A history of monastic foundations in East Anglia, from the middle Anglo-Saxon period to the Normans. Monastic studies usually focus upon the post-Conquest period; here, in valuable contrast, the focus is on pre-Conquest monastic foundations, in the present-day counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Tim Pestell considers the place of the monastery in wider landscapes - topographical, social, economic and political. He observes that by 1215 the Diocese of Norwich contained about a tenth of all English monasteries, a remarkable richness of patronage was no suddenflush of enthusiasm, but a manifestation of religious devotion that had been evolving in East Anglia since the seventh-century Conversion. By integrating archaeological and historical sources, Dr Pestell presents an in-depth examination of where and how communal religious life developed in the region over half a millennium. In so doing, he demonstrates how the more visible and better-evidenced post-Conquest monastic landscape was typically structured by its Anglo-Saxon past. Dr TIM PESTELL is Curator of Archaeology at Norwich Castle Museum.

Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya offers a new perspective on the ancient Maya that emphasizes the importance of dwelling as a social practice. Contrary to contemporary notions of the self as individual and independent, the identities of the ancient Maya grew from their everyday relations and interactions with other people, the houses and temples they built, and the objects they created, exchanged, cherished, and left behind. Using excavations of ancient Chunchucmil as a case study, it investigates how Maya personhood was structured and transformed in and beyond the domestic sphere and examines the role of the past in the production of contemporary Maya identity.

This volume reprints 20 chapters from the editors' comprehensive Histories of Maize (2006) that are relevant to Mesoamerican specialists and students. New findings and interpretations from the past three years have been included. Histories of Maize is the most comprehensive reference source on the botanical, genetic, archaeological, and anthropological aspects of ancient maize published. Included in this abridged volume are new introductory and concluding chapters and updated material on isotopic research. State of the art research on maize chronology, molecular biology, and stable carbon isotope research on ancient human diets have provided additional lines of evidence on the changing role of maize through time and space and its spread throughout the Americas. The multidisciplinary evidence from the social and biological sciences presented in this volume have generated a much more complex picture of the economic, political, and religious significance of maize.

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.

Although war is a heterogeneous assemblage of the human and nonhuman, it nevertheless builds the illusion of human autonomy and singularity. Focusing on war and ecology, a neglected topic in early modern ecocriticism, Bestial Oblivion: War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England shows how warfare unsettles ideas of the human, yet ultimately contributes to, and is then perpetuated by, anthropocentrism. Bertram's study of early modern warfare's impact on human-animal and human-technology relationships draws upon posthumanist theory, animal studies, and the new materialisms, focusing on responses to the Anglo-Spanish War, the Italian Wars, the Wars of Religion, the colonization of Ireland, and Jacobean "peace." The monograph examines a wide range of texts-essays, drama, military treatises, paintings, poetry, engravings, war reports, travel narratives-and authors-Erasmus, Machiavelli, Digges, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Coryate, Bacon-to show how an intricate web of perpetual war altered the perception of the physical environment as well as the ideologies and practices establishing what it meant to be human.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

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 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.

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.

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.

In this two-volume work, published in 1912, the Hungarian-born archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) describes his second expedition to the deserts of Chinese Turkestan in 1906-8. (His account of his first expedition, Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan (1903), is also reissued in this series.) Stein intended this account to be read by non-specialists, and, like his previous book, it is highly illustrated and full of interesting details about his journey and the people he met en route, as well as of the important archaeological discoveries which still link his name with the civilisation of this remote and dangerous area. In Volume 1, Stein describes the problems of setting up the expedition and the excitement and perils of the route, which took him through the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier and the kingdom of Afghanistan, ending with his arrival at the western extremity of the Great Wall of China.

Examining stone vessels in the Levant during the 2nd millennium BC, the author explores the links between material culture and society through a comprehensive study of production and distribution. Extensively illustrated with 100 drawings, maps and charts, this volume includes a full object catalogue. This study represents the first comprehensive overview of the stone vessel assemblagesof the Levant in this period, a time which, fed by an increase of wealth and interregional trade, saw a growth in the popularity and variety of such vessels. Previously, our understanding of the varied functions and forms of these diverse vessels has been relatively underdeveloped. In this volume the author attempts to address this problem by creating a typological framework though which we can analyse variability and define essential characteristics of local stone vessel workshops. Only once this has been achieved is it possible to look at stone vessel production in its wider cultural context. Subsequent chapters explore broader themes, beginning within the workshops themselves, examining the links between craftsmen, their sources of raw materials, and the authorities that controlled and distributed their output. Considerations of the geographical and chronological distribution of such goods are then used to provide a regional perspective for the operation of these workshops, connections between them, and further insights into the nature of local and international trade. Finally, the objects themselves can be used to assess the impact of trends such as the growing Egyptianization of the ruling classes of the Levant at this time.

In this book, Claudia Moser offers a new understanding of Roman religion in the Republican era through an exploration of sacrifice, its principal ritual. Examining the long-term imprint of sacrificial practices on the material world, she focuses on monumental altars as the site for the act of sacrifice. Piecing together the fragments of the complex kaleidoscope of Roman religious practices, she shows how they fit together in ways that shed new light on the characteristic diversity of Roman religion. This study reorients the study of sacrificial practice in three principal ways: first, by establishing the primacy of sacred architecture, rather than individual action, in determining religious authority; second, by viewing religious activities as haptic, structured experiences in the material world rather than as expressions of doctrinal, belief-based mentalities; and third, by considering Roman sacrifice as a local, site-specific ritual rather than as a single, monolithic practice.