Browse by Subject: Anthropology and Archaeology

In this volume, Lawrence Waldron focuses on the cultural significance of nearly two dozen animal and bird representations found in Saladoid-era ceramics, surveying zoomorphic iconography in over twenty major collections.

Focusing on sites ringing the bay such as Cerro Maya, Oxtankah, and Santa Rita Corozal, the contributors to this volume explore how the bay and its feeder rivers affected all aspects of Maya culture from settlement, food production, and the production and use of special goods to political relationships and social organization.

A culmination of Vogel's sixteen-year study of Casma culture, this book helps us understand the relationships between polities of the ancient world, how they built connections to other towns or cities outside and within their own boundaries, and demonstrates the importance of cities and urbanism in the development and collapse of complex societies.

In this volume, Ivan Roksandic and an international team of researchers trace population movement throughout the Caribbean, specifically to Cuba. Through analysis of early agriculture, burial customs, dental modification, pottery production, dietary patterns, and more, they present a new theory of mainland migration to Cuba and the Greater Antilles.

In this volume, Christina Conlee documents the cyclical rise and fall of societies in the region, with particular focus on the development of the Nasca culture, its subsequent conquest by the Wari state, followed by collapse and abandonment, and then the establishment of a new society in the Late Intermediate Period.

This book weaves archaeology and history to illuminate this vibrant, densely packed Atlantic port city. It details the residential, commercial, and public life of the city, the ruins of taverns, markets, and townhouses, including those of Thomas Heyward, shipping merchant Nathaniel Russell, and William Aiken.

Assessing sites both submerged and on land, the authors explore the maritime history of the isthmus through its many stages: from its prehistoric period through Spanish colonialism to the building of the canal and its function as a route for modern-day maritime traffic.

Ritual and archaic states frequently ignite complex debates about their defining characteristics and archaeological signatures. Offering fresh perspectives on both subjects, this volume unites the two streams of scholarship and explores the varying nature, expression, and significance of ritual in archaic states.

Using extensive field research, Alconini explores the modes of direct contact between the Inkas and eastern tropical Lowland populations, a situation often overlooked in studies of the area. Combining both regional- and household-level perspectives, she explores the empire's impact on local settlements as well as on domestic economy, production, cultural materials, and labor organization.

The Powhatan Landscape breaks new ground by tracing Native placemaking in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival to the Powhatan's clashes with the English. Martin Gallivan details how Virginia Algonquians constructed riverine communities alongside fishing grounds and collective burials and later within horticultural towns. Ceremonial spaces, including earthwork enclosures within the center place of Werowocomoco, gathered people for centuries prior to 1607. Even after the violent ruptures of the colonial era, Native people returned to riverine towns for pilgrimages commemorating the enduring power of place.