Recent cioa_ciap items

The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

Tue, 9 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period.

The political analysis considers archaeological evidence related to several organizational principles: collective versus autocratic, corporate versus exclusionary/network, and segmentary (unspecialized versus specialized). Many variables related to these principles used by other scholars are either suited to historically documented states, not archaeological ones, or ambiguous. Many...

Prehistoric Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, 1968-1970 Volume 2: Final Report

Wed, 4 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Volume 2 presents the concluding research on Sitagroi, a prehistoric settlement mound in northeastern Greece, excavated between 1968 and 1970. This volume offers a detailed report on the plant remains along with a full treatment of craft and technology: artifacts of adornment; tools of bone and flaked stone; artifacts and tools of bone and ground and polished stone (and petrology); tools of the spinner, weaver and mat maker; pottery technology; metallurgy; and special clay finds such as seals, miniatures, and utensils. This rich presentation offers unparalleled insights into the life of the prehistoric inhabitants of the area. Sitagroi now becomes one of the most comprehensively published sites from prehistoric Europe and will be indispensable for all those concerned with European prehistory.

Archaeology of Solvieux: An Upper Paleolithic Open Air Site in France

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Few open-air sites of this age have the same extent, complexity and diversity of deposits, as was found at the site of Solvieux in South-west France. The complexities of the site and the intensity of the archaeological investigation called for new and novel methodologies to be devised which are discussed in detail. The history of the project, methodologies, results and analysis of finds are complemented by a large number of drawings, outlines of typologies and essays on Upper Palaeolithic traditions and the contribution of the Solvieux results in this regard.

Settlement Archaeology & Political Economy at Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, Mexico

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This volume presents new information from a program of intensive archaeological survey and surface collection at an important Olmec and Epi-Olmec center. A dual strategy of systematic interval transect sampling and full-coverage survey of architectural features and artifact concentrations permits an evaluation of the relative effectiveness of these commonly employed methods. Auger testing in floodplain areas yielded evidence of extensive buried deposits. Distributional analysis of the surface and subsurface data documents the site's growth and decline from 900 BC to AD 900 in radiocarbon years and confirm that Tres Zapotes achieved its apogee during the Late and Terminal Formative periods (400 BC--AD 300). An attribute analysis of burned earthen artifacts discriminates between daub and probable kiln remains, helping to define ceramic production loci. Interpretive chapters discuss the organization of ceramic and obsidian craft production, concluding that craft activities were mainly...

Inca Rituals and Sacred Mountains: A Study of the World's Highest Archaeological Sites

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 20,000 feet high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations.Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, here the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the world’s highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed....

Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Set on a broad isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas, Caucasia has traditionally been portrayed as either a well-trod highway linking southwest Asia and the Eurasian Steppe or an isolated periphery of the political and cultural centers of the ancient world. Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond critically re-examines traditional archaeological work in the region, assembling accounts of recent investigations by an international group of scholars from the Caucasus, its neighbors, Europe, and the United States. The twelve chapters in this book address the ways archaeologists must re-conceptualize the region within our larger historical and anthropological frameworks of thought, presenting critical new materials from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age. Challenging traditional models of economic, political, cultural, and social marginality that read the past through Cold War geographies, Archaeology in the Borderlands provides a new challenge...

Lloyd Cotsen Study Collection of Chinese Bronze Mirrors: Volume I: Catalogue; Volume II Studies

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This two-volume set was edited by Lothar von Falkenhausen and authored by Suzanne E. Cahill with essays by K.E. Brashier, Charlotte Horlyck, Li Jaang, Guolong Lai, Colin Mackenzie, Li Min, David A. Scott, Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, and Hanmo Zhang.

Volume I, The Lloyd Cotsen Study Collection of Chinese Bronze Mirrors: Catalogue, includes an engaging foreword by Lloyd Cotsen, an overview of major Chinese dynasties and periods, and a brief history of Chinese bronze mirrors by Suzanne E. Cahill. This volume presents a detailed catalogue of the extensive Cotsen Collection through high-quality images and illustrations of the mirrors in their approximate chronological sequence. Volume II, a set of eleven scholarly essays, goes further to investigate these mirrors as a study collection.

Guided by the conviction that this particular constellation of mirrors may lead to substantive insights that cannot easily be obtained otherwise, the leading scholars who contributed to this...

Lloyd Cotsen Study Collection of Chinese Bronze Mirrors: Volume I: Catalogue; Volume II Studies

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Guided by the conviction that this particular constellation of mirrors may lead to substantive insights that cannot easily be obtained otherwise, the leading scholars who contributed to this...

Moche Fineline Painting From San José De Moro

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Moche civilization flourished on the north coast of Peru from AD 200 to 800. Although the Moche had no writing system, they left a vivid artistic record of their beliefs and activities on intricately painted ceramic vessels, several thousand of which are scattered in museums and private collections throughout the world today. Unfortunately, nearly all were looted by grave robbers so their origin and context are unknown. In recent years, however, through a combination of archaeological excavation and stylistic analysis, it has been possible to identify more than 250 painted vessels from the site of San Josèóe Moro. To date, this is the largest sample of Moche art from a single place and time. Thus it provides a unique opportunity to identify a distinct sub-style of Moche ceramics, and to assess its range of artistic and technological variation. Moreover, within the sample it is possible to identify multiple paintings by 18 different artists, thus elucidating the range of subject...

K’axob: Ritual, Work, and Family in an Ancient Maya Village

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Shortly after 800 B.C., a village was founded in the wetland and riverine habitat of northern Belize. Now called K’axob, this Maya community grew and prospered through Formative and Classic times. A millennial-long record of Formative life has been investigated archaeologically by peeling back the closely stratified layers of superimposed domiciles. These houses, their domestic and mortuary features, and associated artifacts reveal a conscious construction of identity and shed light on the manner in which materiality was manipulated in response to larger political dictates. Longterm stasis in material remains suggests that artisan production played a key role in social reproduction, yet the manner in which access to key resources was increasingly localized intimates a political landscape of crystallizing hierarchies. Subfloor mortuary interments were spatially associated with cuisine-related features such as sherd-lined pits, reflecting a cosmology in which ritual and work were...

Inca Rituals and Sacred Mountains: A Study of the World's Highest Archaeological Sites

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, here the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the world’s highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and...

The Early Iron Age Cemetary at Torone: Volume 2: Illustrations

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This volume publishes the excavation and analysis of the Early Iron Age cemetery at Torone in Chalkidike, in the north Aegean, Greece. Spanning the period between the twelfth or eleventh century down to ca. 850 BC, the cemetery represents one of the few burial grounds of the period in Greece to have been excavated virtually in its entirety (yielding 134 tombs, of which 118 were cremations and 16 inhumations). In addition to full analyses of the material from individual tombs (pottery, objects of metal, terracotta, stone, bone, glass compound, amber), as well as the burial customs and funerary rites, a series of specialist reports present the physical anthropology of the deceased, as well as the retrieved faunal and floral remains. There is also a petrographic and chemical analysis of the pottery, one of the most comprehensive of its type in Greece. In addition to presenting the archaeological data from the cemetery, this volume seeks to (re)construct a picture of a society in...

Archaeology of the California Coast During the Middle Holocene

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Archaeology of the California Coast During the Middle Holocene

The Early Iron Age Cemetary at Torone: Volume 1: Text

Fri, 6 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Moche Tombs at Dos Cabezas

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Moche civilization flourished on the north coast of Peru between approximately AD 100 and 800. Although the Moche had no writing system, they left a vivid artistic record of their beliefs and activities in beautifully modeled and painted ceramic vessels, remarkable objects of gold, silver, and copper, sumptuous textiles, and carved and inlaid bone, wood, and stone. Tens of thousands of these objects can be seen today in museums and private collections throughout the world. Unfortunately, nearly all of them have been looted from Moche tombs by grave robbers, and thus there is no record of the grave, or the archaeological site, or even the valley from which they came. This lack of information severely limits what could have been learned about the Moche if the graves had been excavated archaeologically and their contents systematically recorded. This study focuses on five extraordinary Moche tombs that were archaeologically excavated at the site of Dos Cabezas. The tombs are remarkable...

Divine Consumption: Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Kirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal bones, food remains,...

The Archaeology of Oak Park, Ventura County, California Volume III

Tue, 1 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Archaeology of Oak Park, Ventura County, California Volume III

The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

Tue, 1 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Archaeology of the Three Springs Valley, California: A Study in Functional Cultural History

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Archaeology of the Three Springs Valley, California: A Study in Functional Cultural History

The Late Minoan Destruction of Crete: Metal Groups and Stratigraphic Considerations

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Late Minoan Destruction of Crete: Metal Groups and Stratigraphic Considerations

History and Prehistory at Grass Valley, Nevada

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

History and Prehistory at Grass Valley, Nevada

From Cremation to Inhumation: Burial Practices at Ialysos and Kameiros during the Mid-Archaic Period, ca. 625-525 B.C.

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

From Cremation to Inhumation: Burial Practices at Ialysos and Kameiros during the Mid-Archaic Period, ca. 625-525 B.C.

Gabrielino Indians of Southern California: an Annotated Ethnohistoric Bibliography

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Gabrielino Indians of Southern California: an Annotated Ethnohistoric Bibliography

Obsidian Dates II: A Compendium of the Obsidian Hydration Determinations Made ast the UCLA Obsidian Hydration Laboratory

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Obsidian Dates II: A Compendium of the Obsidian Hydration Determinations Made ast the UCLA Obsidian Hydration Laboratory

Talepakemalai: Lapita and Its Transformations in the Mussau Islands of Near Oceania

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The definitive final report on the Lapita and post-Lapita sites investigated during the Mussau Project, fundamental to an understanding of Oceanic prehistory.

Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain, about fifth-millennium BC settlements that reveal the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age, when these prehistoric societies developed new agropastoral subsistences, burial practices and habitation patterns.

Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Paso de la Amada, an archaeological site in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast of Mexico, was among the earliest sedentary, ceramic-using villages of Mesoamerica. With an occupation that extended across 140 ha in 1600 BC, it was also one of the largest communities of its era. First settled around 1900 BC, the site was abandoned 600 years later during what appears to have been a period of local political turmoil. The decline of Paso de la Amada corresponded with a rupture in local traditions of material culture and local adoption of the Early Olmec style. Stylistically, the material culture of Paso de la Amada corresponds predominantly to the pre-Olmec Mokaya tradition.

Excavations at the site have revealed significant earthen constructions from as early as 1700 BC. Those include the earliest known Mesoamerican ball court and traces of a series of high-status residences. This monograph reports on large-scale excavations in Mounds 1, 12, and 32, as well as soundings...

Rock Art at Little Lake: An Ancient Crossroads in the California Desert

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The product of ten years of fieldwork at Little Lake Ranch in the Rose Valley, the southern gateway to the Owens Valley, this book presents the results of intensive rock art analyses carried out by the interdisciplinary research team of the UCLA Rock Art Archive. The research attempts to establish a connective web of associations to break down traditional but artificial barriers between rock art and the rest of archaeology. Through time-honored methods of stylistic analysis, the focus is on recent breakthroughs in the analysis of meaning and religion in the context of landscape attributes and ecological opportunities. Regional or ethnic differences suggested by the rock art record has made it possible to create a flexible analytical framework.

This book describes the occurrence, concentration, distribution, and formal variation of pecked and painted motifs. Scratched, pecked, and painted patterns are analyzed separately. Full-color illustrations throughout enhance the...

The Wari Enclave of Espíritu Pampa

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Wari State was the first expansionistic power to develop in the Andean highlands. Emerging in the area of modern Ayacucho (Peru) around AD 650, the Wari expanded to control much of the central Andes by the time of their collapse at AD 1000. This book describes the discovery and excavation (2010-2012) of a major new Wari site (Espíritu Pampa), located in the subtropical region of Vilcabamba (Department of Cusco). While it was long believed that the Wari established trade networks between their highland capital and the Amazonian lowlands, the identification of a large Wari site in the Vilcabamba region came as a surprise to most Wari specialists. This book covers the first three years of excavations at the Wari site of Espíritu Pampa. It describes the identification of a central plaza surrounded by a series of D-shaped structures that are believed to have been the loci of special activities for the Wari. It also describes the contents of more than...

Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Although the concepts and patterns of ritual varied through time in relation to general sociopolitical transformations and local historical circumstances in ancient Mesoamerica, most archaeologists would agree that certain underlying themes and structures modeled the ritual phenomena of this complex culture area. By focusing on ritual expression at the household level, this volume seeks to compare the manifestations of domestic ritual across time and space in both the cores and peripheries, in the cities and in the villages. The authors explore the ways in which cosmological principles and concepts of the sacred were used in the construction of ritual space and practice, how local landscapes provided templates for the images and paraphernalia recovered from archaeological contexts, how foreign enclaves relied on ritual for social reproduction, and how domestic ritual was related to, and indeed embedded in, institutionalized state religions.

Rice Bowls in the Delta: Artifacts Recovered from the 1915 Asian Community of Walnut Grove, California

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The artifacts recovered from the Walnut Grove are a significant addition to the research of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Asian material culture. Of particular significance is the large collection of recovered Japanese ceramics. Deposited en masse following a devastating fire in 1915, they represent the table wares used by Walnut Grove's Japanese residents from ca. 1896 to 1915. Primarily products of the Meiji Period's technological revolution, these inexpensive porcelains have been largely overlooked in studies of Japanese pottery.

Pottery of Prehistoric Honduras: Regional Classification and Analysis

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The contributors to this volume have addressed issues of systematics in pottery analysis that perplex archaeologists wherever they work. These issues are not approached by setting forth rules or by adopting a how-to approach but rather by example as the various researchers give the background to their work, explain their methods, and present the classified pottery from their investigations. An in-process statement of what we are learning from pottery about chronology, interactions, and the nature of regional cultural development, this volume can be used by archaeologists working in southern Mesoamerica and northern Central America, who will find it valuable for comparative analysis, and by archaeologists dealing with issues of systematics in pottery analysis in different culture areas but facing many of the same problems that researchers do in Honduras.

Maya Zooarchaeology: New Directions in Method and Theory

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A comprehensive work, combining traditional zooarchaeological reports and various state-of-the-art summaries of methods and theoretical perspectives. This combination of detailed discussions of basic zooarchaeological data with reviews of important themes in Maya zooarchaeology emphasizes the central issues that guide our research from basic data collection through final comparative interpretation. The chapters emphasize the newest developments in technical methods, the most recent trends in the analysis of “social zooarchaeology,” and the broadening perspectives provided by a new geographic range of investigations. The main focus of the volume remains on fostering cooperation among Mesoamerican zooarchaeologists at the levels of both preliminary analysis and final theoretical reconstruction.

Prehistory of Agriculture: New Experimental and Ethnographic Approaches

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The twenty-eight contributors to this book show how experimental and ethnographic approaches are being used to shed new light on the process of domestication, and harvesting techniques, tools and technology in the period just before and just after the appearance of agriculture. The book takes an explicitly comparative approach, with chapters on SW Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa.

An Investigation into Early Desert Pastoralism: Excavations at the Camel Site, Negev

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Negev focuses on two primary purposes, one theoretical/methodological and the second substantive. Briefly stated, the book comprises a case study of excavations at an early (ca. 2800 B.C.) pastoral site in the Negev, providing detailed analyses and a synthetic overview of a seasonal encampment from this early period in the evolution of desert pastoral societies. It thus both demonstrates the feasibility of an archaeology of early mobile pastoralism and grapples with the basic anthropological and methodological issues surrounding the subject. Substantively, both the architectural and material culture assemblages uncovered constitute the first detailed analysis of this early desert culture and include materials previously unreported for the region and period. Historically, the Camel Site is placed in a larger perspective of the beginnings of multiresource nomadism in relation to the rise of complex societies.

Images in Action: The Southern Andean Iconographic Series

Wed, 3 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Emanating from a colloquium in pre-Columbian art and archaeology held at the University of Chile in Santiago, Images in Action presents interpretations of a large corpus of art and iconography from the Southern and South-Central Andes, bringing together some of the most esteemed scholars in the field. More than thirty authors, all with extensive experience in the Southern Andes, examine artifacts, artworks, textiles, archaeology and architecture to develop creative new insights on the cultural interactions between people in prehistoric western South America. The volume’s nearly 700 images are archived in an online database with metadata, fully referenced in the text, and searchable.

Series: Cotsen Advanced Seminar 6

The Stones of Tiahuanaco

Tue, 2 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The remains of the artful gateways, platforms, walls, and sculpture at Tiahuanaco, an important Middle Horizon site at the southern end of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, have for centuries sparked what has seemed like unanswerable questions about how they were made. The masons’ highly sophisticated knowledge of mathematics, geometry, and stonecraft is evident in the tight joints and perfectly sharp, right angles of these fine examples of Andean cut-stone architecture. The Inca prized the precise stone masonry of this important site, which is considered by many scholars to be the precursor of the stonebuilding traditions of their civilization, which flourished four hundred years after the decline of Tiahuanaco. Protzen and Nair refute this long-held theory, arguing that Inca architecture could have been inspired by Tiahuanaco, but was not derivative of it. Looking to the stone itself for answers, the authors performed original experiments with stone tools to better understand how...

Recent Advances in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes: In Memory of Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

Mon, 1 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Northern Andes has had a subdued voice in the literature of American archaeology - even though it is a pivotal region for understanding many of the social, economic, political and ideological changes which pre-Columbian cultures experienced. Each of the eleven chapters presents a synthesis of an aspect of recent research in the region, and each is written by scholars who are actively engaged in that research.

Series: Monograph 39

The Archaeology of Grotta Scaloria: Ritual in Neolithic Southeast Italy

Mon, 1 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Scaloria Cave, Grotta Scaloria, is in Apulia, where the Tavoliere Plain rises to meet the Gargano peninsula. Hundreds of villages were located there during the Neolithic period, the villagi trincerati first identified from aerial photographs taken by the British RAF during WW II. Certainly some of these Neolithic villagers of the Tavoliere visited Scaloria Cave, for refuge from the elements, and for the mysterious rituals held in both the Lower and Upper Chambers.

Grotta Scaloria was first discovered and explored in 1931, excavated briefly in 1967, and extensively from 1978–80 by a joint UCLA-University of Genoa team, but never fully published. The Save Scaloria Project was organized to locate this legacy data, and to enhance that information by application of the newest methods of archaeological and scientific analysis.

Finally, this important site is published, in one comprehensive volume that gathers together the archaeological data from the Upper and Lower...

An Archaic Mexican Shellmound and Its Entombed Floors

Mon, 1 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Tlacuachero is the site of an Archaic-period shellmound located in the wetlands of the outer coast of southwest Mexico. This book presents investigations of several floors that are within the site's shell deposits that formed over a 600-800 year interval during the Archaic period (ca. 8000-2000 BCE), a crucial timespan in Mesoamerican prehistory when people were transitioning from full blown dependency on wild resources to the use of domesticated crops.

The floors are now deeply buried in an limited area below the summit of the shellmound. The authors explore what activities were carried out on their surfaces, discussing the floors’ patterns of cultural features, sediment color, density and types of embedded microrefuse and phytoliths, as well as chemical signatures of organic remains.

The studies conducted at Tlacuachero are especially significant in light of the fact that data-rich lowland sites from the Archaic period are extraordinarily rare; the wealth of...

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors

Mon, 1 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century cross-cuts the ranks of important books on social history, consumerism, contemporary culture, the meaning of material culture, domestic architecture, and household ethnoarchaeology. Far richer in information and more incisive than America at Home (Smolan and Erwitt), this innovative book also moves well beyond Rick Smolan's Day in the Life series. It is a distant cousin of Material World and Hungry Planet in content and style, but represents a blend of rigorous science and photography that none of these titles can claim. The authors are widely published scholars--archaeologists and anthropologists from UCLA--and a world-renowned photographer. Using archaeological approaches to human material culture, this volume offers unprecedented access to the middle-class American home through the kaleidoscopic lens of no-limits photography and many kinds of never-before acquired data about how people actually live their lives at home. Its foundation...

Machu Picchu: Exploring an Ancient Sacred Center

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Machu Picchu, voted one of the New Wonders of the World, is one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites, yet it remains a mystery. Even the most basic questions are still unanswered: What was its meaning and why was it built in such a difficult location? Renowned explorer Johan Reinhard attempts to answer such elusive questions from the perspectives of sacred landscape and archaeoastronomy.

Using information gathered from historical, archaeological, and ethnographical sources, Reinhard demonstrates how the site is situated in the center of sacred mountains and associated with a sacred river, which is in turn symbolically linked with the sun's passage. Taken together, these features meant that Machu Picchu formed a cosmological, hydrological, and sacred geological center for a vast region.

Series: World Heritage and Monument 1

The Transition to Mycenaean: A Stratified Middle Helladic II to Late Helladic IIA pottery sequence from Ayios Stephanos in Lakonia

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The following study is concerned only with pottery of the later Middle Helladic and early Mycenaean periods. In spite of its limited scope, we feel that the stratified ceramic sequence presented here has a unique importance not only in the archaeology of prehistoric Lakonia but also, in a broader sense, in the archaeology of prehistoric Greece as a whole. This sequence affords a unique opportunity to trace the effect of Cretan influence on Middle Helladic pottery which transformed the latter into the distinctly different Mycenaean pottery of the Late Helladic period.

Series: Monumenta Archaeologica 4

New Light on Old Art: Recent Advances in Hunter-Gatherer Rock Art Research

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Rock art is the most visible aspect of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer archaeological record. Covering cave walls, cliff slides and boulder faces with painted and engraved designs, it challenges the archaeologist to address the symbolic, aesthetic, and religious sides of the past. Though traditionally marginalized in mainstream archaeology, recent advances in chronometric dating and interpretive techniques along with the development of cognitive archaeology, have brought rock art studies to the substantive and methodological forefront of the discipline.

Series: Monograph 36

Rural Archaeology in Early Urban Northern Mesopotamia: Excavations at Tell Al-Raqa'i

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This book presents a new perspective on the emergence of urban societies in Mesopotamia, focusing attention on life in a rural village and helping to correct the traditional bias by archaeologists toward the urban and the elite. Reporting on the extensive excavations at Tell al-Raqa’i (early-middle 3rd millennium BC) in upper Mesopotamia/Syria, the authors offer detailed studies on architecture, pottery, animal bones, plant remains, and other varieties of artifacts and ecofacts. These data provide a wealth of information on the nature of life in a small community during the transition to urbanism. Spatial and social organization, household economics, and the significance of enigmatic structures such as the Round Building and a small “temple” are among the issues discussed. The excavations at Raqa’i, with their exposure of a broad segment of an ancient village, reveal important new insights on the nature of rural life in upper Mesopotamia and on the role of villages in early...

Excavations at Cerro Azul, Peru: The Architecture and Pottery

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

During the Late Intermediate period (AD 1100-1470), the lower Cañete Valley of Peru was controlled by the walled Kingdom of Huarco. While inland sites produced irrigated crops, the seaside community of Cerro Azul, 130 km south of Lima, produced fish for the rest of the kingdom.

Cerro Azul's noble families lived in large, multipurpose compounds with tapia walls. Their pottery had its strongest ties with valleys to the south, such as Chincha and Ica. During the course of excavation, the University of Michigan Project excavated two tapia buildings in their entirety, saving every sherd from every room, walled work area, feature, and midden. This remarkable volume is the final site report on the architecture and pottery of Late Intermediate Cerro Azul.

Series: Monographs 62

Formative Lifeways in Central Tlaxcala, Volume 1: Excavations, Ceramics, and Chronology

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The transition to the Formative in the relatively high-altitude study region of Tlaxcala, Mexico is later than it was in choice regions for early agriculture elsewhere in Mesoamerica. From 900 BCE, however, population growth and sociopolitical development were rapid. A central claim in the research presented here is that a macroregional perspective is essential for understanding the local Formative sequence. In this volume, the data from excavations at three village sites (Amomoloc, Tetel, and Las Mesitas) and one modest regional center (La Laguna) are examined. The ceramic typology is described in detail. An innovative approach to the classification of figurines is presented, and a Formative chronology for the region is proposed based on seriation of refuse contexts and radiocarbon dates. The work concludes with a macroregional framework to be used in the analysis of subsistence, social relations, and political economy in Volumes 2 and 3, now in preparation.

Series: Monumenta...

Gallinazo: An Early Cultural Tradition on the Peruvian North Coast

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last decades, considerable effort has been directed towards the study of early complex societies of northern Peru, and in recent years archaeologists have expressed a strong interest in the art and archaeology of the Moche, Lambayeque and Chimú societies. Yet, comparatively little attention has been paid to the earlier cultural foundations of North Coast civilization: the Gallinazo. In the recent years, however, the work of a number of North Coast specialists brought about a large quantity of data on the Gallinazo occupation of the coast, but a coherent framework for studying this culture had yet to be defined. A round table, which gathered some thirty scholars from Europe and North and South America to discuss the Gallinazo phenomenon, resulted in this volume of fourteen chapters by authors with different perspectives and backgrounds who re-consider the nature of the Gallinazo culture and its position within Peruvian North Coast cultural history. Greater issues about...

The Archaeology of Ritual

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This book is the fruit of the third Cotsen Advanced Seminar conducted at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. A wide spectrum of scholars, historians, art historians, anthropologists, students of performance and of religion, archaeologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists were all asked to think and comment on how ritual can be traced in archaeology and on possible directions for ritual research in the discipline. The outcome is a collection of papers that is thought provoking, often controversial, but always of extremely high quality.

Last House on the Hill: BACH Area Reports from Çatalhöyük, Turkey

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Occupied from around 7500 BC to 5700 BC, the large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia is composed entirely of domestic buildings; no public buildings have been identified. First excavated in the early 1960s, the site was left untouched until 1993. During the summers of 1997–2003 a team from the University of California at Berkeley (the BACH team) excavated an area at the northern end of the East Mound of Çatalhöyük. The houses there date predominantly to the late Aceramic and early Ceramic Neolithic, around 7000 BC. Last House on the Hill is the final report of the BACH excavations. This volume comprises both interpretive chapters and empirical data from the excavations and their materials. The research of the BACH team focuses on the lives and life histories of houses and people, the use of digital technologies in documenting and sharing the archaeological process, the senses of place, and the nature of cultural heritage and our public responsibilities.

Series: Monumenta...

The Construction of Value in the Ancient World

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things...

Settlement and Subsistence in Early Formative Soconusco: El Varal and the Problem of Inter-Site Assemblage Variation

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Soconusco region, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, is the location of some of the earliest pottery-using villages of ancient Mesoamerica. Mobile early inhabitants of the area harvested marsh clams in the estuaries, leaving behind vast mounds of shell. With the introduction of pottery and the establishment of permanent villages (from 1900 B.C.), use of the resource-rich estuary changed. The archaeological manifestation of that new estuary adaptation is a dramatic pattern of inter-site variability in pottery vessel forms. Vessels at sites within the estuary were about seventy percent neckless jars -- "tecomates" -- while vessels at contemporaneous sites a few kilometers inland were seventy percent open dishes. The pattern is well-known, but the the settlement arrangements or subsistence practices that produced it have remained unclear. Archaeological investigations at El Varal, a special-purpose estuary site of the later Early Formative (1250-1000...

The History and Archaeology of Jaffa 1

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In 2007 the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) was established as a joint research endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the project’s diverse aims is the publication of numerous excavations conducted in Jaffa since 1948 under the auspices of various governmental and research institutions such as the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and its successor, the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. This, the first volume in the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project series, lays the groundwork for this initiative. Part I provides the historical, economic, and legal context for the JCHP’s development, while outlining its objectives and the unique opportunities that Jaffa offers researchers. The history of Jaffa and its region, and the major episodes of cultural change that affected the site and region are explored through a series of articles...

Tangatatau Rockshelter: The Evolution of an Eastern Polynesian Socio-Ecosystem

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Tangatatau Rockshelter on Mangaia Island (Southern Cook Islands), excavated by a multi-disciplinary team in 1989-1991, produced one of the richest stratigraphic sequences of artifacts, faunal assemblages, and archaeobotanical materials in Eastern Polynesia. More than 70 radiocarbon dates provide a tight chronology from AD 1000 to European contact (ca. 1800). The faunal assemblage provides compelling evidence for dramatic reductions in indigenous bird life following Polynesian colonization, one of the best documented cases for human-induced impacts on island biota.

Tangatatau is unique among Polynesian archaeological sites in the extent to which fishing was dominated by freshwater fishes and eels. The site also yielded an extensive suite of carbonized plant materials, including sweet potato tubers, demonstrating that this South American domesticate had reached Eastern Polynesia by AD 1400. Mangaia illustrates the often far-reaching consequences of human land use and resource...

The Excavation of the Prehistoric Burial Tumulus at Lofkënd, Albania (2-Vol Set)

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The burial tumulus of Lofkënd lies in one of the richest archaeological areas of Albania (ancient Illyria) home to a number of burial tumuli spanning the Bronze and Iron Ages of later European prehistory. Modern understanding of the pre- and protohistory of Illyria has largely been shaped by the contents of such burial mounds, yet some were robbed long ago, others reused for modern burials, and few were excavated under scientific conditions. What inspired this systematic exploration by UCLA was more than the promise of an unplundered necropolis; it was also the chance to revisit the significance of this tumulus and its fellows for the emergence of urbanism and complexity in ancient Illyria. In addition to artifacts, the recovery of surviving plant remains, bones, and other organic material contributed to insights into the environmental and ecological history of the region. Full analysis of all the skeletal remains, inhumed and...

Exploring Methods of Faunal Analysis: Insights from California Archaeology

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How does the practice of archaeology benefit from faunal analysis? Michael Glassow and Terry Joslin's Exploring Methods of Faunal Analysis: Insights from California Archaeology addresses this question. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how faunal remains can be used to elucidate subsistence, settlement, technological systems, economic exchange, social organization, adaptation to variability in resource distribution and abundance, and the impacts of historic land use. The sheer prevalence of faunal remains in California archaeological sites means that most archaeologists working in the state inevitably must give these resources their close attention-and yet methodological challenges remain. The chapters in this thoughtfully edited volume tackle these challenges, providing strategies for identifying and mitigating sample bias and recommending quantitative techniques borrowed from a variety of disciplines. The volume also presents examples that illustrate the use of...

Classic Maya Political Ecology: Resource Management, Class Histories, and Political Change in Northwestern Belize

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Classic Maya of the Central Lowlands crafted one of the ancient world’s great civilizations in what is today Belize, northern Guatemala, and Yucatan, Mexico. Although the Maya have long been known for their artistic and architectural achievements, the economic and agricultural base of this society has received far less attention. Over the past couple of decades, archaeologists have begun to understand how Maya householders reliably farmed this harsh, fragile, and yet highly productive environment for two thousand years. A new view emerges of how regional polities prospered in the face of population increase, political turmoil, and environmental and climatic change.

This volume examines pre-Columbian political processes grounded in environmental productivity and a mutual interdependence between elite and non-elite classes, both contributing to the long-term success and adaptability of local and regional political communities and the networks...

Central California Coastal Prehistory: A View from Little Pico Creek

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Reports on excavations at Little Pico Creek in San Luis Obispo County and assesses the temporal components and issues of cultural chronology, subsistence, mobility, and social structure.

Series: Perspectives in California Archaeology 3

Chotuna and Chornancap: Excavating an Ancient Peruvian Legend

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Christopher Donnan's Chotuna and Chornancap: Excavating an Ancient Peruvian Legend, explores one of the most intriguing oral histories passed down among ancient Peruvians: the legend of Naymlap, the founder of a dynasty that ruled the Lambayeque Valley of northern Peru centuries before European contact. Naymlap is said to have built his palace at a place that many now consider to be the archaeological sites of Chotuna and Chornancap. In an effort to test the validity of the Naymlap legend, Donnan directed extensive archaeological excavations at Chotuna and Chornancap--completing plans of the monumental architecture, mapping and excavating most of the major structures, and developing a chronology for the sites. This book presents the results of these excavations and demonstrates the extent to which the archaeological evidence correlates with the sequence of events described in the Naymlap legend.

Series: Monographs 70

Lithares: An Early Bronze Age Settlement in Boeotia

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Series: Occasional Paper 15

The History of the Peoples of the Eastern Desert