Access your Project MUSE content using one of the login options below Close(X)
Browse Results For:
Archaeologists are unsure exactly when the Maya inhabited the coastal areas of Belize, but ample evidence exists to support an extensive maritime trade network along the coast by A.D. 600 This volume focuses on the maritime trade network sites on Ambergris Caye, Belize where excavations have revealed remnants of very small villages, or camps, along the Caribbean coastline.
Archaeology and the Arts
Known widely in Europe as "interpretive narrative archaeology," the practice of using creative methods to interpret and present current knowledge of the past is gaining popularity in North America. This book is the first compilation of international case studies of the various artistic methods used in this new form of education—one that makes archaeology "come alive" for the nonprofessional. Plays, opera, visual art, stories, poetry, performance dance, music, sculpture, digital imagery—all can effectively communicate archaeological processes and cultural values to public audiences.
The 23 contributors to this volume are a diverse group of archaeologists, educators, and artisans who have direct experience in schools, museums, and at archaeological sites. Citing specific examples, such as the film The English Patient, science fiction mysteries, and hypertext environments, they explain how creative imagination and the power of visual and audio media can personalize, contextualize, and demystify the research process. A 16-page color section illuminates their examples, and an accompanying CD includes relevant videos, music, web sites, and additional color images.
In their Introduction, the editors invoke the ancient muses to inspire the modern presenters and interpreters of archaeological research. They aptly quote George Santayana, from his poem "The Power of Art":
". . . may our hands immortalize the day
When life was sweet, and save from utter death
The sacred past that should not pass away."
John H. Jameson Jr. is an archaeologist and John E. Ehrenhard is Director at the National Park Service's Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee, Florida. Christine A. Finn is research associate at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford in England.
Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography
A major reconstruction of the rituals, cosmology, ideology, and political structures of the prehistoric native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and Southeastern United States.
Art and Archaeology of the Recuay Culture
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
This reissue of Charles Jones's classic investigations of the Mound Builders will be an invaluable resource for archaeologists today.
Long a classic of southeastern archaeology, Charles Jones'sAntiquities of the Southern Indians was a groundbreaking work that linked historic tribes with prehistoric "antiquities." Published in 1873, it predated the work of Cyrus Thomas and Clarence Moore and remains a rich resource for modern scholars.
Jones was a pioneer of archaeology who not only excavated important sites but also related his findings to other sites, to contemporary Indians, and to artifacts from other areas. His work covers all of the southeastern states, from Virginia to Louisiana, and is noted for its insights into the De Soto expedition and the history of the Creek Indians.
Best known for refuting the popular myth of the Mound Builders, Jones proposed a connection between living Native Americans of the 1800s and the prehistoric peoples who had created the Southeast's large earthen mounds. His early research and culture comparisons led to the eventual demise of the Mound Builder myth.
For this reissue of Jones's book, a new introduction by Frank Schnell places Jones's work in the context of his times and relates it to current research in the Southeast. An engagingly written work enhanced by numerous maps and engravings, Antiquities of the Southern Indians will serve today's scholars and fascinate all readers interested in the region's prehistory.
Frank T. Schnell Jr. is an Archaeologist and Historian at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
"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.
"All anthropologists and Plains scholars should have this book, especially geographers and historians, as well as biological and paleoenvironmental scientists. The volume is a good and easy read provindg a fresh perspective on the Plains."—Marcel Kornfeld, Great Plains Research
Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains combines history, anthropology, archaeology, and geography to take a closer look at the relationships between land and people in this unique North American region. Focusing on long-term change, this book considers ethnographic literature, archaeological evidence, and environmental data spanning thousands of years of human presence to understand human perception and construction of landscape. The contributors offer cohesive and synthetic studies emphasizing hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers. Using landscape as both reality and metaphor, Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains explores the different and changing ways that people interacted with place in this transitional zone between the Rocky Mountains and the eastern prairies. The contemporary archaeologists working in this small area have chosen diverse approaches to understand the past and its relationship to the present. Through these ten case studies, this variety is highlighted but leads to a common theme - that the High Plains contains important locales to which people, over generations or millennia, return. Providing both data and theory on a region that has not previously received much attention from archaeologists, especially compared with other regions in North America, this volume is a welcome addition to the literature
The field data and archaeological analysis of the first controlled excavations of the vast "City of the Gods" in central Mexico.
In 1932, the Ethnographical Museum of Sweden sent an archaeological expedition to Mexico under the direction of Sigvald Linné to determine the full extent of this ancient Teotihuacan occupation and to collect exhibit-quality artifacts. Of an estimated 2000-plus residential compounds at Teotihuacan, only 20 apartmentlike structures were excavated at the time. Yet Linné's work revealed residential patterns that have been confirmed later in other locations. Some of the curated objects from the Valley of Mexico and the adjacent state of Puebla are among the most rare and unique artifacts yet found. Another important aspect of this research was that, with the aid of the Museum of Natural History in Washington, Linné's team conducted ethnographic interviews with remnant native Mexican peoples whose culture had not been entirely destroyed by the Conquest, thereby collecting and preserving valuable information for later research.
Sigvald Linné was Professor of Ethnography at the University of Stockholm and Director of the Swedish National Museum of Ethnography until 1969. He published several other books, including The Technique of South American Ceramics. Staffan Brunius is Curator of the Americas at the National Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. George L. Cowgillis Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University and coeditor of The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations.
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
A classic work by three important scholars who document prehistoric human occupation along the lower reaches of the continent's largest river.
The Lower Mississippi Survey was initiated in 1939 as a joint undertaking of three institutions: the School of Geology at Louisiana State University, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard. Fieldwork began in 1940 but was halted during the war years. When fieldwork resumed in 1946, James Ford had joined the American Museum of Natural History, which assumed cosponsorship from LSU. The purpose of the Lower Mississippi Survey (LMS)—a term used to identify both the fieldwork and the resultant volume—was to investigate the northern two-thirds of the alluvial valley of the lower Mississippi River, roughly from the mouth of the Ohio River to Vicksburg. This area covers about 350 miles and had been long regarded as one of the principal hot spots in eastern North American archaeology.
Phillips, Ford, and Griffin surveyed over 12,000 square miles, identified 382 archaeological sites, and analyzed over 350,000 potsherds in order to define ceramic typologies and establish a number of cultural periods. The commitment of these scholars to developing a coherent understanding of the archaeology of the area, as well as their mutual respect for one another, enabled the publication of what is now commonly considered the bible of southeastern archaeology. Originally published in 1951 as volume 25 of the Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, this work has been long out of print.
Because Stephen Williams served for 35 years as director of the LMS at Harvard, succeeding Phillips, and was closely associated with the authors during their lifetimes, his new introduction offers a broad overview of the work's influence and value, placing it in a contemporary context.
"Meant for the expert and informed layman, it sets a standard for archaeological studies."—Journal of the West
"One of the important classics in the field. . . Incredibly influential over the decades. . . . Enhancing this timeless volume, the new edition contains four very useful indexes (general, site descriptors, pottery descriptors, and other artifacts). . . .This book should not be an old tome gathering dust on the shelf, but a resource in constant use for reference and inspiration. Students of archaeology should read it as an example of one of the first great syntheses. Nobody should conduct archaeological research in the Southeast without knowing it."—Journal of Alabama Archaeology
"For anyone who has tried long and hard to find a copy of the original, this reprinted volume is a godsend. . . . To say that this 1951 study is a classic is a major understatement. Not only did the volume set the foundation for much of the research conducted within the LMV since that time, it had a significant imapct upon how that research was (and still is) conducted. Names of many of the periods, cultures, and pottery types (even some pottery varieties) that today are commonly employed across the region owe their genesis to PF&G. . . . No archaeologist working in the LMV, and certainly none within the state of Mississippi, should be without a copy. . . . There is no excuse not to have this study now that it is available again at a reasonable price. If you do not yet have a copy, go get one now! You will be very glad that you did."—Mississippi Archaeology
