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The volume traces the origins of agriculture, the transition to agrarian societies, the sociocultural implications of agriculture, agriculture's effects on population, and the theory of carrying capacity, considering the relation of agriculture to the profound social changes that it wrought in the New World. Soil science plays a significant, though varied, role in each case study, and is the common component of each analysis. Soil chemistry is also of particular importance to several of the studies, as it determines the amount of food that can be produced in a particular soil and the effects of occupation or cultivation on that soil, thus having consequences for future cultivators.

Soils, Climate and Society demonstrates that renewed investigation of agricultural production and demography can answer questions about the past, as well as stimulate further research. It will be of interest to scholars of archaeology, historical ecology and geography, and agricultural history.

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.

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.

Through a comprehensive study of changing pottery attributes, Saunders documents the clash of Spanish and Native American cultures in the 16th-century southeastern United States.

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. The Guale were among the first southeastern groups to come into contact with Spanish and French colonists, and they adapted various strategies in order to ensure their own social survival. That adaptation is reflected, Saunders shows, in the changing attributes of pottery recovered on archaeological sites on the coasts of Georgia and Florida.

Saunders traces the evolution of Guale pottery from the late prehistoric Irene phase through the Mission period at the three archaeological sites. She uses both technological and stylistic attributes to monitor change, paying particular attention to changes in execution and frequency of the filfot cross—a stylized cross that is a symbol of Guale cosmology. The frequency of this symbol in different ceramic components, according to Saunders, is a measure of change in the worldview of the missionized Guale. Although the symbol abruptly changed after the first Spanish contact, it showed remarkable stability through the Mission period, suggesting that traditional craft training and production remained strong despite high mortality rates and frequent relocation.

Only after 1684, when the Guale were relocated to Amelia Island in present-day Florida, did the use of the cross motif decline, suggesting that the Guale who remained in Spanish territory may have conceived of their place in the cosmos differently from their forebears or their contemporaries who fled to the interior.

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.

Stones, Bones, and Profiles addresses key and cutting-edge research of three pillars of hunter-gatherer archaeology. Stones and bones—flaked stone tools and the bones of the prey animals—are the objects most commonly recovered from hunter-gatherer archaeological sites, and profiles represent the geologic context of the archeological record. Together they constitute the foundations of much of early archaeology, from the appearance of the earliest humans to the advent of the Neolithic.

The volume is divided into three sections: Peopling of North America and Paleoindians, Geoarchaeology, and Bison Bone Bed Studies. The first section dissects established theories about the Paleoindians, including the possibility that human populations were in North America before Clovis and the timing of the opening of the Alberta Corridor. The second section provides new perspectives on the age and contexts of several well-known New World localities such as the Lindenmeier Folsom and the UP Mammoth sites, as well as a synthesis of the geoarchaeology of the Rocky Mountains' Bighorn region that addresses significant new data and summarizes decades of investigation. The final section, Bison Bone Bed Studies, consists of groundbreaking zooarchaeological studies offering new perspectives on bison taxonomy and procurement.

Stones, Bones, and Profiles presents new data on Paleoindian archaeology and reconsiders previous sites and perspectives, culminating in a thought-provoking and challenging contribution to the ongoing study of Paleoindians around the world.

Contributors: Leland Bement, Jack W. Brink, John Carpenter, Brian Carter, Thomas J. Connolly, Linda Scott Cummings, Loren G. Davis, Allen Denoyer, Stuart J. Fiedel, Judson Byrd Finley, Andrea Freeman, C. Vance Haynes Jr., Bryan Hockett, Vance T. Holliday, Dennis L. Jenkins, Thomas A. Jennings, Eileen Johnson, George T. Jones, Oleksandra Krotova, Patrick J. Lewis, Vitaliy Logvynenko, Ian Luthe, Katelyn McDonough, Lance McNees, Fred L. Nials, Patrick W. O’Grady, Mary M. Prasciunas, Karl J. Reinhard, Michael Rondeau, Guadalupe Sanchez, William E. Scoggin, Ashley M. Smallwood, Iryna Snizhko, Thomas W. Stafford Jr., Mark E. Swisher, Frances White, Eske Willerslev, Robert M. Yohe II, Chad Yost

Studying Technological Change synthesizes nearly four decades of research by Michael Brian Schiffer, a cofounder of the field of behavioral archaeology. This new book asks historical and scientific questions about the interaction of people with artifacts during all times and in all places. The book is not about the history or prehistory of technology, nor is it a catalog of methods and techniques for inferring how specific technologies were made or used. Rather, it supplies conceptual tools that can be used to help craft an explanation of any technological change in any society.

Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent with modification rests in part on the notion that there is heritable continuity affected by transmission between ancestor and descendant. It is precisely this continuity that allows one to trace hylogenetic histories between fossil taxa of various ages and recent taxa. Darwin was clear that were an analyst to attempt such tracings, then the anatomical characters of choice are those least influenced by natural selection, or what are today referred to as adaptively neutral traits. The transmission of these traits is influenced solely by such mechanisms as drift and not by natural selection.

The application of Darwin's theory to archaeological phenomena requires that the theory be retooled to accommodate artifacts. One aspect that has undergone this retooling concerns cultural transmission, the mechanism that affects heritable continuity between cultural phenomena. Archaeologists have long traced what is readily interpreted as heritable continuity between artifacts, but the theory underpinning their tracings is seldom explicit. Thus what have been referred to as artifacts styles underpin such tracings because styles are adaptively neutral. Other traits are referred to as functional.

In their introduction to Style, Function, Transmission, Michael O’Brien and R. Lee Lyman outline in detail the interrelations of a theory of cultural descent with modification and the concepts of drift, style, and function. The chapters in the volume specifically address the issues of selection and drift and their relation to style and function. In non-polemic presentations, contributors specify empirical implications of aspects of cultural transmission for evolutionary lineages of artifacts and then present archaeological data for those implications.

Seeking to move beyond the customary limits of archaeological prose and representation, Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology presents archaeology in a variety of nontraditional formats. The volume demonstrates that visual art, creative nonfiction, archaeological fiction, video, drama, and other artistic pursuits have much to offer archaeological interpretation and analysis.

Chapters in the volume are augmented by narrative, poetry, paintings, dialogues, online databases, videos, audio files, and slideshows. The work will be available in print and as an enhanced ebook that incorporates and showcases the multimedia elements in archaeological narrative. While exploring these new and not-so-new forms, the contributors discuss the boundaries and connections between empirical data and archaeological imagination.

Both a critique and an experiment, Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology addresses the goals, advantages, and difficulties of alternative forms of archaeological representation. Exploring the idea that academically sound archaeology can be fun to create and read, the book takes a step beyond the boundaries of both traditional archaeology and traditional publishing.

The concept of surplus captures the politics of production and also conveys the active material means by which people develop the strategies to navigate everyday life. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life examines how surpluses affected ancient economies, governments, and households in civilizations across Mesoamerica, the Southwest United States, the Andes, Northern Europe, West Africa, Mesopotamia, and eastern Asia.

A hallmark of archaeological research on sociopolitical complexity, surplus is central to theories of political inequality and institutional finance. This book investigates surplus as a macro-scalar process on which states or other complex political formations depend and considers how past people—differentially positioned based on age, class, gender, ethnicity, role, and goal—produced, modified, and mobilized their social and physical worlds.

Placing the concept of surplus at the forefront of archaeological discussions on production, consumption, power, strategy, and change, this volume reaches beyond conventional ways of thinking about top-down or bottom-up models and offers a comparative framework to examine surplus, generating new questions and methodologies to elucidate the social and political economies of the past.

Contributors include Douglas J. Bolender, James A. Brown, Cathy L. Costin, Kristin De Lucia, Timothy Earle, John E. Kelly, Heather M. L. Miller, Christopher R. Moore, Christopher T. Morehart, Neil L. Norman, Ann B. Stahl, Victor D. Thompson, T. L. Thurston, and E. Christian Wells.

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.