* bioarchaeological data is relatively recent in Mesoamerican research so this volume provides a wealth of new material * with Mesoamerica being data-rich by world archeological standards, it allows for robust interdisciplinary dialogues with related fields

Some forty scholars examine California's prehistory and archaeology, looking at marine and terrestrial palaeoenvironments, initial human colonization, linguistic prehistory, early forms of exchange, mitochondrial DNA studies, and rock art. This work is the most extensive study of California's prehistory undertaken in the past 20 years. An essential resource for any scholar of California prehistory and archaeology!

The fifth millennium BCE was a period of rapid social change. One of the key factors was the developments in technology which led to the rise of the metals industry. Archaeological finds from sites dating to the Chalcolithic period indicate the production and use of copper. 'Dawn of the Metal Age' examines a range of sites - from copper mines in Jordan and Israel to the villages of the northern Negev where copper was produced in household workshops, to a series of cave burials where a range of luxury metal goods were buried with the elite members of Chalcolithic society. Ancient technology is reconstructed from the archaeological evidence, which also illuminates the changing economic, social, religious and political environment of the time.

Foraging bands were the quintessential form of human social organization for the most of prehistory. Current arguments rage on the genesis of the contemporary descendants of these hunter-gatherers and their applicability to our understanding of lifeways before agriculture and domestication of animals. Sibel Barut Kusimba addresses this debate by synthesizing the archaeological evidence in Africa from the Middle Stone Age to the present, where the greatest time depth of foraging cultures can be traced. She develops a comprehensive picture of these foundational human societies, their social and technological adaptations to environmental conditions, and the impact of interaction from later economic systems on their lifeways. The book should be of importance to both cultural and archaeological anthropologists and their students.

Working with and for Ancestors examines collaborative partnerships that have developed around the study and care of Indigenous ancestral human remains. In the interest of reconciliation, museums and research institutions around the world have begun to actively seek input and direction from Indigenous descendants in establishing collections care and research policies. However, true collaboration is difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes awkward. By presenting examples of projects involving ancestral remains that are successfully engaged in collaboration, the book provides encouragement for scientists and descendant communities alike to have open and respectful discussions around the research and care of ancestral human remains. Key themes for discussion include new approaches to the care for ancestors; the development of culturally sensitive museum policies; the emergence of mutually beneficial research partnerships; and emerging issues such as those of intellectual property, digital data, and alternatives to destructive analyses. Critical discussions by leading scholars also identify the remaining challenges in the repatriation process and offer a means to continue moving forward. This volume will appeal to a broad, interdisciplinary audience interested in collaborative research and management strategies that are aimed at developing mutually beneficial relationships between researchers and descendant communities. This includes students and researchers in archaeology, anthropology, museums studies, and Indigenous communities.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England provides a unique survey of the six major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms - Kent, the East Saxons, the East Angles, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex - and their royal families, examining the most recent research in this field. Barbara Yorke moves beyond narrative accounts of the various royal houses to explain issues such as the strategies of rule, the reasons for success and failure and the dynamics of change in the office of king. Sixteen genealogical and regnal tables help to elucidate the history of the royal houses.

From Justinian to Branimir explores the social and political transformation of Dalmatia between c.500 and c.900 AD. The collapse of Dalmatia in the early seventh century is traditionally ascribed to the Slav migrations. However, more recent scholarship has started to challenge this theory, looking instead for alternative explanations for the cultural and social changes that took place during this period. Drawing on both written and material sources, this study utilizes recent archaeological and historical research to provide a new historical narrative of this little-known period in the history of the Balkan peninsula. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Byzantine and early medieval Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. It is important reading for both historians and archaeologists.

The Archaeology of Difference presents a new and radically different perspective on the archaeology of cross-cultural contact and engagement. The authors move away from acculturation or domination and resistance and concentrate on interaction and negotiation by using a wide variety of case studies which take a crucially indigenous rather than colonial standpoint.

Each person invests many of the objects in his life with his or her own unconscious meaning, each person subsequently voyages through an environment that constantly evokes the self's psychic history. Taking Freud's model of dreamwork as a model for all unconscious thinking, Christopher Bollas argues that we dreamwork ourselves into becoming who we are, and illustrates how the analyst and the patient use such unconscious processes to develop new psychic structures that the patient can use to alter his or her self experience. Building on this foundation, he goes on to describe some very special forms of self experience, including the tragic madness of women cutting themselves, the experience of a cruising homosexual in bars and bathes and the demented ferocity of the facist state of mind. An original interpreter of classical theory and clinical issues, in Being a Character Christopher Bollas takes the reader into the very texture of the psychoanalytic process.

* Written by one of the leading experts in Andean archaeology, including more of his insights on the latest developments * Increased content on issues with contemporary relevance such as the environment and climate change and, repatriation and social justice * Expanded final section that extends the chronological range of the book to include the Andean world of the Conquest and Colonial Periods as well as the Republican and contemporary Andean worlds and their prehispanic heritage.

Archaeology, Language, and the African Past is an overview of theories and methods, a fusion of African linguistics and archaeology. Roger Blench provides a comprehensive look at the history of all African language families, incorporating the latest linguistic classifications, current evidence from archaeology, genetic research, and recorded history. This original and definitive volume examines the economic culture of the continent-from major crops and plant life to animals and livestock-from a multi-dimensional perspective. It provides students of linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology with a critical discussion on the history of African languages and the cultures they articulate.

This new edition is completely rewritten and extended, but uses the same chronological approach to investigate how society and economy evolved. It draws on a wide range of new data, derived from excavation, investigation of buildings, metal-detecting, and scientific techniques. It examines the social customs, economic pressures, and environmental constraints within which people functioned, the technology available to them, and how they expressed themselves, for example in their houses, their burial customs, their costume, and their material possessions such as pottery. Their adaptation to new circumstances, whether caused by human factors such as the re-emergence of towns or changing taxation requirements, or by external ones such as volcanic activity or the Black Death, is explored throughout each chapter. The new edition of Archaeology, Economy and Society remains essential reading for students and researchers of the archaeology of Medieval England.

This new edition is completely rewritten and extended, but uses the same chronological approach to investigate how society and economy evolved. It draws on a wide range of new data, derived from excavation, investigation of buildings, metal-detecting, and scientific techniques. It examines the social customs, economic pressures, and environmental constraints within which people functioned, the technology available to them, and how they expressed themselves, for example in their houses, their burial customs, their costume, and their material possessions such as pottery. Their adaptation to new circumstances, whether caused by human factors such as the re-emergence of towns or changing taxation requirements, or by external ones such as volcanic activity or the Black Death, is explored throughout each chapter. The new edition of Archaeology, Economy and Society remains essential reading for students and researchers of the archaeology of Medieval England.

This 2004 collection of papers includes some of the most innovative history written about Greece and Rome. The volume offers a convenient and enthralling guide to important issues and topics in Greek and Roman history, maps the changing interests of ancient historians and raises stimulating questions about historical method. The contributors to the volume represent many of the most exciting and influential ancient historians who have been active in the last quarter century. An introduction by the editor, which places the papers in the wider context of changing interests in Greek and Roman history, sets the scene for papers on Greek warfare, the regulation and representation of women and the nature and study of homosexual relationships in Athens, the relationship between Rome and its empire, whether Rome was democratic, the ideology of Augustan Rome, games and gaming at Rome, the lives of slaves, the ancient interpretation of dreams, the nature of religious pilgrimage, early Christian martyr stories, and bandits in the Roman empire.

Historical Archaeology in Africa is an inquiry into historical questions that count, proposing different ways of thinking about historical archaeology. Peter Schmidt challenges readers to expand their horizons . Confronting topics of oral traditions, the role of cultural landscapes in social memory, and historical misrepresentations of various cultures, Schmidt calls for a new pathway to an enriched, more nuanced, and more inclusive historical archaeology. Allowing Africa to speak for itself without colonial interpreters, Historical Archaeology in Africa will be of interest not only to historians and archaeologists, but to all concerned with Africa's past and present.

Relying heavily on primary literary sources and archaeological scholarship, this study sheds new light on the development of towns in early England from late Roman to late Anglo-Saxon times. After a discussion of the problems of urban definition and typology, Russo examines the background of Romano-British urbanism in its prime and in its late Roman transformations. He demonstrates that late Roman towns were virtually abandoned before the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The emporia--new types of Anglo-Saxon towns--are analyzed on the basis of written and archaeological evidence and are compared with continental emporia. Finally, the origin and growth of the Anglo-Saxon burgh is considered from its eighth-century Mercian beginnings to the better known cases of King Alfred and his successors.

Sets each of the seven wonders in their historical context, bringing together materials from ancient sources and the results of modern excavations to suggest why particular places and objects have been seen as the touchstone for human achievement.

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of Africa to global archaeological thinking is highlighted, with a particular focus on materiality and agency in contemporary interpretation. As a means to explore the nature of theory itself, the volume also addresses differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa. Providing a key contribution to theoretical discourse through a focus on the context of theory-building, this volume explores how African modes of thought have shaped our approaches to a meaningful past outside of Africa. A timely intervention into archaeological thought, Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory deconstructs the conventional ways we approach the past, positioning the continent within a global theoretical discourse and blending Western and African scholarship. This volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in the archaeology of Africa, as well as providing fresh perspectives to those interested in archaeological theory more generally.

The horse is surely the aristocrat of animals domesticated by man. This book documents the origins of horse domestication on the Pontic-Caspian steppes some 6,000 years ago and the consequent migration of equestrian tribes across Eurasia to the borders of sedentary states. Horse-chariotry and cavalry in effect changed the nature of warfare in the civilizations of the Middle East, India, and China. But, beyond the battlefield, horsepower also afforded great advances in transport, agriculture, industry, and science. Rapidity of horse communications forged far-flung equestrian empires, where language, law, weights, measures, and writing systems were standardized and revolutionary technologies and ideas were disseminated across continents. Always recognizing this dual character of horsepower both destructive and constructive the politico-military and economic importance of the horse is discussed in the rise of Hittite, Achaemenid, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Arab, Mongol, and Turkic states. Following Columbian contact, Old and New World cultures are contrastively evaluated in terms of presence or absence of the horse. And Spanish conquest of the horseless Americas is seen as the model for subsequent European equestrian colonization of horseless territories around the planet."

Creativity is an integral part of human history, yet most studies focus on the modern era, leaving unresolved questions about the formative role that creativity has played in the past. This book explores the fundamental nature of creativity in the European Bronze Age. Considering developments in crafts that we take for granted today, such as pottery, textiles, and metalwork, the volume compares and contrasts various aspects of their development, from the construction of the materials themselves, through the production processes, to the design and effects deployed in finished objects. It explores how creativity is closely related to changes in material culture, how it directs responses to the new and unfamiliar, and how it has resulted in changes to familiar things and practices. Written by an international team of scholars, the case studies in this volume consider wider issues and provide detailed insights into creative solutions found in specific objects.

In this return to his lively, provocative reconceptualization of the meaning of Chaco Canyon and its monumental 11th-century structures, Stephen H. Lekson expands-over time and distance-our understanding of the political and economic integration of the American Southwest. Lekson's argument that Chaco did not stand alone, but rather was the first of three capitals in a vast networked region incorporating most of the Pueblo world has gained credence over the past 15 years. Here, he marshals new evidence and new interpretations to further the case for ritual astronomical alignment of monumental structures and cities, great ceremonial roads, and the shift of the regional capital first from Chaco Canyon to the Aztec Ruins site and then to Paquime, all located on the same longitudinal meridian. Along the line from Aztec to Paquime, Lekson synthesizes 1000 years of Southwestern prehistory-explaining phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, the recycling of iconic symbols over time, founder burials, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-to yield a fascinating argument that will interest anyone concerned with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.

Archaeology, Language, and the African Past is an overview of theories and methods, a fusion of African linguistics and archaeology. Roger Blench provides a comprehensive look at the history of all African language families, incorporating the latest linguistic classifications, current evidence from archaeology, genetic research, and recorded history. This original and definitive volume examines the economic culture of the continent_from major crops and plant life to animals and livestock_from a multi-dimensional perspective. It provides students of linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology with a critical discussion on the history of African languages and the cultures they articulate.

This volume explores how native peoples of the Southeastern United States cooperated to form large and permanent early villages, using the site of Crystal River on Florida's Gulf Coast as a case study. Crystal River was once among the most celebrated sites of the Woodland period (ca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1000), consisting of ten mounds and large numbers of diverse artifacts from the Hopewell culture. But a lack of research using contemporary methods at this site and nearby Roberts Island limited a full understanding of what these sites could tell scholars. Thomas Pluckhahn and Victor Thompson reanalyze previous excavations and conduct new field investigations to tell the whole story of Crystal River from its beginnings as a ceremonial center, through its growth into a large village, to its decline at the turn of the first millennium while Roberts Island and other nearby areas thrived. Comparing this community to similar sites on the Gulf Coast and in other areas of the world, Pluckhahn and Thompson argue that Crystal River is an example of an ""early village society."" They illustrate that these early villages present important evidence in a larger debate regarding the role of competition versus cooperation in the development of human societies.

Historical Archaeology in Africa is an inquiry into historical questions that count, proposing different ways of thinking about historical archaeology. Peter Schmidt challenges readers to expand their horizons . Confronting topics of oral traditions, the role of cultural landscapes in social memory, and historical misrepresentations of various cultures, Schmidt calls for a new pathway to an enriched, more nuanced, and more inclusive historical archaeology. Allowing Africa to speak for itself without colonial interpreters, Historical Archaeology in Africa will be of interest not only to historians and archaeologists, but to all concerned with Africa's past and present.