Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face--including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation--are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests' past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces--from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems--has masked a significant contemporary trend of woodland resurgence, even in the forests of the tropics. Focusing on the history and current use of woodlands from India to the Amazon, The Social Lives of Forests attempts to build a coherent view of forests sited at the nexus of nature, culture, and development. With chapters covering the effects of human activities on succession patterns in now-protected Costa Rican forests; the intersection of gender and knowledge in African shea nut tree markets; and even the unexpectedly rich urban woodlands of Chicago, this book explores forests as places of significant human action, with complex institutions, ecologies, and economies that have transformed these landscapes in the past and continue to shape them today. From rain forests to timber farms, the face of forests--how we define, understand, and maintain them--is changing.

Specialized forager-traders have lived alongside and in exchange relationships with agriculturalists for many thousands of years in South and Southeast Asia. Here is a series of representative case-studies that pertain to a current archaeological debate. The issue concerns the extent to which historical foraging populations are to be understood as specialized adaptations to a complex economically diverse environment, rather than as throw-backs to a Paleolithic way of life.

Empires, the largest political systems of the ancient and early modern world, powerfully transformed the lives of people within and even beyond their frontiers in ways quite different from other, non-imperial societies. Appearing in all parts of the globe, and in many different epochs, empires invite comparative analysis - yet few attempts have been made to place imperial systems within such a framework. This book brings together studies by distinguished scholars from diverse academic traditions, including anthropology, archaeology, history and classics. The empires discussed include case studies from Central and South America, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Near East, South East Asia and China, and range in time from the first millennium BC to the early modern era. The book organises these detailed studies into five thematic sections: sources, approaches and definitions; empires in a wider world; imperial integration and imperial subjects; imperial ideologies; and the afterlife of empires.

Specialized forager-traders have lived alongside and in exchange relationships with agriculturalists for many thousands of years in South and Southeast Asia. Here is a series of representative case-studies that pertain to a current archaeological debate. The issue concerns the extent to which historical foraging populations are to be understood as specialized adaptations to a complex economically diverse environment, rather than as throw-backs to a Paleolithic way of life.