Written in Stone: The Multiple Dimensions of Lithic Analysis demonstrates the vitality of contemporary lithics analysis by examining material from a variety of geographical locations. This edited collection is primarily concerned with the link between craft production and social complexity, the nature of trade, and the delineation of settlement patterns and manipulation of landscape. While deconstructing the present to reconstruct the past, each chapter incorporates a technological dimension shaped by the type of analysis utilized. Methods include microwear analysis, which adds significant understanding of stone tool function, to the identification of obsidian sources, which illustrates the potential of lithic provenance studies for reconstructing trade. This book verifies and expands on the notion that lithics play an integral role in our understanding of past societies at all levels of complexity, from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to archaic states.

This volume is an extensive collection of chapters discussing Folsom artifacts and sites, as well as innovative experiments undertaken to understand Folsom technology and lifeways. Public and private collections of Folsom artifacts were brought together with professional and amateur lithic analysts and knappers in an attempt to determine how the ancient stone tools were made and used. In addition, "Folsom Technology and Lifeways" summarizes interaction among knappers and analysts, and the attempts to replicate specific artifact types represented. It is a unique volume in that it examines the variation present in technology and behavior across a wide range of Folsom localities.

This volume considers the significance of stone monuments in Preclassic Mesoamerica, focusing on the period following the precocious appearance of monumental sculpture at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo and preceding the rise of the Classic polities in the Maya region and Central Mexico. By quite literally placing sculptures in their cultural, historical, social, political, religious, and cognitive contexts, the seventeen contributors utilize archaeological and art historical methods to understand the origins, growth, and spread of civilization in Middle America. They present abundant new data and new ways of thinking about sculpture and society in Preclassic Mesoamerica, and call into question the traditional dividing line between Preclassic and Classic cultures. They offer not only a fruitful way of rethinking the beginnings of civilization in Mesoamerica, but provide a series of detailed discussions concerning how these beginnings were dynamically visualized through sculptural programming during the Preclassic period.

An insider's look at the end of George Parr's corrupt empire in South Texas

By the time of the Civil War, the railroads had advanced to allow the movement of large numbers of troops even though railways had not yet matured into a truly integrated transportation system. Gaps between lines, incompatible track gauges, and other vexing impediments remained in both the North and South. As John E. Clark Jr. explains in this keen study, the skill with which Union and Confederate war leaders met those problems and utilized the rail system to its fullest potential was an essential ingredient for ultimate victory. Clark focuses on two case studies of troop movement: Longstreet's transfer of thirteen thousand men from the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of Tennessee in the fall of 1863, and the Union's corresponding shift of the Army of Potomac's Eleventh and Twelfth Corps to the Army of the Cumberland to save Chattanooga.