Crystal skulls, imaginative codices, dubious Olmec heads and cute Colima dogs. Fakes and forgeries run rampant in the Mesoamerican art collections of international museums and private individuals. Authors Nancy Kelker and Karen Bruhns 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. 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 Andean archaeology.

Bits and pieces of the lives led long before the age of skyscrapers are scattered throughout New York City, found in backyards, construction sites, street beds, and parks. Indigenous tools used thousands of years ago; wine jugs from a seventeenth-century tavern; a teapot from Seneca Village, the nineteenth-century Black settlement displaced by Central Park; raspberry seeds sown in backyard Brooklyn gardens-these everyday objects are windows into the city's forgotten history. Buried Beneath the City uses urban archaeology to retell the history of New York, from the deeper layers of the past to the topsoil of recent events. The book explores the ever-evolving city and the day-to-day world of its residents through artifacts, from the first traces of Indigenous societies more than ten thousand years ago to the detritus of Dutch and English colonization and through to the burgeoning city's transformation into the modern metropolis. It demonstrates how the archaeological record often goes beyond written history by preserving mundane things-details of everyday life that are beneath the notice of the documentary record. These artifacts reveal the density, diversity, and creativity of a city perpetually tearing up its foundations to rebuild itself. Lavishly illustrated with images of objects excavated in the city, Buried Beneath the City is at once an archaeological history of New York City and an introduction to urban archaeology.

Animals have been used to human advantage for thousands of years. 'Animal Husbandry in Ancient Israel' presents an analysis of caprines and cattle husbandry in the Southern Levantine Bronze and Iron Age. The book employs key methodological approaches - comparative analysis, taphonomy, Geographic Information System spatial analysis, and ethnographic studies - to challenge prevalent views on the Southern Levantine ancient economy. 'Animal Husbandry in Ancient Israel' argues that the key concern of nomadic, rural and urban populations was survival - the common household maintained a self-sufficient economy - rather than profit, specialization or trade. The book will be of value to all those interested in the dynamic relationship between humans and animals in ancient Israel.

Centred on the lawsuit over Kennewick Man, this history illuminates one of the most contentious issues in science: the battle between archeologists and American Indians. The 1996 discovery, near Kennewick, Washington, of a 9000-year-old Caucasoid skeleton brought more to the surface than bones. The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archaeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archaeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal Reparation Law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories. In this work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archaeologists' deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archaeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building co-operation between the two sides.

This is the first comprehensive, one-volume encyclopedia in English devoted to pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican culture area.
In more than 500 articles by the major experts in the field, this work brings the most recent scholarship to an examination of regional environments and their cultural evolution. Entries range from the familiar and world-renowned archaeological discoveries of Maya and Aztec sites to more recent excavations such as the Sayil archaeological zone in the Yucatan and Teopantecuanitlan in Guerrero. A rich historical and cultural resource on one of the world's six cradles of civilization, this reference is ideal for students, scholars, and prospective travelers.

This early civilization was erased from human memory until 1924, when it was rediscovered and announced in the Illustrated London Times. Our understanding of the Indus has been partially advanced by textual sources from Mesopotamia that contain references to Meluhha, a land identified by cuneiform specialists as the Indus, with which the ancient Mesopotamians traded and engaged in battles. In this volume, Rita P. Wright uses both Mesopotamian texts but principally the results of archaeological excavations and surveys to draw a rich account of the Indus civilization s well-planned cities, its sophisticated alterations to the landscape, and the complexities of its agrarian and craft-producing economy. She focuses principally on the social networks established between city and rural communities; farmers, pastoralists, and craft producers; and Indus merchants and traders and the symbolic imagery that the civilization shared with contemporary cultures in Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf region. Broadly comparative, her study emphasizes the interconnected nature of early societies."

This volume reports on the excavation of Guila Naquitz cave in Oaxaca, a site that provides important evidence for the earliest plant domestication in the New World. Stratigraphic studies, examinations of artifactual and botanical remains, simulations, and an imaginative reconstruction make this a model project of processual archaeology.

This volume shows how hunter gatherer societies maintain their traditional lifeways in the face of interaction with neighboring herders, farmers, and traders. Using historical, anthropological and archaeological data and cases from Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia, the authors examine hunter gatherer peoples--both past and present--to assess these relationships and the mechanisms by which hunter gatherers adapt and maintain elements of their culture in the wider world around them.

This book represents the first comprehensive attempt to bring to western scholarship the great advances made in Paleolithic archaeology and palaeoanthropology in the People's Republic of China. The 15 chapters are devoted to a historical overview of past and recent studies, the development of chronological frameworks, the composition and stratigraphy of vertebrate fauna, the pongid and hominid palaeontological records, and Pleistocene prehistoric archaeology. Maps, illustrations and tables illustrate the materials presented here.

This volume reports on a series of multidisciplinary projects involving the Archaic period of the American Midwest. A period of innovation and technical achievement, the articles focus on changes in environmental, social, and economic factors operating in this period, and the adaptation of the hunter gatherer peoples living at this time.

Using a combination of historical, archaeological, and scientific data is not an uncommon research practice. Rarely found, however, is a more overt critical consideration of how these sources of information relate to each other, or explicit attempts at developing successful strategies for interdisciplinary work. The authors in this volume provide such critical perspectives, examining materials from a wide range of cultures and time periods to demonstrate the added value of combining in their research seemingly incompatible or even contradictory sources. Case studies include explorations of the symbolism of flint knives in ancient Egypt, the meaning of cuneiform glass texts, medieval metallurgical traditions, and urban archaeology at industrial sites. This volume is noteworthy, as it offers novel contributions to specific topics, as well as fundamental reflections on the problems and potentials of the interdisciplinary study of the human past.

Exploring museums and cultural centers in New England that hold important meanings for Native American communities today, this illuminating book offers a much-needed critique of the collaborative work being done to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of the region. Siobhan Hart examines the narratives told by and about Native American communities at heritage sites of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe on Martha's Vineyard, the Pocumtuck in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut, and Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts. She looks at interpretive signage, exhibits, events, and visitor engagement strategies that try to reverse the common idea that Native peoples no longer exist in these landscapes and asks whether the messages of these sites really do help break apart the power structures of colonialism. She finds that in many cases whiteness is still presented to visitors as the cultural norm and that the burden of decolonizing often falls on indigenous curators, interpreters, and collaborators. Hart's analysis spotlights the persistence of racialization and structural inequalities in these landscapes, as well as the negative effects of these problems on current Native American sovereignty. The broader goal of decolonization, she argues, remains unrealized. This book presents startling evidence of the ways even well-intentioned multiperspective approaches to heritage presentations can undermine the social justice they seek. A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel.

Located some one hundred kilometers southwest of Cairo, the Fayum region has long been regarded as unique, often described in terms that conjure up images of an idealized Garden of Eden. In The Fayum Landscape Claire Malleson takes a novel approach to the study of the region by exploring the ways in which people have, through millennia, perceived and engaged with the Fayum landscape. Distinguishing between the experienced landscape of state and bureaucratic record and the imagined landscape of myth, meaning, and observers' personal influences and expectations, Malleson questions in detail where those perceptions come from. She traces religious practices, follows the tracks of myths and traditions, and investigates the roots of stories found in texts from the pharaonic, classical, and Medieval Islamic periods. She also reviews many, more recent travel writings on the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The work of each author is presented in its historical and cultural context, and Malleson integrates what is known about ancient activities in the Fayum, based on the archaeological evidence from the many monuments and ancient settlements that exist in the region. Scholars and students of archaeology and landscape studies as well as general readers interested in Egypt's history and archaeology will find this book highly engaging and enlightening.

The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs has enabled scholars to better understand Classic society, but many aspects of this civilization remain shrouded in mystery, particularly its economies and social structures. How did farmers, artisans, and rulers make a living in a tropical forest environment? In this study, Patricia McAnany tackles this question and presents the first comprehensive view of ancestral Maya economic practice. Bringing an archaeological approach to the topic, she demonstrates the vital role of ritual practice in indigenous ecologies, gendered labor, and the construction of colossal architecture. Examining Maya royalty as a kind of social speciation, McAnany also shows the fundamentality of social difference as well as the pervasiveness of artisan production and marketplaces in ancestral Maya societies. Her analysis of royal iconography and hieroglyphic texts provides evidence of a political economy dominated by tribute extraction, thus lifting the veil of opacity over the operation of palace economies. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book situates Maya economies within contemporary social, political, and economic theories of social practice, gender, actor-networks, inalienable goods, materiality, social difference, indigenous ecologies, and strategies of state finance.

Tin in Antiquity is the first comprehensive history of the early metallurgy of tin, a mine of information on this rare, highly prized metal so vital to the developing civilization of the Bronze Age. The origins of tin have always been a mystery, but the author has unearthed archaeological evidence from all over the world to trace the tinfields used before the discovery of European deposits. He takes us on a fascinating voyage of discovery through the Ancient World, delving into mythology, and enlivening his scholarly text with quotations from the Classics and humorous anecdotes. As his name suggests, Roger Penhallurick's roots are deep in Cornwall - formerly the world's largest tin producer, and still the greatest in Europe. So it is fitting that the Cornish section comprises almost half the book, for the first time collecting together all the evidence for tin streaming between 2000 BC and AD 1000. All surviving artifacts recovered from the tin workings are illustrated and put in their archaeological context. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout, including many rare old photos, and has a full bibliography of the wealth of sources that have contributed to this work.

Sarah Milledge Nelson's bold thesis is that the development of states in East Asia-China, Japan, Korea-was an outgrowth of the leadership in smaller communities guided by shamans. Using a mixture of historical documents, mythology, archaeological data, and ethnographic studies of contemporary shamans, she builds a case for shamans being the driving force behind the blossoming of complex societies. More interesting, shamans in East Asia are generally women, who used their access to the spirit world to take leadership roles. This work challenges traditional interpretations growth of Asian states, which is overlaid with later Confucian notions of gender roles. Written at a level accessible for undergraduates, this concise work will be fascinating reading for those interested in East Asian archaeology, politics, and society; in gender roles, and in shamanism.

This book presents the proceedings of the international academic workshop on "Early Navigation in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Maritime Archaeological Perspective" held from June 21-23, 2013 at Harvard University campus and organized by Harvard-Yenching Institute. It includes high-quality papers focusing on the historical shipwrecks investigated by underwater archaeologists from Eastern Asian, including southern China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, and North America, including California, Oregon and Washington in the US, as well as Mexico. These investigations reveal the history of the early pan-Pacific navigation and maritime globalization from the 16th to the 18th century, covering the background and formation, concept and practice, as well as the results and influence of this early globalization and global economy, emphasizing the maritime archaeological evidence of Spanish exploration of transportation between East Asia and North America. The book provides an excellent opportunity for maritime archaeologists from both sides of the Pacific to share the latest findings and new developments in maritime archaeological exploration. It discusses 16-18th century nautical trade and maritime cultural history and provides a comprehensive overview of research work in the Asia-Pacific region.

This collection of original essays explores the tensions between prevailing regional and national versions of Indigenous pasts created, reified, and disseminated through monuments, and Indigenous peoples' memories and experiences of place. The contributors ask critical questions about historic preservation and commemoration methods used by modern societies and their impact on the perception and identity of the people they supposedly remember, who are generally not consulted in the commemoration process. They discuss dichotomies of history and memory, place and displacement, public spectacle and private engagement, and reconciliation and re-appropriation of the heritage of indigenous people shown in these monuments. While the case studies deal with North American indigenous experience--from California to Virginia, and from the Southwest to New England and the Canadian Maritime--they have implications for dealings between indigenous peoples and nation states worldwide. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress.

Sarah Milledge Nelson's bold thesis is that the development of states in East Asia-China, Japan, Korea-was an outgrowth of the leadership in smaller communities guided by shamans. Using a mixture of historical documents, mythology, archaeological data, and ethnographic studies of contemporary shamans, she builds a case for shamans being the driving force behind the blossoming of complex societies. More interesting, shamans in East Asia are generally women, who used their access to the spirit world to take leadership roles. This work challenges traditional interpretations growth of Asian states, which is overlaid with later Confucian notions of gender roles. Written at a level accessible for undergraduates, this concise work will be fascinating reading for those interested in East Asian archaeology, politics, and society; in gender roles, and in shamanism.

In this volume, the authors present an original ethnographic study of five llama herding communities in Ayacucho, Peru. Data on herd dynamics are subjected to computer modeling in an effort to evaluate the roles of biology, symbolic and ritual behavior, ecological adaptation, and practical reason. The book contains the most detailed study of the waytakuy llama marking ceremony yet available. The role of this ceremony in preventing herds from going to extinction is evaluated against anthropological and sociobiological theory. This is an interdisciplinary book will appeal to professional archaeologists, prehistorians, cultural anthropologists, Andeanists, theoretical biologists, evolutionary biologists, and zoologists interested in animal domestication.

Using a combination of historical, archaeological, and scientific data is not an uncommon research practice. Rarely found, however, is a more overt critical consideration of how these sources of information relate to each other, or explicit attempts at developing successful strategies for interdisciplinary work. The authors in this volume provide such critical perspectives, examining materials from a wide range of cultures and time periods to demonstrate the added value of combining in their research seemingly incompatible or even contradictory sources. Case studies include explorations of the symbolism of flint knives in ancient Egypt, the meaning of cuneiform glass texts, medieval metallurgical traditions, and urban archaeology at industrial sites. This volume is noteworthy, as it offers novel contributions to specific topics, as well as fundamental reflections on the problems and potentials of the interdisciplinary study of the human past.

Urbanization has been an important feature of Africa's history for over 2000 years. Towns and cities have been arenas around which societies have organized themselves: as centres of trade and economic activity; as foci of political action and authority; as military garrisons; as sites of ritual power; and as places of refuge and collective security in troubled times. This collection reveals the depth of urbanization in African history.

What does the Rosetta Stone tell us about the past? What treasures of Egyptian literature can now be read, thanks to its decipherment? What does it tell us about the history of writing and the story of our own alphabets? How do decipherments work and how can we know if they are right? Who owns the Rosetta Stone and what happens if we start to return pieces of the past to countries who claim them? These are some of the fascinating questions which are explored in this introduction to one of the true Wonders of the World.

This book focuses on the sociopolitical development and the organisa-tional differences between societies in northwestern Scandinavia in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (2350-1100 BCE). Grounded in a political economy approach, the book presents a theo-retical model that emphases a dialectic negotiation between societies exercising coercive or cooperative strategies through processes of categorisation. Within this theoretical model the archaeological mate-rial is studied using a two-tiered approach. First, an extensive archaeo-logical corpus, consisting of settlement and burial patterns, lithics, metal, and rock art is investigated comparatively for patterns of dia-chronic, regional and societal differences. Second, patterns from the first-tier are scrutinised and three case studies are selected, each ex-pressing different organisational patterns based on local ecological advantages and/or restrictions. These aspects are then discussed on an interregional level, suggesting that utilisation of the seaway was one of the primary movers of increased complexity along the coast. The book presents the first big synthesis of the sociopolitical develop-ment in northwestern Scandinavia and outlines a theoretical model for concurrent but contrasting sociopolitical strategies that can be applied cross-culturally.