front cover of Ten Thousand Years of Inequality
Ten Thousand Years of Inequality
The Archaeology of Wealth Differences
Edited by Timothy A. Kohler and Michael E. Smith
University of Arizona Press, 2018
Is wealth inequality a universal feature of human societies, or did early peoples live an egalitarian existence? How did inequality develop before the modern era? Did inequalities in wealth increase as people settled into a way of life dominated by farming and herding? Why in general do such disparities increase, and how recent are the high levels of wealth inequality now experienced in many developed nations? How can archaeologists tell?

Ten Thousand Years of Inequality addresses these and other questions by presenting the first set of consistent quantitative measurements of ancient wealth inequality. The authors are archaeologists who have adapted the Gini index, a statistical measure of wealth distribution often used by economists to measure contemporary inequality, and applied it to house-size distributions over time and around the world. Clear descriptions of methods and assumptions serve as a model for other archaeologists and historians who want to document past patterns of wealth disparity.

The chapters cover a variety of ancient cases, including early hunter-­gatherers, farmer villages, and agrarian states and empires. The final chapter synthesizes and compares the results. Among the new and notable outcomes, the authors report a systematic difference between higher levels of inequality in ancient Old World societies and lower levels in their New World counterparts.

For the first time, archaeology allows humanity’s deep past to provide an account of the early manifestations of wealth inequality around the world.

Contributors

Nicholas Ames
Alleen Betzenhauser
Amy Bogaard
Samuel Bowles
Meredith S. Chesson
Abhijit Dandekar
Timothy J. Dennehy
Robert D. Drennan
Laura J. Ellyson
Deniz Enverova
Ronald K. Faulseit
Gary M. Feinman
Mattia Fochesato
Thomas A. Foor
Vishwas D. Gogte
Timothy A. Kohler
Ian Kuijt
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Mary-Margaret Murphy
Linda M. Nicholas
Rahul C. Oka
Matthew Pailes
Christian E. Peterson
Anna Marie Prentiss
Michael E. Smith
Elizabeth C. Stone
Amy Styring
Jade Whitlam
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front cover of Tenahaha and the Wari State
Tenahaha and the Wari State
A View of the Middle Horizon from the Cotahuasi Valley
Edited by Justin Jennings and Willy Yépez Álvarez
University of Alabama Press, 2015
The Middle Horizon period (A.D. 600–1000) was a time of sweeping cultural change in the Andes. Archaeologists have long associated this period with the expansion of the Wari (Huari) and Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) states in the south-central Andes and the Pacific coasts of contemporary Peru and Chile.
 
Tenahaha and the Wari State contains a series of essays that challenge current beliefs about the Wari state and suggest a reassessment of this pivotal era in Andean history. In this collection, a picture emerges of Wari power projected across the region’s rugged and formidable topography less as a conquering empire than as a source of ideas, styles, and material culture voluntarily adopted by neighboring peoples.
 
Much of the previous fieldwork on Wari history took place in the Wari heartland and in Wari strongholds, not areas where Wari power and influence were equivocal. In Tenahaha and the Wari State, editors Justin Jennings and Willy Yépez Álvarez set out to test whether current theories of the Wari state as a cohesive empire were accurate or simply reflective of the bias inherent in studying Wari culture in its most concentrated centers. The essays in this collection examine instead life in the Cotahuasi Valley, an area into which Wari influence expanded during the Middle Horizon period.
 
Drawing on ten years of exhaustive field work both at the ceremonial site of Tenahaha and in the surrounding valley, Jennings and Yépez Álvarez posit that Cotahuasinos at Tenahaha had little contact with the Wari state. Their excavations and survey in the area tell the story of a region in flux rather than of a people conquered by Wari. In a time of uncertainty, they adopted Wari ideas and culture as ways to cope with change.
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front cover of Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica
Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica
Multiscalar Perspectives on Power, Identity, and Interregional Relations
Claudia García-Des Lauriers
University Press of Colorado, 2021
The Early Classic period in Mesoamerica has been characterized by the appearance of Teotihuacan-related material culture throughout the region. Teotihuacan, known for its monumental architecture and dense settlement, became an urban center around 100 BC and a regional state over the next few centuries, dominating much of the Basin of Mexico and beyond until its collapse around AD 650. Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica explores the complex nature of Teotihuacan’s interactions with other regions from both central and peripheral vantage points.
 
The volume offers a multiscalar view of power and identity, showing that the spread of Teotihuacan-related material culture may have resulted from direct and indirect state administration, colonization, emulation by local groups, economic transactions, single-event elite interactions, and various kinds of social and political alliances. The contributors explore questions concerning who interacted with whom; what kinds of materials and ideas were exchanged; what role interregional interactions played in the creation, transformation, and contestation of power and identity within the city and among local polities; and how interactions on different scales were articulated. The answers to these questions reveal an Early Classic Mesoamerican world engaged in complex economic exchanges, multidirectional movements of goods and ideas, and a range of material patterns that require local, regional, and macroregional contextualization.
 
Focusing on the intersecting themes of identity and power, Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica makes a strong contribution to the understanding of the role of this important metropolis in the Early Classic history of the region. The volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students of Mesoamerican archaeology, the archaeology of interaction, and the archaeology of identity.
 
Contributors: Sarah C. Clayton, Fiorella Fenoglio Limón, Agapi Filini, Julie Gazzola, Sergio Gómez-Chávez, Haley Holt Mehta, Carmen Pérez, Patricia Plunket, Juan Carlos Saint Charles Zetina, Yoko Sugiura, Gabriela Uruñuela, Gustavo Jaimes Vences
 
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front cover of The Teotihuacan Trinity
The Teotihuacan Trinity
The Sociopolitical Structure of an Ancient Mesoamerican City
By Annabeth Headrick
University of Texas Press, 2007

Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems.

In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.

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front cover of The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands
The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands
Collapse, Transition, and Transformation
Arthur A. Demarest
University Press of Colorado, 2004
The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands revisits one of the great problems in Mayan archaeology - the apparent collapse of Classic Maya civilization from roughly A.D. 830 to 950. During this period the Maya abandoned their power centers in the southern lowlands and rather abruptly ceased the distinctive cultural practices that marked their apogee in the Classic period. Archaeological fieldwork during the past three decades, however, has uncovered enormous regional variability in the ways the Maya experienced the shift from Classic to Postclassic society, revealing a period of cultural change more complex than acknowledged by traditional models.

Featuring an impressive roster of scholars, The Terminal Classic presents the most recent data and interpretations pertaining to this perplexing period of cultural transformation in the Maya lowlands. Although the research reveals clear interregional patterns, the contributors resist a single overarching explanation. Rather, this volume's diverse and nuanced interpretations provide a new, more properly grounded beginning for continued debate on the nature of lowland Terminal Classic Maya civilization.

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front cover of Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece
Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece
Manipulating Material Culture
Lisa C. Nevett, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2017
In the modern world, objects and buildings speak eloquently about their creators. Status, gender identity, and cultural affiliations are just a few characteristics we can often infer about such material culture. But can we make similar deductions about the inhabitants of the first millennium BCE Greek world? Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece offers a series of case studies exploring how a theoretical approach to the archaeology of this area provides insight into aspects of ancient society.

An introductory section exploring the emergence and growth of theoretical approaches is followed by examinations of the potential insights these approaches provide. The authors probe some of the meanings attached to ancient objects, townscapes, and cemeteries, for those who created, and used, or inhabited them.

The range of contexts stretches from the early Greek communities during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, through Athens between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE, and on into present day Turkey and the Levant during the third and second centuries BCE. The authors examine a range of practices, from the creation of individual items such as ceramic vessels and figurines, through to the construction of civic buildings, monuments, and cemeteries. At the same time they interrogate a range of spheres, from craft production, through civic and religious practices, to funerary ritual.

 

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front cover of Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology
Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology
Cases from Paleoindian Archaeology
Todd A. Surovell
University of Arizona Press, 2009
Modern humans and their hominid ancestors relied on chipped-stone technology for well over two million years and colonized more than 99 percent of the Earth's habitable landmass in doing so. Yet there currently exist only a handful of informal models derived from ethnographic observation, experiments, engineering, and "common sense" to explain variability in archaeological lithic assemblages.

Because the fundamental processes of making, using, and discarding stone tools are, at root, exercises in problem solving, Todd Surovell asks what conditions favor certain technological solutions. Whether asking if a biface should be made thick or thin or if a flake should be saved or discarded, Surovell seeks answers that extend beyond a case-by-case analysis. One avenue for addressing these questions theoretically is formal mathematical modeling.

Here Surovell constructs a series of models designed to link environmental variability to human decision making as it pertains to lithic technology. To test the models, Surovell uses data from the analysis of more than 40,000 artifacts from five Rocky Mountain and Northern Plains Folsom and Goshen complex archaeological sites dating to the Younger Dryas stadial (ca. 12,600-11,500 years BP). The primary result is the production of powerful new analytical tools useful to the interpretation of archaeological assemblages.

Surovell's goal is to promote modeling and explore the general issues governing technological decisions. In this light, his models can be applied to any context in which stone tools are made and used.
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front cover of Tracing the Relational
Tracing the Relational
The Archaeology of Worlds, Spirits, and Temporalities
Meghan E. Buchanan and B. Jacob Skousen
University of Utah Press, 2015
Tracing the Relational examines the recent emergence of relational ontologies in archaeological interpretation and how this perspective can help archaeologists better understand the past. Traditional representational approaches reflect modern or Western perspectives, which focus on the individual and see the world in terms of dichotomies that separate culture and nature, human and object, sacred and secular. In contrast, ancient societies saw themselves as connected to and entangled with other human and nonhuman entities. In order to gain deeper insight into how people in the ancient world lived, experienced, and negotiated their lives, contributors argue, archaeologists must explore the myriad relationships and entanglements between humans and other beings, places, and things. As contributors unravel these relationships, they demonstrate that movement is an inherent feature of these relational webs and is the driving force behind a continually shifting reality. Chapters focus on various regions and time periods throughout the Americas, tracing how movements between other-worldly dimensions, spirits and deities, and temporalities were integral to everyday life.
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front cover of Transformation by Fire
Transformation by Fire
The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context
Edited by Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney
University of Arizona Press, 2014
Ash, bone, and memories are all that remains after cremation. Yet for societies and communities, the act of cremation after death is highly symbolic, rich with complex meaning, touching on what it means to be human. In the process of transforming the dead, the family, the community, and society as a whole create and partake in cultural symbolism. Cremation is a key area of archaeological research, but its complexity has been underappreciated and undertheorized. Transformation by Fire offers a fresh assessment of archaeological research on this widespread social practice.

Editors Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney’s volume examines cremation by documenting the material signatures of cremation events and processes, as well as its transformative impact on social relations and concepts of the body. Indeed, examining why and how people chose to cremate their dead serves as an important means of understanding how people in the past dealt with death, the body, and the social world.

The contributors develop new perspectives on cremation as important mortuary practices and social transformations. Varying attitudes and beliefs on cremation and other forms of burial within the same cultural paradigm help us understand what constitutes the body and what occurs during its fiery transformation. In addition, they explore issues and interpretive perspectives in the archaeological study of cremation within and between different cultural contexts.

The global and comparative perspectives on cremation render the book a unique contribution to the literature of anthropological and mortuary archaeology.
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front cover of Transforming the Dead
Transforming the Dead
Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest
Eve A. Hargrave
University of Alabama Press, 2015
Transforming the Dead is a collection of essays that examines culturally modified human bones and their roles as “cultural and ritual objects” among prehistoric Eastern Woodland cultures. Previous scholarship has explored the role of human body parts in Native American cultures as trophies of war and revered ancestors. This collection discusses new evidence that human elements were also important components of daily and ritual activities across the Eastern Woodlands. The contributors to this volume discuss each case study within the unique regional and temporal contexts of the material, rather than seeking universal answers to how these objects were used.
 
Most research addressing modified human bone has focused on cut marks and trauma associated with warfare, trophy taking, and burial practices. The editors and contributors of Transforming the Dead document the varied and often overlooked ways that human bone was intentionally modified through drilling, incising, cutting, and polishing for utilitarian, ornamental, spiritual, or ritual use. Examples include bracelets and gorgets to be worn, as well as musical rasps, pipe stems, masks, and protective talismans. The form and function of these objects are not unusual; their construction from the remains of “another” sets them apart.
 
Through a flexible but systematic analysis of the archaeological record, the contributors bring into focus how the careful selection, modification, and retention of particular bones or body parts of an individual after death offer insights into concepts of personhood, the body, life, and death among the prehistoric Native Americans in the Midwest.
 

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