Download or read book Mesoamerican Osteobiographies written by Gabriel D. Wrobel and published by University of Florida Press. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bioarchaeology of Pre Columbian Mesoamerica written by Cathy Willermet and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a novel interdisciplinary view of the migration, mobility, ethnicity, and social identities of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples. In studies that combine bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, isotope data, and dental morphology, contributors demonstrate the challenges and rewards of such integrative work when applied to large regional questions of population history. The essays in this volume are the results of fieldwork in Honduras, Belize, and a variety of sites in Mexico. One chapter uses dental health data and burial rituals to investigate the social status of sacrificial victims during the Late Classic period. Another analyzes skeletal remains from multiple research perspectives to explore the immigrant makeup of the multiethnic city of Copan. Contributors also use strontium and oxygen isotope data from tooth enamel and dental morphological traits to test hypotheses about migration, and they incorporate ethnohistorical sources in an examination of ancient Maya understandings of belonging and otherness. Revealing how complementary fields of study can together create a better understanding of the complex forces that impact population movements, this volume provides an inspiring picture of the exciting collaborative work currently under way among researchers in the region. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen
Download or read book Cuban Archaeology in the Caribbean written by Ivan Roksandic and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Changes the conversation about Cuban archaeology as a whole, presenting groundbreaking data and interpretations that will be useful for prehistoric and historical archaeologists working the region."--Samuel M. Wilson, author of The Archaeology of the Caribbean "Presents a collection of essays that will tremendously facilitate the linkage of issues in Cuban archaeology with the rest of the Caribbean and surrounding areas."--Peter E. Siegel, coeditor of Protecting Heritage in the Caribbean As the largest--and most centrally located--island of the Caribbean, Cuba has seen successive waves of migration to its shores. Its early colonization, and that of the Greater Antilles, is complicated by population movements within the Circum-Caribbean. In this volume, Ivan Roksandic and an international team of researchers present a new theory of mainland migration into the Caribbean. Through analysis of early agriculture, burial customs, dental modification, pottery production, and dietary patterns, the contributors enable a very close look at the lifeways and challenges of the native populations. They decipher patterns of movement between the islands and present-day Mexico and Central America and explore the interactions between the islands’ inhabitants, including the fate of indigenous groups after European contact. Together the essays produce a view of the early Caribbean that is rich with dynamic networks of exchange and matrixes of cultural influences, more intricate and multilinear than previously believed. With contributions from archaeology, physical anthropology, environmental archaeology, paleobotany, linguistics, and ethnohistory, this volume adds to ongoing debates concerning migration and colonization. It examines the importance of landscape and seascape in shaping human experience; the role that contact and interaction between different groups play in building identity; and the contribution of native groups to the biological and cultural identity of postcontact and modern societies. Ivan Roksandic, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Linguistics Program at the University of Winnipeg, is the author of The Ouroboros Seizes Its Tale: Strategies of Mythopoeia in Narrative Fiction. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Download or read book The Market for Mesoamerica written by Cara G. Tremain and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pre-Columbian artifacts are among the most popular items on the international antiquities market, yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor these items as public, private, and digital sales proliferate. This timely volume explores past, current, and future policies and trends concerning the sales and illicit movement of artifacts from Mesoamerica to museums and private collections. Informed by the fields of anthropology, economics, law, and criminology, contributors critically analyze practices of research and collecting in Central American countries. They assess the circulation of looted and forged artifacts on the art market and in museums and examine government and institutional policies aimed at fighting trafficking. They also ask if and how scholars can use materials removed from their context to interpret the past. The theft of cultural heritage items from their places of origin is a topic of intense contemporary discussion, and The Market for Mesoamerica updates our knowledge of this issue by presenting undocumented and illicit antiquities within a regional and global context. Through discussion of transparency, accountability, and ethical practice, this volume ultimately considers how antiquities can be protected and studied through effective policy and professional practice. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Download or read book Archaeologies of Indigenous Presence written by Tsim D. Schneider and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting collaborative archaeological research that centers the enduring histories of Native peoples in North America Challenging narratives of Indigenous cultural loss and disappearance that are still prevalent in the archaeological study of colonization, this book highlights collaborative research and efforts to center the enduring histories of Native peoples in North America through case studies from several regions across the continent. The contributors to this volume, including Indigenous scholars and Tribal resource managers, examine different ways that archaeologists can center long-term Indigenous presence in the practices of fieldwork, laboratory analysis, scholarly communication, and public interpretation. These conversations range from ways to reframe colonial encounters in light of Indigenous persistence to the practicalities of identifying poorly documented sites dating to the late nineteenth century. In recognizing Indigenous presence in the centuries after 1492, this volume counters continued patterns of unknowing in archaeology and offers new perspectives on decolonizing the field. These essays show how this approach can help expose silenced histories, modeling research practices that acknowledge Tribes as living entities with their own rights, interests, and epistemologies. Contributors: Heather Walder | Sarah E. Cowie | Peter A Nelson | Shawn Steinmetz | Nick Tipon | Lee M Panich | Tsim D Schneider | Maureen Mahoney | Matthew A. Beaudoin | Nicholas Laluk | Kurt A. Jordan | Kathleen L. Hull | Laura L. Scheiber | Sarah Trabert | Paul N. Backhouse | Diane L. Teeman | Dave Scheidecker | Catherine Dickson | Hannah Russell | Ian Kretzler
Download or read book The Archaeology of the Logging Industry written by John G. Franzen and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American lumber industry helped fuel westward expansion and industrial development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, building logging camps and sawmills—and abandoning them once the trees ran out. In this book, John Franzen surveys archaeological studies of logging sites across the nation, explaining how material evidence found at these locations illustrates key aspects of the American experience during this era. Franzen delves into the technologies used in cutting and processing logs, the environmental impacts of harvesting timber, the daily life of workers and their families, and the social organization of logging communities. He highlights important trends, such as increasing mechanization and standardization, and changes in working and living conditions, especially the food and housing provided by employers. Throughout these studies, which range from Michigan to California, the book provides access to information from unpublished studies not readily available to most researchers. The Archaeology of the Logging Industry also shows that when archaeologists turn their attention to the recent past, the discipline can be relevant to today’s ecological crises. By creating awareness of the environmental deterioration caused by industrial-scale logging during what some are calling the Anthropocene, archaeology supports the hope that with adequate time for recovery and better global-scale stewardship, the human use of forests might become sustainable. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney
Download or read book Imperiled Reef written by Sandy Sheehy and published by University of Florida Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings alive the richly diverse world of an underwater paradise, the second largest coral structure on the planet: the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.
Download or read book Massacres written by Cheryl P. Anderson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 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, the Tennessee River Valley, 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 that 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, they also expand 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 is the first volume 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. Contributors: Cheryl P. Anderson | Cate E. Bird | William E. De Vore | David H. Dye | Julie M. Fleischman | Julia R. Hanebrink | Ryan P. Harrod | Keith P. Jacobi | Ashley E. Kendell | Krista E. Latham | Justin Maiers | Debra L. Martin | Alyson O’Daniel | Anna J. Osterholtz | Marin A. Pilloud | His Excellency Sonnara Prak | Tricia Redeker Hepner | Sophearavy Ros | Al W. Schwitalla | Dawnie Wolfe Steadman | J. Marla Toyne | Vuthy Voeun | P. Willey A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen
Download or read book Reading the Bones written by Elizabeth Weiss and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can bones tell us about past lives? Do different bone shapes, sizes, and injuries reveal more about people's genes or about their environments? Reading the Bones tackles this question, guiding readers through one of the most hotly debated topics in bioarchaeology. Elizabeth Weiss assembles evidence from anthropological work, medical and sports studies, occupational studies, genetic twin studies, and animal research. Examining the most commonly utilized activity pattern indicators in the field, she reevaluates the age-old question of genes versus environment. While cross-sectional geometries frequently inform on mobility, Weiss asks whether these measures may also be influenced by climate-driven body shape adaptions. Entheseal changes—at the locations of muscle attachments—and osteoarthritis indicate wear and tear on joints but are also among the best predictors of age and can be used to reconstruct activity patterns. Weiss also examines the most common stress fractures, such as spondylolysis and clay-shoveler's fracture; stress hernias or Schmorl's nodes; and activity indicator facets like Poirier's facets, Allen's facets, and Baastrup's kissing spines. Probing deeper into the complex factors that result in the varying anomalies of the human skeleton, this thorough survey of activity indicators in bones helps us understand which markers are mainly due to human biology and which are truly useful in reconstructing lifestyle patterns of the past.
Download or read book Archaeology on the Threshold written by Joseph D. Wardle and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on transitions in human history This book is about transitional periods of cultural and environmental change as seen through the lenses of archaeology and ethnography. Incorporating data from across six continents and tracing the human experience from the Late Pleistocene to the present, these chapters offer a global comparative perspective on transitional states. Questions of causality are considered, as are hypotheses about the processes of cultural change. Archaeology on the Threshold focuses on major transitions such as the shift from foraging to agriculture, the adoption of new technologies, the emergence of large-scale societies, the transition from egalitarian to inegalitarian leadership, and changes that occur in socioeconomic and ideological systems as a result of climate change and disease. Theoretical approaches range from processual to postprocessual, humanistic, and interpretive. Methodologies include ethnoarchaeology, the use of ethnographic analogy, cross-cultural comparisons and large-scale data approaches, oral history, the historical record, participant observation, and focus group discussions. Challenging archaeologists to query long-held assumptions and theoretical positions, this volume aims to refocus inquiry into change-causing and larger evolutionary processes to problematize notions of revolutionary, irrevocable change. These case studies examine and shed light on assumptions regarding the linearity and oscillations of adaptations, with intriguing implications for archaeological inferences.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Abundance written by Kristina M. Gill and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-01-23 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The islands of Alta and Baja California changed dramatically in the centuries after Spanish colonists arrived. Native populations were decimated by disease, and their lives were altered through forced assimilation and the cessation of traditional foraging practices. Overgrazing, overfishing, and the introduction of nonnative species depleted natural resources severely. Most scientists have assumed the islands were also relatively marginal for human habitation before European contact, but An Archaeology of Abundance reassesses this long-held belief, analyzing new lines of evidence suggesting that the California islands were rich in resources important to human populations. Contributors examine data from Paleocoastal to historic times that suggest the islands were optimal habitats that provided a variety of foods, fresh water, minerals, and fuels for the people living there. Botanical remains from these sites, together with the modern resurgence of plant communities after the removal of livestock, challenge theories that plant foods had to be imported for survival. Geoarchaeological surveys show that the islands had a variety of materials for making stone tools, and zooarchaeological data show that marine resources were abundant and that the translocation of plants and animals from the mainland further enhanced an already rich resource base. Studies of extensive exchange, underwater forests of edible seaweeds, and high island population densities also support the case for abundance on the islands. Concluding that the California islands were not marginal environments for early humans, the discoveries presented in this volume hold significant implications for reassessing the ancient history of islands around the world that have undergone similar ecological transformations. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson
Download or read book A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism written by Megan C. Kassabaum and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a temporally and geographically broad yet detailed history of an important form of Native American architecture, the platform mound. While the variation in these earthen monuments across the eastern United States has sparked much debate among archaeologists, this landmark study reveals unexpected continuities in moundbuilding over many thousands of years. In A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism, Megan Kassabaum synthesizes an exceptionally wide dataset of 149 platform mound sites from the earliest iterations of the structure 7,500 years ago to its latest manifestations. Kassabaum discusses Archaic period sites from Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley, as well as Woodland period sites across the Midwest and Southeast, to revisit traditional perspectives on later, more well-known Mississippian-era mounds. Kassabaum’s chronological approach corrects major flaws in the ways these constructions have been interpreted in the past. This comprehensive history exposes nonlinear shifts in mound function, use, and meaning across space and time and suggests a dynamic view of the vitality and creativity of their builders. Ending with a discussion of Native American beliefs about and uses of earthen mounds today, Kassabaum reminds us that this history will continue to be written for many generations to come. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Download or read book The Archaeology of the Upper Amazon written by Ryan Clasby and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together archaeologists working in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to construct a new prehistory of the Upper Amazon, outlining cultural developments from the late third millennium B.C. to the Inca Empire of the sixteenth century A.D. Encompassing the forested tropical slopes of the eastern Andes as well as Andean drainage systems that connect to the Amazon River basin, this vast region has been unevenly studied due to the restrictions of national borders, remote site locations, and limited interpretive models. The Archaeology of the Upper Amazon unites and builds on recent field investigations that have found evidence of extensive interaction networks along the major rivers—Santiago, Marañon, Huallaga, and Ucayali. Chapters detail how these rivers facilitated the movement of people, resources, and ideas between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. Contributors demonstrate that the Upper Amazon was not a peripheral zone but a locus for complex societal developments. Reaching across geographical, cultural, and political boundaries, this volume shows that the trajectory of Andean civilization cannot be fully understood without a nuanced perspective on the region’s diverse patterns of interaction with the Upper Amazon. Contributors: Ryan Hechler | Kenneth R. Young | J. Scott Raymond | Warren Deboer | Inge Schjellerup | Charles Hastings | Atsushi Yamamoto | Bebel Ibarra Asencios | Francisco Valdez | Jason Nesbitt | Warren B. Church | Sonia Alconini | Rachel Johnson | Ryan Clasby | Estanislao Pazmino
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Mesoamerican Bioarchaeology written by Vera Tiesler and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-05-23 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a range of contributors with different and hybrid academic backgrounds to explore, through bioarchaeology, the past human experience in the territories that span Mesoamerica. This handbook provides systematic bioarchaeological coverage of skeletal research in the ancient Mesoamericas. It offers an integrated collection of engrained, bioculturally embedded explorations of relevant and timely topics, such as population shifts, lifestyles, body concepts, beauty, gender, health, foodways, social inequality, and violence. The additional treatment of new methodologies, local cultural settings, and theoretic frames rounds out the scope of this handbook. The selection of 36 chapter contributions invites readers to engage with the human condition in ancient and not-so-ancient Mesoamerica and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Mesoamerican Bioarchaeology is addressed to an audience of Mesoamericanists, students, and researchers in bioarchaeology and related fields. It serves as a comprehensive reference for courses on Mesoamerica, bioarchaeology, and Native American studies.
Download or read book Ancient Foodways written by C. Margaret Scarry and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How archaeology can shed light on past foodways and social worlds Through various case studies, Ancient Foodways illustrates how archaeologists can use bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, architecture, and other evidence to understand how food acquisition, preparation, and consumption intersect with economics, politics, and ritual. Spanning four continents and several millennia of human history, this volume is a comprehensive and contemporary survey of how archaeological data can be used to interpret past foodways and reconstruct past social worlds. This volume is organized around four major themes: feasting and politics; sacrifice, ritual, and ancestors; diet, landscape, and health; and integrative methods. Contributors weave together multiple threads of evidence relating to plants, animals, craft production, and human health and reconnect the material remnants with behaviors, practices, and meanings. The case studies show the varied and creative ways that multiple sources of evidence can be used to shed light on past foodways. Ancient Foodways demonstrates how environmental and cultural factors shaped past subsistence strategies and cooking practices and reveals the role food played in shaping cultural identity and exchange networks, while also examining how food production methods can lead to environmental destruction and the detrimental role of dietary constraints on human health.
Download or read book Bioarchaeology of Care through Population Level Analyses written by Alecia Schrenk and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New methods for understanding healthcare in past societies “Provides unique and useful models that demonstrate how inferences can be made about communities of care in samples ranging in size from several dozen to several thousand. Authors weave together diverse lines of evidence—osteological, archaeological, ethnographic, clinical—in their historical and cultural contexts. Sophisticated analytical tools and theoretical frameworks position this book at the cutting edge of bioarchaeological research and illustrate the cultural relativity of care, caregiving, and healthcare in the past and present, and in Western and non-Western contexts.”—Alexis Boutin, coeditor of Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology Representing current and emerging methods and theory, this volume introduces new avenues for exploring how prehistoric and historic communities provided health care for their sick, injured, and disabled members. It adjusts and expands the bioarchaeology of care framework—a way of analyzing caregiving in the past designed for individual case studies of human skeletal remains—to detect and examine care at the population level. Covering a range of time from the Archaic period to the present, contributors discuss community settings including British hospitals and nursing homes, a shell burial mound site in Alabama, and the Mississippi State Asylum. These essays offer insights into the care given to children and those with reduced mobility, the social burden of health care, practices of euthanasia, and the relationship between care for the mentally ill and structural violence. A necessary extension to our understanding of the complexities of caregiving in the past, Bioarchaeology of Care through Population-Level Analyses shows that it is important to recognize the impact of disease or disability on both the individuals affected and their broader communities. Contributors demonstrate that flexibility in bioarchaeological modeling and methodology can result in robust and nuanced scholarship on caregiving in the past and the societies that provided that care. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Contributors: Petra Banks | Anna-Marie C. Casserly | Briana R. Moore | Anna Osterholtz | Bennjamin J. Penny-Mason | Charlotte A. Roberts | Alecia Schrenk | Diana S. Simpson | Lori A. Tremblay
Download or read book The Archaeology of Ancestors written by Hill/Hageman and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributors to this landmark volume demonstrate that ancestor veneration was about much more than claiming property rights: the spirits of the dead were central to domestic disputes, displays of wealth, and power and status relationships. Case studies from China, Africa, Europe, and Mesoamerica use the evidence of art, architecture, ritual, and burial practices to explore the complex roles of ancestors in the past. Including a comprehensive overview of nearly two hundred years of anthropological research, The Archaeology of Ancestors reveals how and why societies remember and revere the dead. Through analyses of human remains, ritual deposits, and historical documents, contributors explain how ancestors were woven into the social fabric of the living.
