Anthropology Books

Trade ReviewThis is a timely and accessible text that will be of great use to a range of scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners … Such a text could well spur further studies in non-Western displays and thus encourage a broadening of the discourse on religion in a way that is desperately needed. * Reading Religion *Readers will enjoy the freedom of discussion that is created via the combination of both academic and professional voices … Each individual chapter works as a stand-alone piece, yet there are clear through-lines present in the work as a whole ... This text is also valuable for teaching academics that will find the individual chapters useful for a variety of courses, particularly religious studies, museum studies, and art history. Religion in Museums is a successful volume in that it provides a comprehensive, complex, and exuberant discussion of the numerous forms through which museums and religion come together. * British Association for the Study of Religions Bulletin *This project engages the fascinating--and culturally important--conjunction of the subjects of museums and religion. The book has the potential to address and shape the future of this interdisciplinary discourse through an intriguing conjunction of cultural, scholarly, and curatorial perspectives. * Marcia Brennan, Professor of Art History and Religion, Rice University, USA *This is an exciting and comprehensive study on how museums represent religion and the future prospects. * Ivette Vargas-O’Bryan, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Austin College, USA *Table of ContentsContents List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword, Sally Promey (Professor of Religion and Visual Culture at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, Yale University, USA) Introduction: Religion in Museums, Museums as Religion, Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate Part One: Museum Buildings 1. Museum Architecture and the Sacred: Modes of Engagement, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA) 2. Toward a Theology of the Art Museum, Karla Cavarra Britton (Yale School of Architecture, USA) 3. Native Americans on the National Mall: The Architecture of the Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA), with Douglas Cardinal (Architect, National Museum of the American Indian, USA) and Tim Johnson (National Museum of American History, USA) Part Two: Objects, Museums, Religions 4. The Museumification of Religion: Human Evolution and the Display of Ritual, S. Brent Plate (Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA) 5. Altar as Museum, Museum as Altar: Ethnography, Devotion, and Display, Mary Nooter Roberts (UCLA, USA) 6. Religious History Objects in Museums, Lauren F. Turek (Trinity University in San Antonio, USA) 7. Archaeological Displays: Ancient Objects, Current Beliefs, Chiara Zuanni (University of Manchester, UK) 8. Museums, Religious Objects, and the Flourishing Realm of the Supernatural in Modern Asia, Denis Byrne (Western Sydney University, Australia) Part Three: Responses to Objects, Museums, & Religion 9. Devotional Baggage, Steph Berns (University of Lancaster, UK) 10. Transactional and Experiential Responses to Religious Objects, Graham Howes (Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and a Trustee of the Art and Christianity Enquiry) 11. Museums and the Repatriation of Objects, 1945-2015, Mark O'Neill (Director of Policy, Research and Development at Glasgow Life, UK) 12. The Case for the News Media's Critical Engagement with Museum Religious Exhibits, Menachem Wecker (Art Critic, Chicago, USA) Part Four: Museum Collecting and Research 13. Museum Collection and the History of Interpretation, David Morgan (Professor of Religious Studies, Duke University, USA) 14. Community-led Museums Exploring Religious Life in Canada: Abbotsford's Sikh Heritage Museum and Mennonite Heritage Museum, Matthew Francis (Executive Director, Chilliwack Museum and Archives, Canada) 15. Religious Objects and Conservation: The Changing Impact of Religious Objects on Conservators, Samantha Hamilton (Object Conservator at Museum Victoria; University of Melbourne, Australia) 16. Collecting and Research in the Museum of the History of Religion, Ekaterina Teryukova (Deputy Director for Research Affairs,Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg, Russia) 17. Studying, Teaching and Exhibiting Religion: The Marburg Museum of Religions - (Religionskundliche Sammlung), Konstanze Runge (Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Marburg, Germany) Part Five: Museum Interpretation of Religion and Religious Objects 18. Radical Hospitality: Approaching Religious Understanding in Museums, Amanda Millay Hughes (Duke University Chapel, USA) 19. Islam and Museums: Learning and Outreach, John Reeve (Lecturer in the Department of Art, Design and Museology, UCL, UK) 20. Museums and Religion: Uneasy Companions, Tom Freudenheim ((Smithsonian Institute, USA) 21. Conversing with the Past: First-Person Religion Programming at Colonial Williamsburg, Gretchen Buggeln (Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts, Valparaiso University, USA) 22. Religion in Museums for Families with Children, Christian Carron (The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, USA), Susan Foutz (The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, USA), and Melissa Pederson (The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, USA) 23. Bringing the Sacred into Art Museums, Gary Vikan (The Walters Art Museum, USA) Part Six: Presenting Religion in a Variety of Museums 24. Rich and Varied: Religion in Museums, Crispin Paine (Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, UK) 25. The Museum of Biblical Art: a Worthwhile Experiment, Ena Giurescu Heller (Director of Rollins College Cornell Fine Arts Museum, USA) 26. Missionary Museums, Christopher Wingfield (Senior Curator, Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, UK) 27. Religion at Glencairn Museum: Past, Present, and Future, Ed Gyllenhaal (Curator, Glencairn Museum of Religion, Philadelphia, USA) Afterword: Looking to the Future of Religion in Museums, Gretchen Buggeln, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate Index

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Book SynopsisIt has been twelve years since a work relating to the long-tailed African monkeys known as the guenons has been published and fifteen years have passed since the last major scientific symposium was held that was solely dedicated to current research on members of this monkey group living in the wild. Since that time, new guenon species and subspecies have been discovered, previously unstudied guenon species have become the subject of long-term research projects, and knowledge of the more well-known guenon species has greatly increased. This volume presents novel information and keen insight on research previously studied and newly discovered. A wide range of topics related to guenon biology is presented, including evolution, taxonomy, biogeography, reproductive physiology, social and positional behavior, ecology, and conservation. Composed of 26 chapters compiled by 47 authors, maTrade Review`The Guenons is encyclopedic in its coverage of this remarkably diverse group of primates. From chapters on evolutionary history, behavior, ecology, and conservation, The Guenons also offers a window into the world of primatology, as seen through the lenses of these monkeys and the researchers who study them. Glenn and Cords should be commended for assembling such an impressive set of contributions from so many guenon experts. This volume will be the standard reference on the guenons for many years to come.' Karen B. Strier, University of Wisconsin-Madison `This book is a cornucopia of recently-gathered knowledge about the natural history of Africas most species-rich group of anthropoids. The volume is particularly strong on behavioral ecology, but it also presents important new evolutionary analyses and, in a useful section on conservation, makes practical suggestions to address the growing threats posed to the survival of African primates by ever-increasing habitat loss and hunting.' John F. Oates, Hunter College `Guenons are one of the most specifically diverse groups of living primates, but the true extent of their behavioral, ecological, and phylogenetic diversity has remained largely unappreciated. This exciting volume describes many new aspects of guenon biology. The authors use the diversity of guenons to address, and often question, several major tenets of primate socioecology. Most significantly, this volume thoroughly demolishes the view that guenons are a uniform radiation.' John G. Fleagle, State University of New York at Stony Brook `A comprehensive and valuable collection and an essential reference for any primatologists. Highly recommended.' L. Swedell, CUNY Queens College in Choice, November 2003 Table of ContentsList of Contributors. Preface. Part I: Evolutionary Biology and Biogeography. 1. The Guenons: An Overview of Taxonomy and Diversity; T.M. Butynski. 2. Y-chromosomal Window onto the History of Terrestrial Adaptation in the Cercopithecini; A.J. Tosi, et al. 3. Molecular Timescale and Gene Tree Incongruence in the Guenons; T. Disotell, R. Raaum. 4. Phylogeny of the Cercopithecus lhoesti Group Revisited: Combining Multiple Character sets; J.-P. Gautier, et al. 5. Terrestriality and the Maintenance of the Disjunct Geographical Distribution in the lhoesti group; B. Kaplin. 6. A Biogeographical Analysis of Central African Guenons; M. Colyn, P. Deleporte. 7. Hybridization Between Red-tailed Monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius) and Blue Monkeys (C. mitis) in East African forests; K. Detwiler. 8. Genetic Study of Translocated Guenons: Cercopithecus mona on Grenada; K.A. Horsburgh, et al. Part II: Behavior. 9. Diversity of Guenon Positional Behavior; W.S. McGraw. 10. Unique Behavior of Mona Monkeys, Cercopithecus mona: All-male Groups and Copulation Calls; M.E. Glenn, et al. 11. Group Fission in Red-tailed Guenons (Cercopithecus ascanius) in the Kibale National Park, Uganda; T. Windfelder, J.S. Lwanga. 12. Interindividual Proximity and Surveillance of Associates in Comparative Perspective; A. Treves, P. Baguma. 13. Why Vervets (Cercopithecus aethiops) Live in Multi-male Groups; L.A. Isbell, et al. 14. When are There Influxes in Blue Monkey Groups? M. Cords. 15. Costs and Benefits of Alternative Mating Strategies in Samango Monkey Males; M.C. Macleod, et al. 16. Female Reproductive Endocrinology in Wild Blue Monkeys: a Preliminary Assessment and Discussion of Potential Adaptive Functions; K. Pazol, et al. 17. Grooming and Social Cohesion in Patas Monkeys and Other Female-bonded Guenons; J. Chism, W. Rogers. 18. Development of Mother-infant Relationships and Infant Behavior in Wild Blue Monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis); S. Förster, M. Cords. 19. Influence of Foraging Adaptations on Play Activity in Red-tailed and Blue Monkeys with Comparisons to Colobus Monkey; E.A. Worch. 20. Effects of Natural and Sexual Selection on the Evolution of Guenon Loud Calls; K. Zuberbühler. Part III: Ecology. 21. Resource Switching in Guenons: a Community Analysis of Dietary Flexiblity; J. Lambert. 22. Variation in the Diet of Cercopithecus species: Differences Within Forests, Among Forests and Across Species; C.A. Chapman, et al. 23. Diet of the Roloway Monkey, Cercopithecus diana roloway, in Bia National Park, Ghana; S. Hunt Curtin. Part IV: Conservation. 24. Conservation of Fragmented Populations of Cercopithecus mitis in South Africa: the Role of Reintroduction, Corridors and Metapopulation Ecology; M.J. Lawes. 25. Assessing Extinction Risk in Cercopithecus monkeys; T. Ukizintambara, C. Thebaud. 26. Conservation of the Guenons: An Overview of Status, Threats, and Recommendations; T.M. Butynski. Editors' Conclusion. Literature Cited. Index.

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Book SynopsisPreface and acknowledgments.- Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, and Cameron Anderson.- Part I. Theoretical Perspectives: The Nature of Social Status and Hierarchy.- Chapter 1.Toward a unified science of hierarchy: Dominance and prestige are two fundamental pathways to human social rank Joey T. Cheng and Jessica L. Tracy.- Chapter 2. Prestige and the ongoing process of culture revision Jerome H. Barkow Chapter 3. Do status hierarchies benefit groups? A bounded functionalist account of status Cameron Anderson and Robb Willer.- Chapter 4. What's in a name? Status, power, and other forms of social hierarchy Steven L. Blader and Ya-Ru Chen.- Part II. Who Leads? Psychological Underpinnings of Status Attainment.- Chapter 5. Personality and status attainment:  A Micropolitics perspective.- Cameron Anderson and Jon Cowan.- Chapter 6.The status-size hypothesis: How cues of physical size and social status influence eacTable of ContentsFront Matter Preface and acknowledgments Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, and Cameron Anderson Part I. Theoretical Perspectives: The Nature of Social Status and Hierarchy Chapter 1. Toward a unified science of hierarchy: Dominance and prestige are two fundamental pathways to human social rank Joey T. Cheng and Jessica L. Tracy Chapter 2. Prestige and the ongoing process of culture revision Jerome H. Barkow Chapter 3. Do status hierarchies benefit groups? A bounded functionalist account of status Cameron Anderson and Robb Willer Chapter 4. What’s in a name? Status, power, and other forms of social hierarchy Steven L. Blader and Ya-Ru Chen Part II. Who Leads? Psychological Underpinnings of Status Attainment Chapter 5. Personality and status attainment: A Micropolitics perspective Cameron Anderson and Jon Cowan Chapter 6. The status-size hypothesis: How cues of physical size and social status influence each other Nancy M. Blaker and Mark van Vugt Chapter 7. Prosocial behavior and social status Sara Kafashan, Adam Sparks, Vladas Griskevicius, and Pat Barclay Chapter 8. The pursuit of status: A self-presentational perspective on the quest for social value Mark R. Leary, Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno, and Kate J. Diebels Chapter 9. The roots and fruits of social status in small-scale human societies Christopher von Rueden Chapter 10. The emotional underpinnings of social status Conor M. Steckler and Jessica L. TracyPart III. Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Consequences of Status Chapter 11. Decision-making at the top: Benefits and barriers Nathanael J. Fast and Priyanka D. Joshi Chapter 12. Social categories create and reflect inequality: Psychological and sociological insights Michael S. North and Susan T. FiskePart IV. How is Status Manifested in the Body? Chapter 13. Hormones and hierarchies Erik L. Knight and Pranjal H. Mehta Chapter 14. Neural basis of social status hierarchy Narun Pornpattananangkul, Caroline F. Zink, Joan Y. Chiao Chapter 15. Nonverbal communication and the vertical dimension of social relations Judith A. Hall, Ioana-Maria Latu, Dana R. Carney, Marianne Schmid Mast Part V. Methodology Chapter 16. The assessment of social status: A review of measures and experimental manipulations Joey T. Cheng, Aaron C. Weidman, and Jessica L. Tracy

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Book SynopsisThe Emerging Contours of the Medium explores a crucial aspect of media thinking, focusing particularly on the mediality' of literature, a medium that remains today on the margins of the theoretical discussion of media. The book was written by a collective of authors based in the Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic. Even though interest in the technological and media aspects of literature has been slowly building momentum in the past several decades, from comparative perspectives to written culture to new media, the concept of the medium has not informed this process, and its systematic integration into literary studies has never been effectively carried out. Nor has the specific mediality of literature been successfully integrated into the general concept of media/lity in media science. Contributors to this work provide both an explanation of and solution to this mutual blindness, setting out from the question: What are the conditions for elaborati

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Book SynopsisAnthropologists have long argued that the old 19th-century racial paradigm of four or five races (i.e., Black, White, Asian, Malay, and Native American) is not scientifically valid. In a biological sense, there are no such things as races. Contemporary humans are, and have always been, one species, with roots in Africa. There are no subspecies of humans. Yet this idea seems to contradict the experiences of many people in the United States and other countries where racial classification is used daily, by individuals and institutions. Race still matters, whether in wealth accumulation, educational achievement, health, the legal system, or in personal safety. How can race not be real when we experience its effects every day?Mukhopadhyay, Moses, and Henze systematically deconstruct the myth of race as biology and address the reality of race as a cultural invention, drawing on both biocultural and cross-cultural perspectives. In so doing, they shed light on the intricate, dynamic interplay among race, culture, and biology. Part I, The Fallacy of Race as Biology, unravels, chapter by chapter, the myth that races are biologically valid divisions of humanity. Part II, Culture Creates Race, explores in detail the concept of race as a social construction. Part III, Racial and Hot-Button Issues, takes everyday realities and uses them as a starting point for uncovering the way racial ideologies work in these settings.

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Book SynopsisThis stimulating and timely collection examines the Taino revival movement, a grassroots conglomeration of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos who promote or have adopted the culture and pedigree of the pre-Columbian Taino Indian population of Puerto Rico and the western Caribbean. The Tainos became a symbol of Puerto Rican identity in the 19th century, when local governments and intellectuals began to appropriate the Tainos for the conception of a socially and racially balanced Puerto Rican society. Modern critics now claim that the Taino heritage has been canonized through state-sponsored institutions, such as festivals, museums, and textbooks, at the expense of blacks. In the past, officials, alarmed at the black majorities on other the Caribbean Islands, tried to ""whiten"" Puerto Rican society by calling all people of color Tainos. Others complain that the Taino revival lost its fervor, evolving from an anti-colonialist movement to a mere fashionable trend.

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Book SynopsisHow do we understand and respond to the pressing health problems of modern society? Conventional practice focuses on the assessment and clinical treatment of immediate health issues presented by individual patients. In contrast, social medicine advocates an equal focus on the assessment and social treatment of underlying social conditions, such as environmental factors, structural violence, and social injustice.Social Justice and Medical Practice examines the practice of social medicine through extensive life history interviews with a physician practicing the approach in marginalized communities. It presents a case example of social medicine in action, demonstrating how such a practice can be successfully pursued within the context of the existing structure of twenty-first-century medicine. In examining the experience of a physician on the frontlines of reforming health care, the book critiques the restrictive nature of the dominant clinical model of medicine and argues for a radically expanded focus for modern-day medical practice.Social Justice and Medical Practice is a timely intervention at a time when even advanced health care systems are facing multiple crises. Lucidly written, it presents a striking alternative and is important reading for students and practitioners of medicine and anthropology, as well as policy makers.Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Road Less Taken 1. Alternatives in Medical Practice and their Social and Personal Implications 2. The Social Construction of Disease Conception and Treatment in Biomedicine 3. Being a Person, Becoming a Doctor 4. Inside the Beast: An Engaged Physician and Modern Medical Institutions 5. Struggling for Health Equity from the Inner City to Rural Farms 6. Putting People First: Envisioning a Healthy Society

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Book SynopsisSamina Hadi-Tabassum is associate professor at Erikson Institute in Chicago.Persis Driver is assistant professor of psychology at Dominican University, Illinois.

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Book SynopsisDr. Nayantara Sheoran Appleton is a Senior Lecturer at the interdisciplinary School of Science in Society, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Trained as a feminist medical anthropologist and STS Scholar (with a PhD in cultural studies) she has co-edited (w/Bennett) Methods, Moments, and Ethnographic Spaces in Asia (2021) and (w/ Van Hollen) A Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology (2023). Most recently, in light of COVID-19, she has been working collaboratively to research and write over a dozen articles about the experiences withing diverse communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is part of a collaboration that has been thinking and writing about COVID-19 since its very start and the collaboration is called CARUL (Care And Responsibility Under Lockdown). She has also individually written about the bubble' in NZ as new public health vocabulary and looking away' in India as a complex COVID-19 reality. She has published in leading academic journals (Anthropology and Medicine, American Anthropologist, Economic and Political Weekly, to list but three) and non-academic public facing news platforms (The Hindu, The Wire, The Citizen, again, to just list three). She serves on numerous academic publishing/journal editorial boards, including Science, Technology, and Human Value (STHV). She is also the recipient of the New Zealand Royal Society's Marden Fast Start grant (2023) which is focused on researching the Social Lives of Sex Hormones: Our Hormones, Our Selves in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Book SynopsisMohammad Zaman is an international development/resettlement specialist and advisory professor in the National Research Center for Resettlement (NRCR) at Hohai University, Nanjing, China. He is editor of Resettlement News, the only newsletter in the resettlement field.

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Book SynopsisFranz Boas in Translation is the ultimate study of the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas and his work on the American Northwest. This groundbreaking study analyses what Boas did with local Native American legends passed down by the region's tribal groups. Three translations, originally published in 1888 and 1895, are presented here and constitute Boas's early attempts to define the cultural history of Pacific Northwest tribes. Using definitive plots, details, and incidents from a large collection of myths, comparative myths from other indigenous cultures, and a statistical method of multivariant analysis, Boas not only defined the historical relations of the regional tribes but also the role of diffusion in those relations.

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Book SynopsisThe issue of African migration since the Covid-19 pandemic depended on novel influences and determinants. The chapters in this edited volume evaluate recent variables that instigated the migration of Africans and assess implications for Africans, Africans in diaspora, and their global reverberations. The volume unites well-researched and theoretically informed empirical studies constructed on qualitative research methodologies. To project significant social science and humanities voices, the book's chapters reinforce theory-building rather than assumptions derived from arm-chair theorizing, journalistic presentations, and subjective personal views. The issue of African migration is fundamentally a matter of human modeling and therefore is never static. As this unique new volume demonstrates, it is consistently value-laden and reminiscent of "politics as an art.

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Book SynopsisThis book offered to the reader's attention is an ethnographic study devoted to the traditional pottery of Yakutia. The author, A. A. Savvin, collected materials for the book during field research in 1939–1941, when ceramic tableware had largely already lost its former role in the household way of the Yakuts. But the skills for its manufacture were still preserved in certain localities. Savvin managed to document the last "living" evidence of a craft that had a centuries-old history and established traditions. It is noteworthy that the research conducted by Savvin was a scientific project in the modern sense of the term. It was carefully planned and executed in accordance with a pre-written program, which is also included in this edition. The sources of information were not only direct observations of the working processes of the production of ceramic tableware but also conversations-interviews with potters, memoirs of representatives of the older generation. A special layer of research consisted of materials of folklore, folk beliefs, and customs related to pottery.

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Book SynopsisThis volume contains five chapters that present highly original research on Siberia's unique history by five Russian scholars. The volume is edited by Prof. Elena A. Okladnikova, a faculty member of the Herzen State Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg, Russia. The articles include discussions of seafaring along the Siberian coast, ethnolinguistic considerations, the worldview of inner Asian nomads, and ethnocultural understandings of civilization crossroads.

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Book SynopsisThe unique and diverse hair and eye colours often found in northern and eastern Europe are relatively new and have emerged over a short span of evolutionary time—less than ten thousand years. Why? How? This work explores the latest science to answer these puzzling questions.

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Book SynopsisThis volume integrates data from researchers in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology to explain when and why group-targeted violence occurs. Massacres have plagued both ancient and modern societies, and by analyzing skeletal remains from these events within their broader cultural and historical contexts this volume opens up important new understandings of the underlying social processes that continue to lead to these tragedies.In case studies that include Crow Creek in South Dakota, Khmer Rouge–era Cambodia, the Peruvian Andes, and northern Uganda, contributors demonstrate that massacres are a process?a nonrandom pattern of events that precede the acts of violence and continue long afterward. They also show how massacres have varying aims and are driven by culture-specific forces and logic, ranging from small events to cases of genocide. Many of these studies examine bones found in mass graves, while others focus on victims whose bodies have never been buried. Notably, the volume expands widely held definitions of massacres to include structural violence, featuring the radical argument that the large-scale death of undocumented migrants in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert should be viewed as an extended massacre.This volume is the first to focus exclusively on massacres as a unique form of violence. Its interdisciplinary approach illuminates similarities in human behavior across time and space, provides methods for identifying killings as massacres, and helps today’s societies learn from patterns of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen.

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Book SynopsisPresenting the most current research and thinking on prehistoric archaeology in the Southeast, this volume reexamines some of Florida’s most important Paleoindian sites and discusses emerging technologies and methods that are necessary knowledge for archaeologists working in the region today.Using new analytical methods, contributors explore fresh perspectives on sites including Old Vero, Guest Mammoth, Page-Ladson, and Ray Hole Spring. They discuss the role of hydrology?rivers, springs, and coastal plain drainages?in the history of Florida’s earliest inhabitants. They address both the research challenges and the unique preservation capacity of the state’s many underwater sites, suggesting solutions for analyzing corroded lithic artifacts and submerged midden deposits. Looking towards future research, archaeologists discuss strategies for finding additional pre-Clovis and Clovis-era sites offshore on the southeastern continental shelf. The search is important, these essays show, because Florida’s prehistoric sites hold critical data for the debate over the nature and timing of the first human colonization of the Western Hemisphere.A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

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Book SynopsisFor thousands of years, the inhabitants of the Middle Cumberland River Valley harvested shellfish for food and raw materials then deposited the remains in dense concentrations along the river. Very little research has been published on the Archaic period shell mounds in this region. Demonstrating that nearly forty such sites exist, this volume presents the results of recent surveys, excavations, and laboratory work as well as fresh examinations of past investigations that have been difficult for scholars to access. In these essays, contributors describe an emergency riverbank survey of shell-bearing sites that were discovered, reopened, or damaged in the aftermath of recent flooding. Their studies of these sites feature stratigraphic analysis, radiocarbon dating, zooarchaeological data, and other interpretive methods. Other essays in the volume provide the first widely accessible summary of previous work on sites that have long been known. Contributors also address larger topics such as GIS analysis of settlement patterns, research biases, and current debates about the purpose of shell mounds. This volume provides an enormous amount of valuable data from the abundant material record of a fascinating people, place, and time. It is a landmark synthesis that will improve our understanding of the individual communities and broader cultures that created shell mounds across the southeastern United States.A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series.

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Book SynopsisFrontiers and territorial borders are places of contested power where societies collide, interact, and interconnect. Using bioanthropological case studies from around the world, this volume explores how people in the past created, maintained, or changed their identities while living on the edge between two or more different spheres of influence. Essays in this volume examine borderland settings in cultural contexts that include Roman Egypt, Iron Age Italy, eleventh-century Iceland, and the precontact American Great Basin and Southwest. Contributors look at isotope data, skeletal stress markers, craniometric and dental metric information, mortuary arrangements, and other evidence to examine how frontier life can affect health and socioeconomic status. Illustrating the many meanings and definitions of frontiers and borderlands, they question assumptions about the relationships between people, place, and identity. As national borders continue to ignite controversy in today’s society and politics, the research presented here is more important than ever. The long history of people who have lived in borderland areas helps us understand the challenges of adapting to these dynamic and often violent places. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer LarsenTrade Review“Richly theorized and methodologically rigorous, this volume delivers a timely and nuanced discussion of frontiers and borderlands not merely as the peripheries of complex societies but as their own complex and dynamic spaces of interaction and lived experience.” ―Bethany L. Turner, Georgia State University“The subject of boundaries and frontiers has not been explored in bioarchaeological studies to its full potential. In this volume, contributors discuss boundaries from multiple perspectives that crosscut political, social, and economic domains.” ―Dale L. Hutchinson, author of Disease and Discrimination: Poverty and Pestilence in Colonial Atlantic America

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Book SynopsisThis volume highlights new directions in the study of social identities in past populations. Building on the field-defining research in Bioarchaeology and Identity in the Americas, contributors expand the scope of the subject regionally, theoretically, and methodologically. This collection moves beyond the previous focus on single aspects of identity by demonstrating multi-scalar approaches and by explicitly addressing intersectionality in the archaeological record.Case studies in this volume come from both New World and Old World settings, including sites in North America, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. The communities investigated range from early Holocene hunter-gatherers to nineteenth-century urban poor. Contributors broaden the concept of identity to include disability or health status, age, social class, religion, occupation, and communal and familial identities. In addition to combining bioarchaeological data with oral history and material artifacts, they use new methods including social network analysis and more humanistic approaches in osteobiography. Bioarchaeology and Identity Revisited offers updated ways of conceptualizing identity across time and space.A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

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