"These significant contributions to economic anthropology should encourage comparative cross-cultural diologues and foster new approaches to the study of premodern market exchange... The Garraty & Stark volume is a giant step forward in understanding market systems, market places, and sociocultural and religious parameters that impinge upon the economic structure of preindustrial societies."—Charles C. Kolb, The Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Ancient market activities are dynamic in the economies of most ancient states, yet they have received little research from the archaeological community. Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies is the first book to address the development, change, and organizational complexity of ancient markets from a comparative archaeological perspective. Drawing from historical documents and archaeological records from Mesoamerica, the U.S. Southwest, East Africa, and the Andes, this volume reveals the complexity of ancient marketplace development and economic behavior both in hierarchical and non-hierarchical societies. Highlighting four principal themes-the defining characteristics of market exchange; the recognition of market exchange archaeologically; the relationship among market, political, and other social institutions; and the conditions in which market systems develop and change-the book contains a strong methodological and theoretical focus on market exchange. Diverse contributions from noted scholars show the history of market exchange and other activities to be more dynamic than scholars previously appreciated. Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies will be of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, material-culture theorists, economists, and historians.

Interdisciplinary study of the role of violence in the Mediterranean and Europe. The Archaeology of Violence is an interdisciplinary consideration of the role of violence in social-cultural and sociopolitical contexts. The volume draws on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists, and art historians, all of whom have an interest in understanding the role of violence in their respective specialist fields in the Mediterranean and Europe. The focus is on three themes: contexts of violence, politics and identities of violence, and sanctified violence. In contrast to many past studies of violence, often defined by their subject specialism, or by a specific temporal or geographic focus, this book draws on a wide range of both temporal and spatial examples and offers new perspectives on the study of violence and its role in social and political change. Rather than simply equating violence with warfare, as has been done in many archaeological cases, the volume contends that the focus on warfare has been to the detriment of our understanding of other forms of “non-warfare” violence and has the potential to affect the ways in which violence is recognized and discussed by scholars, and ultimately has repercussions for understanding its role in society.

Arctic Anthropology Edited by Susan Kaplan, Bowdoin College Arctic Anthropology , founded in 1962 by Chester S. Chard, is an international journal devoted to the study of Old and New World northern cultures and peoples. Archeology, ethnology, physical anthropology, and related disciplines are represented, with emphasis on: studies of specific cultures of the arctic, subarctic and contiguous regions of the world; the peopling of the New World, and relationships between New World and Eurasian cultures of the circumpolar zone; contemporary problems and culture change among northern peoples, new directions in interdisciplinary northern research .

A study of a major piece of modern Mayan religious art.

Part ethnography and part historical study, The Artificial Ear is based on interviews with researchers who were pivotal in the early development and implementation of the new technology necessary for cochlear implants. Through an analysis of the scientific and clinical literature, Stuart Blume reconstructs the history of artificial hearing from its conceptual origins in the 1930s, to the first attempt at cochlear implantation in Paris in the 1950s, and to the widespread clinical application of the "bionic ear" since the 1980s.

During the last third of the twentieth century, white supremacists moved, both literally and in the collective imagination, from midnight rides through Mississippi to broadband-wired cabins in Montana. But while rural Montana may be on the geographical fringe of the country, white supremacist groups were not pushed there, and they are far from “fringe elements” of society, as many Americans would like to believe. Evelyn Schlatter’s startling analysis describes how many of the new white supremacist groups in the West have co-opted the region’s mythology and environment based on longstanding beliefs about American character and Manifest Destiny to shape an organic, home-grown movement. Dissatisfied with the urbanized, culturally progressive coasts, disenfranchised by affirmative action and immigration, white supremacists have found new hope in the old ideal of the West as a land of opportunity waiting to be settled by self-reliant traditional families. Some even envision the region as a potential white homeland. Groups such as Aryan Nations, The Order, and Posse Comitatus use controversial issues such as affirmative action, anti-Semitism, immigration, and religion to create sympathy for their extremist views among mainstream whites—while offering a “solution” in the popular conception of the West as a place of freedom, opportunity, and escape from modern society. Aryan Cowboys exposes the exclusionist message of this “American” ideal, while documenting its dangerous appeal.

Drawing from the fields of ethnographic and sociological studies, cultural activism, public health and film studies, this volume poses new and exciting challenges to queer studies and demonstrates the study of Chinese sexuality as an emergent field currently emanating from multiple disciplines. The essays here showcase the work of emerging and established scholars working mostly outside Euro-America and focus on cities including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. This book is one of the first sustained collections on Chinese non-normative sexual subjectivities and contemporary sexual politics published in English. It highlights the various ways in which different individuals and communities––including male sex workers, transsexual subjects, lesbians and Indonesian migrants––negotiate with notions of normativity and modernity, fine-tuned according to the different power structures of each context, and making new and different meanings.

An account of the life of the Ashkenazi Jews in Mexico in this century highlights the intersection of cultural and political international problems, shedding light on the contemporary condition of minorities the world over. In a century full of social dreams and abhorrent calamities, the survival of a small cultural ethnic group is no small story. Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews arrived in Mexico in the early years of this century. The vast majority of these 40,000 Jews live in Mexico City and have done so for most of the eighty years of this communal experiment. Arriving with few resources, the Ashkenazi created a network of organizations to sustain their cultural survival in a country that had its own complex cultural context. This community chose its own survival path; while successful in confronting some issues, it faced problems of identity and social cohesion that mirror contemporary dilemmas everywhere. The author examines the particular exchanges that took place between minority and majority, and reflects on the challenges for multicultural living shaped by pluralism, democracy, and socio-political tolerance.