A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY10 start with A start with A
Almost all of Mythologies, originally published as a two-volume cloth set, is now available in four paperback volumes. These volumes reproduce the articles, introductory essays, and illustrations as they appeared in the full Mythologies set, and each includes a new Preface by Wendy Doniger.
This volume gathers eighty articles on mythologies from around the world. A section on the Americas and the South Pacific covers myths of native Americans, from the Inuit to the Mesoamericans, about such topics as the cosmos, fire, and the creation of the world. Essays on African mythology range from the 266 basic signs of West Africa to themes such as twins, the placenta, and masks. The final section, covering Celtic, Norse, and Slavic traditions opens with an overview of the Indo-Europeans and concludes with an essay on the religion and myths of Armenia.
Authors Silver and Miller demonstrate the complexity and diversity of these languages while dispelling popular misconceptions. Their text reveals the linguistic richness of languages found throughout the Americas, emphasizing those located in the western United States and Mexico, while drawing on a wide range of other examples found from Canada to the Andes. It introduces readers to such varied aspects of communicating as directionals and counting systems, storytelling, expressive speech, Mexican Kickapoo whistle speech, and Plains sign language.
The authors have included basics of grammar and historical linguistics, while emphasizing such issues as speech genres and other sociolinguistic issues and the relation between language and worldview. They have incorporated a variety of data that have rarely or never received attention in nontechnical literature in order to underscore the linguistic diversity of the Americas, and have provided more extensive language classification lists than are found in most other texts.
American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts is a comprehensive resource that will serve as a text in undergraduate and lower-level graduate courses on Native American languages and provide a useful reference for students of American Indian literature or general linguistics. It also introduces general readers interested in Native Americans to the amazing diversity and richness of indigenous American languages.
Coverage includes:
Achumawi, Acoma, Algonquin, Apache, Araucanian, Arawakan, Athapascan, Atsugewi, Ayamara, Bacairi, Bella Coola, Beothuk, Biloxi, Blackfoot, Caddoan, Cahto, Cahuilla, Cakchiquel, Carib, Cayuga, Chemehuevi, Cherokee, Chibchan, Chichimec, Chimakuan, Chimariko, Chinook, Chipewyan, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Chol, Cocopa, Coeur d'Alene, Comanche, Coos, Cora, Cree, Creek, Crow, Cubeo, Cupeño, Dakota, Delaware, Diegueño, Eskimo-Aleut, Esselen, Eyak, Fox, Gros Ventre, Guaraní, Guarijío, Haida, Havasupai, Hill Patwin, Hopi, Huastec, Huave, Hupa, Inuit-Inupiaq, Iroquois, Jaqaru, Je, Jicaque, Kalapuyan, Kamia, Karankawas, Karuk, Kashaya, Keres, Kickapoo, Kiliwa, Kiowa-Tanoan, Koasati, Konkow, Kuna, Kwakiutl, Kwalhioqua-Tlatskanai, Lakota, Lenca, Luiseño, Maidu, Mapuche, Markoosie, Mayan, Mazahua, Mazatec, Métis, Mexica, Micmac, Misumalpan, Mitchif, Miwok, Mixe-Zoquean, Mixtec, Mobilian, Mohave, Mohawk, Muskogean, Nahuatl, Natchez, Navajo, Nez Perce, Nheengatú, Nicola, Nomlaki, Nootka, Ojibwa, Oneida, O'odham, Otomí, Paiute, Palaihnihan, Panamint, Panoan, Paya, Pima, Pipil, Pomo, Poplocan, Pueblo, Puquina, Purpecha, Quechua, Quiché, Quileute, Sahaptian, Salish, Seneca, Sequoyah, Seri, Serrano, Shasta, Shoshoni, Sioux, Sirenikski, Slavey, Subtiaba-Tlapanec, Taíno, Takelma, Tanaina, Tarahumara, Tequistlatecan, Tewa, Tlingit, Toba, Toltec, Totonac, Tsimshian, Tubatulabal, Tukano, Tunica, Tupí, Ute, Uto-Aztecan, Vaupés, Venture¤o, Wakashan, Walapai, Wappo, Washo, Wintu, Wiyot, Xinca, Yahi, Yana, Yokuts, Yucatec, Yuchi, Yuki, Yuma, Yurok, Zapotec, Zoquean, and Zuni.
This work answers the hypothetical question: What would the Americas be like today—politically, economically, culturally—if Columbus and the Europeans had never found them, and how would American peoples interact with the world’s other societies? It assumes that Columbus did not embark from Spain in 1492 and that no Europeans found or settled the New World afterward, leaving the peoples of the two American continents free to follow the natural course of their Native lives.
The Americas That Might Have Been is a professional but layman-accessible, fact-based, nonfiction account of the major Native American political states that were thriving in the New World in 1492. Granberry considers a contemporary New World in which the glories of Aztec Mexico, Maya Middle America, and Inca Peru survived intact. He imagines the roles that the Iroquois Confederacy of the American Northeast, the powerful city-states along the Mississippi River in the Midwest and Southeast, the Navajo Nation and the Pueblo culture of the Southwest, the Eskimo Nation in the Far North, and the Taino/Arawak chiefdoms of the Caribbean would play in American and world politics in the 21st Century.
Following a critical examination of the data using empirical archaeology, linguistics, and ethnohistory, Granberry presents a reasoned and compelling discussion of native cultures and the paths they would have logically taken over the past five centuries. He reveals the spectacular futures these brilliant pre-Columbian societies might have had, if not for one epochal meeting that set off a chain of events so overwhelming to them that the course of human history was forever changed.
Several different cultures-Iroquois, Coosa, Anasazi, Hohokam, San Agustín, Wankarani, Formative Gulf Coast Mexico, and Formative, Classic, Colonial, and contemporary Maya-are analyzed through the lens of household archaeology in concrete, data-driven case studies. The text is divided into three sections: Section I examines the spatial and social organization and context of household production; Section II looks at the role and results of households as primary producers; and Section III investigates the role of, and interplay among, households in their greater political and socioeconomic communities.
In the past few decades, household archaeology has made substantial contributions to our understanding and explanation of the past through the documentation of the household as a social unit-whether small or large, rural or urban, commoner or elite. These case studies from a broad swath of the Americas make Ancient Households of the Americas extremely valuable for continuing the comparative interdisciplinary study of households.
A clear assessment of the growing mutual respect and strengthening bond between modern Native Americans and the researchers who explore their past
Southern Indians have experienced much change in the last half of the 20th century. In rapid succession since World War II, they have passed through the testing field of land claims litigation begun in the 1950s, played upon or retreated from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, seen the proliferation of “wannabe” Indian groups in the 1970s, and created innovative tribal enterprises—such as high-stakes bingo and gambling casinos—in the 1980s. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 stimulated a cultural renewal resulting in tribal museums and heritage programs and a rapprochement with their western kinsmen removed in “Old South” days.
Anthropology in the South has changed too, moving forward at the cutting edge of academic theory. This collection of essays reflects both that which has endured and that which has changed in the anthropological embrace of Indians from the New South. Beginning as an invited session at the 30th-anniversary meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society held in 1996, the collection includes papers by linguists, archaeologists, and physical anthropologists, as well as comments from Native Americans.
This broad scope of inquiry—ranging in subject from the Maya of Florida, presumed biology, and alcohol-related problems to pow-wow dancing, Mobilian linguistics, and the “lost Indian ancestor” myth—results in a volume valuable to students, professionals, and libraries. Anthropologists and Indians in the New South is a clear assessment of the growing mutual respect and strengthening bond between modern Native Americans and the researchers who explore their past.
Drawing from historical documents and archaeological records from Mesoamerica, the U.S. Southwest, East Africa, and the Andes, this volume reveals the complexity of ancient marketplace development and economic behavior both in hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Highlighting four principal themes-the defining characteristics of market exchange; the recognition of market exchange archaeologically; the relationship among market, political, and other social institutions; and the conditions in which market systems develop and change-the book contains a strong methodological and theoretical focus on market exchange.
Diverse contributions from noted scholars show the history of market exchange and other activities to be more dynamic than scholars previously appreciated. Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies will be of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, material-culture theorists, economists, and historians.
Mesoamerican archaeologists have long been interested in the collapse of political systems or civilizations but have been slow to undertake detailed abandonment analyses of specific settlements. The Archaeology of Settlement Abandonment in Middle America explores some of the old questions in Middle American archaeology in light of the newer theoretical approach provided by abandonment studies. Unlike much of the abandonment work previously done in the American Southwest, a number of contributions to this volume examine relatively large population centers.
Among the original contributions in this collection is the discovery that deposits resulting from termination rituals are more common than previously thought. Several chapters point out that structures and places can continue to serve ritual functions even after abandonment. Another finding is that the causes of abandonment—warfare, economic marginalization, or natural cataclysm—are likely to have varied effects on different social groups, which in turn sheds light on occupational histories in specific sites preceding major abandonments.
By the mid-twentieth century, ancient Mexican artifacts had undergone a striking transformation. Once dismissed as anthropological curiosities, sought after more for their ethnographic value than aesthetic merit, they had become prized artworks that were prominently displayed in major US museums, featured in advertisements and Hollywood films, and shown adorning the homes of celebrities.
At the center of this shift was Earl Stendahl, a savvy Los Angeles art dealer who played a pivotal role in shaping public and institutional perceptions of these objects. Through strategic marketing and a keen eye for opportunity, he repositioned these artifacts, selling them to an elite clientele that included movie stars, wealthy collectors, and museum curators. In doing so, he helped define a new canon of “ancient American art.”
Beneath this glamorous facade, however, lies a darker narrative of the looting, smuggling, and forgery that fueled this midcentury craze, exposing how the desire for authenticity and prestige often came at the expense of ethical collecting practices and cultural heritage. This book brings together art history, museum studies, and the politics of the antiquities trade, offering both a social history and a critical examination of how ancient Mexico’s past was sold in twentieth-century America.
This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center from June 23 to October 18, 2026.
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