Under the Shade of Thipaak is the first book to explore the cultural role of cycads, plants that evolved over 250 million years ago and are now critically endangered, in the ancient and modern Mesoamerican and Caribbean worlds. This volume demonstrates how these ancient plants have figured prominently in regional mythologies, rituals, art, and foodways from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition to the present. Contributors discuss the importance of cycads from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including biology and population genetics, historical ecology, archaeology, art history, linguistics, and conservation and sustainability. Chapters pay special attention to the enduring conceptual relationships between cycads and maize. This book demonstrates how a close examination of cycad-human relationships can motivate conservation of these threatened plants in ways that engage local communities, as well as promote the significance of ancient and modern practices that unite nature and culture.

The ancient societies of western Mexico have long been understudied and misunderstood. Focusing on recent archaeological data, Ancient West Mexicos highlights the diversity and complexity of the region's pre-Hispanic cultures and argues that western Mexico was more similar to the rest of the Mesoamerican world than many researchers have believed. Chapters that treat investigations in Durango, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit, Aguascalientes, and Michoacan draw on new evidence dating from across millennia, spanning different periods in the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Contributors analyze materials including ceramics, architectural remains, textiles, and weaving tools to discern the settlement patterns, political structures, and cosmologies of the people who lived at these sites. Featuring intriguing case studies that point to unexpected pathways to sociopolitical complexity in these and other ancient societies, these essays illustrate that the region's archaeological record can contribute meaningfully to a more nuanced picture of Mesoamerica as a whole.