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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.
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.
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.
Vijayanagara, the "City of Victory," was the capital of South
India's largest and most successful pre-colonial empire from c. AD
1330-1565. This richly illustrated volume reports on the results of
a ten-year systematic regional archaeological survey in the
hinterland or "metropolitan region" of this vast and well-preserved
urban site.
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