews, shop keepers, and merchant traders. But by January 1836, Native American attacks of the Second Seminole War, intending to rid the Florida frontier of settlers, devastated the whole sugar industry.
Although sugar works again sprang up in other Florida regions just prior to the Civil War, the competition from Louisiana and the Caribbean blocked a resurgence of sugar production for the area. The sugar industry would never regain its importance in East Florida—only two of the original sugar works were ever rebuilt. Today, remains of this once thriving industry are visible in a few parks. Some are accessible but others lie hidden, slowly disintegrating and almost forgotten. Archaeological, historical, and architectural research in the last decade has returned these works to their once prominent place in Florida’s history, revealing the beauty, efficiency of design, as well as early industrial engineering. Equally important is what can be learned of the lives of those associated with the sugar works and the early plantation days along the East Florida frontier
A unique dataset for studying past social interactions comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery that linked sites throughout much of the Eastern Woodlands but that was primarily distributed over the lower Southeast. Although connections have been demonstrated, their significance has remained enigmatic. How and why were apparently utilitarian vessels, or the wooden tools used to make them, distributed widely across the landscape?
This book assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds whose provenience is fully documented from both mortuary mounds and village middens along the Atlantic coast. Together, these data demonstrate formal and functional differences between mortuary and village assemblages along with the nearly exclusive occurrence of foreign-made cooking pots in mortuary contexts. The Swift Creek Gift provides insight into the unique workings of gift exchanges to transform seemingly mundane materials like cooking pots into powerful tools of commemoration, affiliation, and ownership.
Although initially intended for the innovative, if prosaic, purpose of providing waterproof and fireproof cover for earlier thatch-roofed homes, fired clay tiles, in seventh- and sixth-century Etruria and Central Italy, combined with Etruscan love of adornment to create exceptional domestic and religious building decoration. Featuring statues and figured friezes of humans, animals, and mythological figures intended to convey the status of the owner or dedicator, the surviving terracotta roofs provide important insights into the architectural history of Etruria. With Symbols of Wealth and Power, Nancy A. Winter has provided a definitive overview of the evidence for these roofing elements that will enhance our knowledge of Etruscan---and more broadly, ancient---architecture.
Nancy A. Winter is an archaeologist and former librarian of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. She is the author of Greek Architectural Terracottas: From the Prehistoric to the End of the Archaic Period (1993).
Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation, edited by Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen
The Maritime World of Ancient Rome, edited by Robert L. Hohlfelder
Cosa: The Black-Glaze Pottery 2, by Ann Reynolds Scott
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