Browse by Subject: Archaeology

The years 1500–1700 AD were a time of dramatic change for the indigenous inhabitants of southeastern North America, yet Native histories during this era have been difficult to reconstruct due to a scarcity of written records before the eighteenth century. Using archaeology to enhance our knowledge of the period, Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States presents new research on the ways Native societies responded to early contact with Europeans.

This volume uses archaeological and historical evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that multidisciplinary studies can provide about the effects of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people.  

The Galápagos Islands are one of the world’s premiere nature attractions, home to unique ecosystems widely thought to be untouched and pristine. This volume reveals that the archipelago is not as isolated as many imagine, examining how centuries of human occupation have transformed its landscape.

Highlighting the strong relationship between New England’s Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture.

This volume brings together a wide spectrum of new approaches to ancient Maya studies in an innovative exploration of how the Preclassic and Classic Maya shaped their world. Moving beyond the towering temples and palaces typically associated with the Maya civilization, contributors present unconventional examples of monumental Maya landscapes.

Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes examines how settlements along South America’s Pacific coastline played a role in the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of Andean civilizations from the Late Pleistocene era through Spanish colonization. Providing the first synthesis of data from Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, this wide-ranging volume evaluates and revises long-standing research on ancient maritime sites across the region.

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases.  

Blending elements of geography, archaeology, and ethnography, this readable, illustrated history offers a fascinating portrait of all aspects of Caymanian nautical traditions and describes how an intrepid and independent group of islanders flourished on the frontiers of the sea.

Using archaeology as a tool for understanding long-term ecological and climatic change, this volume synthesizes current knowledge about the ways Native Americans interacted with their environments along the Atlantic Coast of North America over the past 10,000 years.  

Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact.