Taking a bioarchaeological approach, this book examines the Ancestral Pueblo culture living in the Four Corners region of the United States during the late Pueblo I through the end of the Pueblo III period (AD 850-1300). During this time, a vast system of pueblo villages spread throughout the region creating what has been called the Chaco Phenomenon, named after the large great houses in Chaco Canyon that are thought to have been centers of control. Through a bioarchaeological analysis of the human skeletal remains, this volume provides evidence that key individuals within the hierarchical social structure used a variety of methods of social control, including structural violence, to maintain their power over the interconnected communities.

Britain's pagan past, with its mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artifacts, bloodthirsty legends, and cryptic inscriptions, is both enthralling and perplexing to a resident of the twenty-first century. In this ambitious and thoroughly up-to-date book, Ronald Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression, and enduring cultural significance of paganism, from the Paleolithic Era to the coming of Christianity. He draws on an array of recently discovered evidence and shows how new findings have radically transformed understandings of belief and ritual in Britain before the arrival of organized religion. Setting forth a chronological narrative, Hutton along the way makes side visits to explore specific locations of ancient pagan activity. He includes the well-known sacred sites-Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge, Maiden Castle, Anglesey-as well as more obscure locations across the mainland and coastal islands. In tireless pursuit of the elusive "why" of pagan behavior, Hutton astonishes with the breadth of his understanding of Britain's deep past and inspires with the originality of his insights.

Nasca pots, Quimbaya figurines, Moche porn figures, stone shamans. Fakes and forgeries run rampant in the Andean art collections of international museums and private individuals. Authors Karen Bruhns and Nancy Kelker examine the phenomenon in this eye-opening volume. They discuss the most commonly forged classes and styles of artifacts, many of which were being duplicated as early as the 19th century. More important, they describe the system whereby these objects get made, purchased, authenticated, and placed in major museums as well as the complicity of forgers, dealers, curators, and collectors in this system. Unique to this volume are biographies of several of the forgers, who describe their craft and how they are able to effectively fool connoisseurs and specialists. This is an important accessible introduction to pre-Columbian art fraud for archaeologists, art historians, and museum professionals alike. A parallel volume by the same authors discusses fakes in Mesoamerican archaeology.

What do we value about the past? In formulating policies about heritage preservation, that is the inevitable question, and deals not only with economic value but also the intangible value to individuals, communities and society as a whole. This interdisciplinary group of scholars--anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, educators, lawyers, heritage administrators, policy analysts, and consultants--make the first attempt to define and assess heritage values on a local, national and global level. Chapters range from the theoretical to policy frameworks to case studies of heritage practice, written by scholars from eight countries.

Adrian Boas's combined use of historical and archaeological evidence together with first-hand accounts written by visiting pilgrims results in a multi-faceted perspective on Crusader Jerusalem. Generously illustrated, this book will serve both as a scholarly account of this city's archaeology and history, and a useful guide for the interested reader to a city at the centre of international and religious interest and conflict today.

Draws on a lifetime's study and a decade of new research to address the first question that every visitor asks: how was Stonehenge built? Icon of the New Stone Age, sculptural and engineering marvel, symbol of national pride: there is nothing quite like Stonehenge. These great sarsen and bluestone slabs, arranged with simple, graphic genius, attract visitors from across the world. The monument stands silent in the face of the questions its unlikely existence raises: who built it? Why? How? There has been endless speculation about why Stonehenge was built, inspiring theories ranging from the academically credible to the improbable, but far less investigation into how. In the millennia since its creation, pieces of Stonehenge have been knocked over by heavy machinery, found their way to Florida (and back again), and been exposed to radioactive sodium, but the seemingly impossible endeavour of raising the stones with Neolithic technology has remained inexplicable - until now. In the past decade ground-breaking discoveries, made possible by cutting-edge scientific techniques, have traced the precise provenance of the bluestones in Wales, but can we plot their journeys to the Salisbury Plain? And how might teams of labourers lacking machinery or even pack animals have dragged them 150 miles to the site? How did they carve joints into the sarsen boulders, among the hardest stones in the world, and then raise them into place? Mike Pitts draws on a lifetime's study to answer these questions, revealing how Stonehenge stood not in austere isolation, as we see it today, but as part of a wider world, the focus of a megalithic cosmology of belief, ritual and creativity. With 109 illustrations

More than any other category of evidence, ceramics ofters archaeologists their most abundant and potentially enlightening source of information on the past. Being made primarily of day, a relatively inexpensive material that is available in every region, ceramics became essential in virtually every society in the world during the past ten thousand years. The straightfor ward technology of preparing, forming, and firing day into hard, durable shapes has meant that societies at various levels of complexity have come to rely on it for a wide variety of tasks. Ceramic vessels quickly became essential for many household and productive tasks. Food preparation, cooking, and storage-the very basis of settled village life-could not exist as we know them without the use of ceramic vessels. Often these vessels broke into pieces, but the virtually indestructible quality of the ceramic material itself meant that these pieces would be preserved for centuries, waiting to be recovered by modem archaeologists. The ability to create ceramic material with diverse physical properties, to form vessels into so many different shapes, and to decorate them in limitless manners, led to their use in far more than utilitarian contexts. Some vessels were especially made to be used in trade, manufacturing activities, or rituals, while ceramic material was also used to make other items such as figurines, models, and architectural ornaments."

In this book, Richard Bussmann presents a fresh overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture in the age of the pyramids. He addresses key themes in the comparative research of early complex societies, including urbanism, funerary culture, temple ritual, kingship, and the state, and explores how ideas and practices were exchanged between ruling elites and local communities in provincial Egypt. Unlike other studies of ancient Egypt, this book adopts an anthropological approach that places people at the centre of the analysis. Bussmann covers a range of important themes in cross-cultural debates, such as materiality, gender, non-elite culture, and the body. He also offers new perspectives on social diversity and cultural cohesion, based on recent discoveries. His study vividly illustrates how our understanding of ancient Egyptian society benefits from the application of theoretical concepts in archaeology and anthropology to the interpretation of the evidence.

This volume was developed to meet a much noted need for accessible case study material for courses in human ecology, cultural ecology, cultural geography, and other subjects increasingly offered to fulfill renewed student and faculty interest in environmental issues. The case studies, all taken from the journal Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Jouma represent a broad cross-section of contemporary research. It is tempting but inaccurate to sug gest that these represent the "Best of Human Ecology." They were selected from among many outstanding possibilities because they worked well with the organization of the book which, in turn, reflects the way in which courses in human ecology are often organized. This book provides a useful sample of case studies in the application of the perspective of human ecology to a wide variety of problems in dif ferent regions of the world. University courses in human ecology typically begin with basic concepts pertaining to energy flow, feeding relations, ma terial cycles, population dynamics, and ecosystem properties, and then take up illustrative case studies of human-environmental interactions. These are usually discussed either along the lines of distinctive strategies of food pro curement (such as foraging or pastoralism) or as adaptations to specific habitat types or biomes (such as the circumpolar regions or arid lands)."

In The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit Mary Buck takes a new approach to the field of Amorite studies by considering whether the site of Ugarit shares close parallels with other sites and cultures known from the Bronze Age Levant. When viewed in conjunction, the archaeological and linguistic material uncovered in this study serves to enhance our understanding of the historical complexity and diversity of the Middle Bronze Age period of international relations at the site of Ugarit. With a deft hand, Dr. Buck pursues a nuanced view of populations in the Bronze Age Levant, with the objective of understanding the ancient polity of Ugarit as a kin-based culture that shares close ties with the Amorite populations of the Levant. "The author covers a contentious area of scholarship with confidence and competence, and has produced a convincing case for the Amorite origins of Bronze Age Ugarit." -Nick Wyatt, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44.5 (2020) The Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant series publishes volumes from the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Other series offered by Brill that publish volumes from the Museum include Harvard Semitic Studies and Harvard Semitic Monographs, https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications.

Ancient DNA Typing is a comprehensive manual about the analysis of ancient and degraded DNA. It is an equally useful textbook and working tool for various disciplines such as: Anthropology, Archaeology, Forensic Medicine, Conservation Biology, Environmental Sciences and Food Engineering.The reader benefits from a clear division of strategies, methods and applications with many interesting examples of the analysis of historic skeletal and cultural remains. The book contains a detailed protocol chapter which serves as a lab manual with the most important methods for DNA extraction, PCR and electrophoretic analysis of degraded samples. The appendix helps to set up a PCR lab specializing in ancient DNA research and answers the most frequent questions concerning technical problems in investigations of degraded DNA.

This technical and well-illustrated guide for archaeologists and conservators aims to 'provide a methodology for the identification of the woody taxa used to manufacture artefacts recovered from archaeological excavations', to provide the anatomical descriptions of the taxa and to present a list of characters of the taxa. The guide is heavily illustrated with photographs, maps, and tables to allow easy identification.

Dr Eric Mallow, a serious gun collector, complicates his life by acquiring a pair of Japanese swords at a gun show. He has no idea one of the swords was the personal weapon of a 14th century patriot, or that the other carries a blood-thirsty reputation as the 'Son Killer.'

Ever since Darwin, the world has been struggling with the mystery of human diversity. As the historian Peter Bowler has written, an evolutionary interpretation of the history of life on the earth must inevitably extend itself to include the origins of the human race. But this has proved to be a difficult and controversial task. Understanding human origins means accounting not only for the obvious differences between people and cultures around the world, but also for the unity of "Homo sapiens" as a single biological species. As Stephen Jay Gould has said, flexibility is the hallmark of human evolution. Because so much of who we are is learned rather than genetically predetermined, a satisfactory understanding of human evolution--to use old parlance--must account both for the human body and the human soul.

At any single moment of time, it is always possible to find instances where people seem to live in their own world, speak in their own distinctive ways, and have their own exclusive cultural traits and practices. Over the course of time, however, it is not so easy to find places where these dimensions of our diversity stay together. The essays in this collection show why we must stop thinking that race, language, and culture go together, and why we should be wary of the commonsense beliefs that human races exist and that people who speak different languages come from fundamentally different biological lineages.

What are stone circles? When were they built, and why? How come so many of them egg-shaped, or geometrically flattened? What do they have to do with the landscape, Sun, Moon and stars? In this beautifully illustrated book, megalithomaniac Hugh Newman takes us on a fascinating journey around the world, examining these mysterious monuments of the megalithic culture from Wessex to Scotland, France to Poland, North America to Africa and India to Japan. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.