This volume provides a forum for debate between varied approaches to the past. The authors, drawn from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, represent many different strands of archaeology. They address the philosophical issues involved in interpretation and a desire among archaeologists to come to terms with their own subjective approaches to the material they study, a recognition of how past researchers have also imposed their own value systems on the evidence which they presented...

Performances in the premodern communities shaped identities, created meanings, generated and maintained political control. But unlike other social scientists, archaeologists have not worked much with these concepts. Archaeology of Performance shows how the notions of theatricality and spectacle are as important economics and politics in understanding how ancient communities work. Without sacrificing conceptual rigor, the contributors draw on the wide-ranging literature on performance. With...

In this edition of Them Days, look back at the linerboard operations, early woods initiatives and practices, through a sample of the songs and stories that arose from them. This audiobook was created in partnership with Them Days Magazine and Archive (Labrador) and the Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place (Memorial University), with generous funding from Memorial University. Special thanks to Aimee Chaulk (Them Days Magazine and Archive) and the Faculty of Education at ...

This unique and fascinating book concentrates on the varying roles and functions that material culture may play in almost all aspects of the social fabric of a given culture. The contributors, from Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea, India, South America, the USA, and both Eastern and Western Europe, provide a rich variety of views and experience in a worldwide perspective. Several of the authors focus on essential points of principle and methodology that must be carefully considered b...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocen...

Political authority contains an inherent contradiction. Rulers must reinforce social inequality and bolster their own unique position at the top of the sociopolitical hierarchy, yet simultaneously emphasize social similarities and the commonalities shared by all. Political Strategies in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica explores the different and complex ways that those who exercised authority in the region confronted this contradiction.New data from a variety of well-known schola...

Political Landscapes of Capital Cities investigates the processes of transformation of the natural landscape into the culturally constructed and ideologically defined political environments of capital cities. In this spatially inclusive, socially dynamic interpretation, an interdisciplinary group of authors including archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians uses the methodology put forth in Adam T. Smith’s The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Earl...

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the role of interregional interaction in the dynamic sociocultural processes that shaped the pre-Columbian societies of Mesoamerica. Interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars investigate linguistic exchange and borrowing, scribal practices, settlement patterns, ceramics, iconography, and trade systems, presenting a variety of case studies drawn from multiple spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts within Mesoam...

This authoritative guide offers readers a comprehensive look into the world of anthropology and its related sciences. The book covers the essential areas of the field, including its history. The major branches of the field are also discussed, including cultural and social anthropology as well as archaeology. It also explores the study of the discipline around the world through urban, medical, and applied anthropology. This is a perfect resource for anyone interested in world cultures and t...

Rituals of the Past explores the various approaches archaeologists use to identify ritual in the material record and discusses the influence ritual had on the formation, reproduction, and transformation of community life in past Andean societies. A diverse group of established and rising scholars from across the globe investigates how ritual influenced, permeated, and altered political authority, economic production, shamanic practice, landscape cognition, and religion in the Ande...

The language we use forms an important part of our sense of who we are - of our identity. This book outlines the relationship between our identity as members of groups - ethnic, national, religious and gender - and the language varieties important to each group. What is a language? What is a dialect? Are there such things as language 'rights'? Must every national group have its own unique language? How have languages, large and small, been used to spread religious ideas? Why have particula...

Landscape is a stimulating introduction to and contemporary understanding of one of the most important concepts within human geography. A series of different influential readings of landscape are debated and explored, and, for the first time, distinctive traditions of landscape writing are brought together and examined as a whole, in a forward-looking critical review of work by cultural geographers and others within the last twenty to thirty years. This book clearly and concisely ...