This extensively illustrated volume provides the first complete visual documentation and a pioneering iconographic analysis of Picture Cave, an eastern Missouri cavern filled with Native American pictographs that is one of the most important prehistoric sites in North America. A millennia ago, Native Americans entered the dark recesses of a cave in eastern Missouri and painted an astonishing array of human, animal, and supernatural creatures on its walls. Known as Picture Cave, it was a hallowed site for sacred rituals and rites of passage, for explaining the multi-layered cosmos, for vision quests, for communing with spirits in the "other world," and for burying the dead. The number, variety, and complexity of images make Picture Cave one of the most significant prehistoric sites in North America, similar in importance to Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. Indeed, scholars will be able to use it to reconstruct much of the Native American symbolism of the early Western Mississippian world. The Picture Cave Interdisciplinary Project brought together specialists in American Indian art and iconography, two artists, Osage Indian elders, a museum curator, a folklorist, and an internationally renowned cave archaeologist to produce the first complete documentation of the pictographs on the cave walls and the first interpretations of their meanings and significance. This extensively illustrated volume presents the Project's findings, including an introduction to Picture Cave and prehistoric cave art and technical analyses of pigments, radiocarbon dating, spatial order, and archaeological remains. Interpretations of the cave's imagery, from individual motifs to complex panels; the responses of contemporary artists; and interviews with Osage elders (descendants of the people who made the art), describing what Picture Cave means to them today, are also included. A visual glossary of all the images in Picture Cave as well as panoramic views complete this pathfinding volume.

"Plants from the Past" is a fascinating, comprehensive record of the work of two dedicated plant scientists who were instrumental in the establishment of archaeobotany and paleoethnobotany as vigorous subdisciplines within American archaeology. Hugh Carson Cutler and Leonard Watson Blake worked together for many decades at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, identifying and interpreting plant remains from archaeological sites all over North America.
Covering a period of 30 years and tracing the development of the study of plant remains from archaeological sites, the volume will give archaeologists access to previously unavailable data and interpretations. It features the much-sought-after extensive inventory "Plants from Archaeological Sites East of the Rockies," which serves as a reference to archaeobotanical collections curated at the Illinois State Museum. The chapters dealing with protohistory and early historic foodways and trade in the upper Midwest are especially relevant at this time of increasing attention to early Indian-white interactions.
The editors' introduction provides coherence and historical context for the papers and points to the book's potential as a resource for future research. Graced by Dr. Blake's brief introductions to each chapter, "Plants from the Past" neatly compiles the earliest research in archaeobotany by two originators of the science.

The eight case studies in this book -- each a synthesis of available knowledge about the origins of agriculture in a specific region of the globe -- enable scholars in diverse disciplines to examine humanity's transition to agricultural societies. Contributors include: Gary W. Crawford, Robin W. Dennell, and Jack R. Harlan.