From 1930 to 1931, Julian Steward recovered hundreds of well-worn moccasins, along with mittens, bison robe fragments, bows, arrows, pottery, bone and stone tools, cordage, gaming pieces, and abundant faunal remains, making Utah’s Promontory Caves site one of the most remarkable hunter-gatherer archaeological records in western North America. Although Steward recognized that the moccasins and other artifacts were characteristic of the Canadian Subarctic and northern Plains and not the Great Basin, his findings languished for decades. 

This volume connects Steward’s work with results from new excavations in Promontory Caves 1 and 2 and illustrates that the early Promontory Phase resulted from an intrusive large-game hunting population very different from nearby late Fremont communities. Lingering for just one or two human generations, the cave occupants began to accept people as well as material and symbolic culture from surrounding thirteenth-century neighbors. Volume contributors employ a transdisciplinary approach to evaluate the possibility that the Promontory Phase materials reflect the presence of Apachean ancestors.  In these records lies the seeds for the intensive Plains-Puebloan interactions of the centuries that followed. 
 

Trepanation is the oldest surgical procedure known from antiquity, extending back more than five thousand years in Europe and to at least the fifth century BC in the New World. Anthropologists and medical historians have been investigating ancient trepanation since the mid-nineteenth century, but questions remain about its origins, evolution, and the possible motivations for conducting such a dangerous surgical procedure. Peru is particularly important to these questions, as it boasts more trepanned skulls than the rest of the world combined. This volume presents the results of a long-term research project that examined more than 800 trepanned skulls from recent archaeological excavations and from museum collections in Peru, the United States, and Europe. It examines trepanation in ancient Peru from a broad anthropological and historic perspective, focusing on the archaeological context of osteological collections and highlighting the history of discoveries. It explores the origins and spread of the practice throughout the Central Andes, with a focus on trepanation techniques, success rates, and motivations for trepanning. It examines the apparent disappearance of trepanation in the Andes following Spanish conquest, while noting that there are reports of trepanations being performed by healers in highland Peru and Bolivia into the twentieth century.

The Resurrection Plate, a Late Classic Maya dish, is decorated with an arresting scene. The Maize God, assisted by two other deities, emerges reborn from a turtle shell. At the center of the plate, in the middle of the god’s body and aligned with the point of emergence, there is a curious sight: a small, neatly drilled hole.

Art historian Andrew Finegold explores the meanings attributed to this and other holes in Mesoamerican material culture, arguing that such spaces were broadly understood as conduits of vital forces and material abundance, prerequisites for the emergence of life. Beginning with, and repeatedly returning to, the Resurrection Plate, this study explores the generative potential attributed to a wide variety of cavities and holes in Mesoamerica, ranging from the perforated dishes placed in Classic Maya burials, to caves and architectural voids, to the piercing of human flesh. Holes are also discussed in relation to fire, based on the common means through which both were produced: drilling. Ultimately, by attending to what is not there, Vital Voids offers a fascinating approach to Mesoamerican cosmology and material culture.