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Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D.
Iravatham Mahadevan
Harvard University Press
This book presents the earliest South Indian inscriptions (ca. second century B.C.E. to sixth century A.D.), written in Tamil in local derivations of the Ashokan Brahmi script. They are the earliest known Dravidian documents available and show some overlap with the early Cera and Pandya dynasties. Their language is Archaic Tamil, with a few borrowings from Prakrit and influences of old Kannada, both resulting from the early presence of northern Jainism. The widespread occurrence of pottery inscriptions indicates that the Tamil-Brahmi script had taken deep roots all over the countryside, leading to the cultured society visible in the classical Tamil poetry of the Cankam (Sangam) texts of the early centuries C.E. The work includes texts, transliteration, translation, detailed commentary, inscriptional glossary, and indexes.
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Imagining Serengeti
A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present
Jan Bender Shetler
Ohio University Press, 2007

Many students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists. With prose that is elegant in its simplicity and analysis that is forceful and compelling, Jan Bender Shetler brings the landscape memory of the Serengeti to life. She demonstrates how the social identities of western Serengeti peoples are embedded in specific spaces and in their collective memories of those spaces. Using a new methodology to analyze precolonial oral traditions, Shetler identifies core spatial images and reevaluates them in their historical context through the use of archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic, ecological, and archival evidence. Imagining Serengeti is a lively environmental history that will ensure that we never look at images of the African landscape in quite the same way.

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Rio del Norte
People of Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to Pueblo Revolt
Carroll L. Riley
University of Utah Press, 1995

Rio del Norte chronicles the upper Rio Grande region and its divers peoples across twelve thousand years of continuous history. Based on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological research, Rio del Norte is a tour de force, highlighting the unbroken history of the upper Rio Grande.

Beginning with the mammoth hunters of eleven millennia ago, Carroll Riley adeptly eaves the threads of twelve thousand years of continuous history through the introduction of agriculture, the rise of the Basketmaker-Pueblo (Anasazi) people, and the extraordinary "quickening" that occurred along the Rio Grande and its tributaries as the Anasazi era ended.

At that time large towns appeared, some holding several thousand people who practiced irrigation-based agriculture, maintained complex social and political organizations, and had a rich artistry. This "golden age" was continuing when Spaniards contacted, then colonized and missionized the region. In 1680 the Pueblos joined in a powerful record and ousted the invaders. Although the Spanish returned, the Pueblos have maintained important parts of their cultural heritage to the present.

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To the Arctic!
The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times
Jeannette Mirsky
University of Chicago Press, 1970
"Who Reached the North Pole First?" A recent article in the New York Times (February 17, 1997) presented new evidence from the journals of Admiral Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick A. Cook that sheds light on this long-argued debate. Questioning whether the journal entries are truthful, new theories indicate that neither explorer was first, despite their individual claims. To the Arctic contributes valuable information to this debate in its lively narrative of Arctic exploration from the time of the ancient Greeks to the mid-1940s. Revealing stories of the many men who attempted to map the lands or search for means to live there, Mirsky describes the weather and resources they encountered, the temptations and odds of success, and the role of nationalism and individual character in the many conflicting accounts of Arctic exploration.

"Excellent. . . . This is a book which anyone interested in almost any facet of the north will find of value."—William Cody, Canadian Field Naturalist

"A book filled with adventure."—Daily News Journal
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