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Andean Ontologies is a fascinating interdisciplinary investigation of how ancient Andean people understood their world and the nature of being. Exploring pre-Hispanic ideas of time, space, and the human body, these essays highlight a range of beliefs across the region’s different cultures, emphasizing the relational aspects of identity in Andean worldviews. Studies included here show that Andeans physically interacted with their pasts through recurring ceremonies in their ritual calendar and that Andean bodies were believed to be changeable entities with the ability to interact with nonhuman and spiritual worlds. A survey of rock art describes Andeans’ changing relationships with places and things over time. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence reveals head hair was believed to be a conduit for the flow of spiritual power, and bioarchaeological remains offer evidence of Andean perceptions of age and wellness. Andean Ontologies breaks new ground by bringing together an array of renowned specialists including anthropologists, bioarchaeologists, historians, linguists, ethnohistorians, and art historians to evaluate ancient Amerindian ideologies through different interpretive lenses. Many are local researchers from South American countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and this volume makes their work available to North American readers for the first time. Their essays are highly contextualized according to the territories and time periods studied. Instead of taking an external, outside-in approach, they prioritize internal and localized views that incorporate insights from today’s indigenous societies. This cutting-edge collection demonstrates the value of a multifaceted, holistic, inside-out approach to studying the pre-Columbian world.

The archaeological study of prostitution in nineteenth-century American contexts grew out of the discovery of brothels in the 1990s during large urban projects done in compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act. This book provides an overview of many of those projects as well as detailed discussions of a brothel found at Five Points in New York City and several parlor houses found in Washington, D.C. The large artifact assemblages recovered in combination with detailed primary and secondary historical research have produced a complex picture of commercial sex, which the book discusses in both nineteenth-century and twenty-first century perspectives. Agency theory is used to link the practice of prostitution with other forms of clandestine behavior that have come to light through archaeology. Issues of gender, class, and race run through the archaeological study of clandestine behavior, which includes acts of resistance in public—from drinking on the job to piracy—and acts in private—from hiding caches of artifacts in vulnerable places to scratching inscrutable designs on ceramic pots. The book ends with questions that touch on the age-old conundrum of passing judgment. Should prostitution be decriminalized? Should the efficacy of spiritual practices be questioned? The value of anomalous artifacts and their interpretation is stressed as crucial to recognizing brothels and evidence of clandestine pursuits.

The Archaeology of Removal in North America examines the material implications of human dislocation, focusing on the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries. This book shows how archaeologists are investigating the catalysts, dynamics, and meanings of removal. The contributors to this edited volume illustrate the diverse factors that uproot humans and their material culture. They also explain peoples’ roles in removal, their responses to dislocation, and the consequences of being uprooted. A variety of themes are examined, such as forced migration, dispossession, social engineering, value, agrarian labor, class, memory, forgetting, landscapes, racialization, capitalism, violence, government intervention, preservation, neighborhoods, identity, cultural transformation, networks, and social confinement.

After nearly two decades of investigations at Fort St. Joseph, historical archaeologists have revealed the contours of everyday life at one of the most important French colonial outposts in the western Great Lakes region. Initially founded as a mission along the St. Joseph River in the 1680s, the French soon established a settlement amidst their Miami and Potawatomi allies, and the site became a strategic stronghold before it was abandoned in 1781. For many years, the site eluded archaeological discovery, until 1998 when Western Michigan University archaeologists identified material evidence of the long-lost Fort. In 2002, after a century of searching for the Fort, subsurface testing revealed undisturbed archaeological deposits in the form of fireplaces, pits, and trash middens—definitive material evidence of Fort St. Joseph. Under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, subsequent fieldwork and analysis have focused on examining the materiality of the Fort and the relationships between the Fort residents and local native populations. Fort St. Joseph Revealed employs archaeological and documentary sources to examine the history and culture of a fur trade society on the frontier of New France. This collection of papers is the first compilation of analyses derived from documents, cultural features, plant and animal remains, and various artifacts both to explore the importance of Fort St. Joseph in the past and in the present and to synthesize data on the colonial frontier from the perspective of a single place in the western Great Lakes region.

Historical Archaeology of the Revolutionary War Encampments of Washington’s Army presents archaeological and ethno-historic research concerning Washington’s Army’s encampments, trails, and support structures during the American Revolution. Important sites and preserves that the following chapters discuss include Valley Forge in Pennsylvania; Putnam Park and General Parson’s Preserve in Redding, Connecticut; Morristown National Historic Park in New Jersey; and Rochambeau’s marching trail through Connecticut. Topics pursued by contributors to the volume are the military discipline and training of soldiers; the routine activities of soldiers and officers; the special accommodations at George Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge; the layouts and organizations of encampments; the participation of African descendants, Native peoples, and women in the war; and the historic technology used by soldiers to construct their winter quarters. The goals of this book are to demonstrate the usefulness of archaeology and ethno-history for scholarly research of the American Revolution, to provoke interest in the subject, and to convey the importance of protecting important cultural and historic resources. Additionally, the book demonstrates how creatively exploring new questions while applying advances in technology, methodology, and theory continues to provide new scholarly insights into both how the war was fought and what it meant to its participants. To all scholars interested in pursuing research into America’s Revolution, the book should also demonstrate that public outreach and information sharing is the real significance of any ongoing investigations, such as those presented here.

Frank Hamilton Cushing’s 1896 excavations at Key Marco revealed astonishing carved and painted wooden artifacts rarely seen by archaeologists. Those following in Cushing’s footsteps have assembled a corpus of aesthetic objects from Florida, often in perishable materials. These range from an embarrassing number of dugout canoes, to the wooden animal carvings of Fort Center’s mortuary pond and the owl totem of Hontoon Island. Connections to neighboring areas have been sought with some success; in general, however, the diversity of imagery often makes comparison a challenge. The chapters in this book explore new discoveries and revisit existing museum collections, asking new questions or employing innovative analytical techniques. Cushing concluded his slim Key Marco report with the surmise that the boundless life of the sea provided the energetic impulse behind the artworks that he uncovered. While we might reach a different conclusion today, it is clear that ancient Florida is difficult to comfortably place within the Southeast or Caribbean and that much of that difficulty arises from the iconography born of Florida’s watery landscapes.

Across the Near East, major changes in the commemoration of death and the formation of identity amongst the living took place at the beginning of the Neolithic. However, these investigations have largely focused on a narrow geographic expanse, including the Levant and Egypt, where processes of death and dying have been extensively documented. Much less is known about death and burial in the Near East, outside of the Levant. In recent years, however, interest in the mortuary landscapes of Arabia has steadily grown, and the potential for using death to reconstruct the lifestyles of once-living communities are becoming more fully realized. Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia brings together an international consortium of archaeologists and bioarchaeologists, who are at the forefront of mortuary archaeology work across Arabia, to examine continuity and change in death and remembrance. While mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology contribute important perspectives to the interpretation of life and death in ancient Arabia, these subdisciplines are rarely brought together in this region. Indeed, only recently have skeletal remains been recognized as a rich source of scientific data complementing burial context. Such joint collaboration highlights the novel, interdisciplinary perspective proposed in this volume, resulting in a synthesis of new ideas and interpretations that will undoubtedly guide future archaeological endeavors in Arabia and beyond.

New Directions in the Search for the First Floridians had its genesis in research and ideas focused on the state and future of Paleoindian studies in Florida but also reaching into the Early Archaic period and the greater Southeast as far as Texas. Although the focus is still on Paleoindians in Florida, several chapters place the Florida-specific works in larger spatial (the greater Southeast and the now-drowned Gulf and Atlantic shelfs from Virginia to Texas) and temporal (Early Archaic period) contexts. We have organized the book into three sections: The Past, Present, and Future of the Archaeology of Early Floridians; Early Floridian Studies in a Broader Context; and Technological Advances in the Study of Early Floridians.