Browse by Subject: Anthropology and Archaeology

This book explores the sociopolitical contexts of heritage landscapes, paying special attention to sites with deep Indigenous histories—Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and the Burrup Peninsula along the Pilbara Coast in Australia, the Altai Mountains of northwestern Mongolia, and Prince William Sound in Alaska. For many communities, landscapes such as these have long been associated with cultural identity and memories of important and difficult events, as well as political struggles related to nation-state boundaries, sovereignty, and knowledge claims. 

Packed with archaeological and historical evidence from both land and underwater sites, impressive in geographical scope, and featuring perspectives of scholars from many different countries and traditions, these volumes illuminate the often misunderstood nature of early colonialism in Asia-Pacific.

Packed with archaeological and historical evidence from both land and underwater sites, impressive in geographical scope, and featuring perspectives of scholars from many different countries and traditions, these volumes illuminate the often misunderstood nature of early colonialism in Asia-Pacific.

This volume is a much-needed update on recent archaeological and art historical work being done at Chichen Itza, offering new ways of understanding the site and its role in the Yucatan landscape.

Utopian and intentional communities have dotted the American landscape since the colonial era, yet only in recent decades have archaeologists begun analyzing the material culture left behind by these groups. The case studies in this volume use archaeological evidence to reveal how these communities upheld their societal ideals—and how some diverged from them in everyday life.

Drawing on archaeological findings from the Maya lowlands, this book shows how innovation and creativity led to social change in ancient societies

Established by a Black community in the eighteenth century during British colonization of the Bahamas, the Northern Burial Ground of St. Matthew’s Parish was an important expression of the group’s African cultural identity. Analyzing the landscape and artifacts found at the site, Grace Turner shows how the community used this separate space to maintain a sense of social belonging despite the power of white planters and the colonial government. 

Tooth modification has been practiced throughout many time periods and places to convey information about individual people, their societies, and their relationships to others. This volume represents the wide spectrum of intentional dental modification in humans across the globe over the past 16,000 years.

A monumental synthesis of a half century of research, this book investigates three communities from the ancient Nubian civilization of the Nile River Valley. Excavations in this region first inspired the “biocultural approach” to human biology now used by anthropologists worldwide, and Life and Death on the Nile exemplifies the very best of this perspective. It is the life’s work of two highly accomplished anthropologists.