At the height of their power in the late eleventh century, the Chaco Anasazi dominated a territory in the American Southwest larger than any European principality of the time. A vast and powerful alliance of thousands of farming hamlets and nearly 100 spectacular towns integrated the region through economic and religious ties, and the whole system was interconnected with hundreds of miles of roads. It took these Anasazi farmers more than seven centuries to lay the agricultural, organizational, and technological groundwork for the creation of classic Chacoan civilization, which lasted about 200 years--only to collapse spectacularly in a mere 40.

Why did such a great society collapse? Who survived? Why? In this lively book anthropologist/archaeologist David Stuart presents answers to these questions that offer useful lessons to modern societies. His account of the rise and fall of the Chaco Anasazi brings to life the people known to us today as the architects of Chaco Canyon, the spectacular national park in New Mexico that thousands of tourists visit every year.

Much of what we currently know about the ancient Maya concerns the activities of the elites who ruled the societies and left records of their deeds carved on the monumental buildings and sculptures that remain as silent testimony to their power and status. But what do we know of the common folk who labored to build the temple complexes and palaces and grew the food that fed all of Maya society? This pathfinding book marshals a wide array of archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence to offer the fullest understanding to date of the lifeways of ancient Maya commoners. Senior and emerging scholars contribute case studies that examine such aspects of commoner life as settlement patterns, household organization, and subsistence practices. Their reports cover most of the Maya area and the entire time span from Preclassic to Postclassic. This broad range of data helps resolve Maya commoners from a faceless mass into individual actors who successfully adapted to their social environment and who also held primary responsibility for producing the food and many other goods on which the whole Maya society depended.

Native to a high valley in the Andes of Ecuador, the Otavalos are an indigenous people whose handcrafted textiles and traditional music are now sold in countries around the globe. Known as weavers and merchants since pre-Inca times, Otavalos today live and work in over thirty countries on six continents, while hosting more than 145,000 tourists annually at their Saturday market. In this ethnography of the globalization process, Lynn A. Meisch looks at how participation in the global economy has affected Otavalo identity and culture since the 1970s. Drawing on nearly thirty years of fieldwork, she covers many areas of Otavalo life, including the development of weaving and music as business enterprises, the increase in tourism to Otavalo, the diaspora of Otavalo merchants and musicians around the world, changing social relations at home, the growth of indigenous political power, and current debates within the Otavalo community over preserving cultural identity in the face of globalization and transnational migration. Refuting the belief that contact with the wider world inevitably destroys indigenous societies, Meisch demonstrates that Otavalos are preserving many features of their culture while adopting and adapting modern technologies and practices they find useful.

In this book, Gina Marchetti explores the way this example of Hong Kong's cinematic eclecticism has crossed borders as a story, a commercial product and a work of art; and has had an undeniable impact on current Hong Kong cinema.

The resolutely independent filmmaker Ann On-wah Hui continues to inspire critical acclaim for her sensitive portrayals of numerous Hong Kong tragedies and marginalized populations. In a pioneering career spanning three decades, Hui has been director, producer, writer and actress for more than 30 films. In this work, Audrey Yue analyses a 1990 film considered by many to be one of Hui’s most haunting and poignant works, Song of the Exile. The semi-autobiographical film depicts a daughter’s coming to terms with her mother’s Japanese identity. Themes of cross-cultural alienation, divided loyalties and generational reconciliation resonate strongly amid the migration and displacement pressures surrounding Hong Kong in the early 1990s. Even now, more than a decade after the 1997 Handover, the film is a perennial favourite among returning Hong Kong emigrants and international cinema students. This book examines how Hui challenges the myth of the original home as singular, familial and romantic, and constructs the second home as a new space for Hong Kong modernity. Yue also discusses the teaching of the film in the diaspora, demonstrating its potential as an affective and performative text of transcultural literacy and diasporic negotiations in the cross-cultural classroom.

Anonimo Mexicano is the first publication of the full Nahuatl text and English translation of a rare and important Native history of preconquest Mexico. Written circa 1600 by an anonymous Tlaxcaltecan author, it is an epic account of the settling of central Mexico by Nahua peoples from the northern frontier. They developed a sophisticated culture with powerful city states and an agricultural economy, fought great wars, established dynasties, and recorded their history and legends in painted books. The Mexica became the most powerful of these nations until their conquest by the Spanish with the help of the Tlaxcalteca, who were rivals of the Mexica and whose national origin tale was recorded in Anonimo Mexicano.

Anthropological Linguistics provides a forum for the full range of scholarly study of the languages and cultures of the peoples of the world, especially the native peoples of the Americas. Embracing the field of language and culture broadly defined, the journal includes articles and research reports addressing cultural, historical, and philological aspects of linguistic study, including analyses of texts and discourse; studies of semantic systems and cultural classifications; onomastic studies; ethnohistorical papers that draw significantly on linguistic data; studies of linguistic prehistory and genetic classification, both methodological and substantive; discussions and interpretations of archival material; edited historical documents; and contributions to the history of the field.

Since 1921, Anthropological Quarterly has published scholarly articles, review articles, book reviews, and lists of recently published books in all areas of sociocultural anthropology. Its goal is the rapid dissemination of articles that blend precision with humanism, and scrupulous analysis with meticulous description.