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Ancient west Mexico has often been viewed as an isolated mishmash of cultures, separated from Mesoamerica “proper,” a region that lacked “civilization.” This volume argues against this vision by highlighting current archaeological research on the diverse and complex pre-Hispanic societies that developed in this area. Through the presentation of original data and interpretations, contributions provoke debate and advance understanding of regional complexity, chronology, and diversity, as well as the role of the west in broader, pan-Mesoamerican sociocultural processes. The volume illustrates the ways in which research and areal data from western Mesoamerica can meaningfully contribute to the construction of theoretical models applicable in multiple contexts and capable of enhancing archaeological descriptions and explanations of the dynamic diversity characteristic of all Mesoamerican societies. The volume also presents intriguing case studies from western Mesoamerica that illuminate alternative pathways to sociopolitical complexity in pre-Hispanic societies. In doing so, the volume seeks to contribute to contemporary anthropological and archaeological debates regarding the ways in which archaeologists describe and explain the material configurations that they encounter in the archaeological record, and how these configurations may explain, relate to, and enhance our understanding of the ancient lifeways of the diverse societies that inhabited the region.

Approaches to Monumental Landscapes of the Ancient Maya showcases interpretations and perspectives of landscape importance in the central Maya lowlands, Belize, and the northern and central Maya highlands with studies spanning over 10,000 years of human occupation in the region. Taking their cues from a robust scholarship on landscape archaeology, urban planning, political history, and settlement pattern studies in Maya research, the authors in this volume explore conceptions of monumentality and landscapes that are the products of long-term research and varied research agendas, falling into three broad conceptual categories: natural and built landscapes, political and economic landscapes, and ritual and sacred landscapes. The chapters explore the concept of monumentality in novel ways and approach the idea of landscape as not just the sum total of how a settlement’s local environs were plied and manipulated to conform to the Maya’s deep-seated and normative notions of sacred geography but also take note of how the lowland Maya actively constructed landscapes of power, meaning, and exchange, which rendered their social worlds imbricated, interdependent, and complex. Though varied in their approaches, the authors are all supported by the Alphawood Foundation, and this volume is a testament to the impact philanthropy can have on scientific research.

An Archaeology and History of a Caribbean Sugar Plantation on Antigua uses archaeological and documentary evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that the multidisciplinary approach of contemporary historical archaeology can offer when assessing the long-term impacts of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people. Drawing on ten years of research at the 300-year-old site, the researchers uncover the plantation’s inner workings and its connections to broader historical developments in the Atlantic World. Excavations at the Great House reveal similarities to other British colonial sites, and historical records reveal the owners’ involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and in the trade of rum and other commodities. Artifacts uncovered from the slave quarters—ceramic tokens, repurposed bottle glass, and hundreds of Afro-Antiguan pottery sherds—speak to the agency of enslaved peoples in the face of harsh living conditions. Contributors also use ethnographic field data collected from interviews with contemporary farmers, as well as soil analysis to demonstrate how three centuries of sugarcane monocropping created a complicated legacy of soil depletion. Today tourism has long surpassed sugar as Antigua’s primary economic driver. Looking at visitor exhibits and new technologies for exploring and interpreting the site, the volume discusses best practices in cultural heritage management at Betty’s Hope and other locations that are home to contested historical narratives of a colonial past.

This book explores Mississippian communities in the 14th–15th century northern Yazoo Basin through an archaeological case study of Parchman Place, located in present day Coahoma County, Mississippi. Drawing on archaeological evidence for foodways, mound building, and the organization of community space, the book takes the position that community-building by Mississippian people was a process of placemaking that involved repeated re-creations of a distinct worldview in a particular place (or places). Much evidence points toward the tendency for Mississippian social relations to be strongly hierarchical. And yet, archaeological data from Parchman Place and elsewhere suggest that different Mississippian people practiced placemaking and world creation in different ways, through different media, and to achieve different goals. Despite the very visible outcomes of actions taken by powerful people (mound-top residences, palisades, community spatial organization, feasting refuse), community-building was decidedly not the exclusive purview of elite members of Mississippian communities. Rather, spatial and depositional practices indicate that leadership was routinely checked by those who wished to emphasize kin group autonomy and those who valued the maintenance of balance among distinct social groups.

Thanks to Irving Hallowell’s classic 1926 comparative ethnography on the special mythic status of bears in Subarctic cultures, anthropologists are generally aware that peoples throughout the northern hemisphere have treated bears as far more than a subsistence resource, something more akin to another kind of human or, to use Hallowell’s famous phrase, “other-than-human persons.” While Hallowell provided ample evidence of bear ceremonialism in northern latitudes, he found little evidence for the special treatment of bears elsewhere in Native North America. Archaeological and historical research over the last nine decades, however, has produced vast unsynthesized information about the roles of bears in Native American beliefs, rituals, and subsistence. This book is the first collective effort since Hallowell’s formative publication to consider how Native peoples viewed, treated, and used black bears (Ursus americanus) through time across Eastern North America. Contributors draw on zooarchaeological, ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and other evidence of bear hunting, consumption, and use, while contemplating the range of relationships that existed between bears and humans. They have reviewed thousands of pages of ethnohistorical and ethnographic documents and summarized and interpreted data on bear remains from nearly 300 archaeological sites from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico. Native peoples perceived and related to bears in remarkably diverse ways. Our authors explore the religious and economic significance of bears and bear products (meat, fat, oil, pelts, etc.), bear imagery in Native art and artifacts, and bears in Native worldviews, kinship systems, and cosmologies, along with their role as exported commodities in trans-Atlantic trade.

At its height between AD 1050 and 1275, the city of Cahokia was the largest settlement of the Mississippian culture, acting as an important trade center and pilgrimage site. While the influence of Cahokian culture on the development of monumental architecture, maize-based subsistence practices, and economic complexity throughout North America is undisputed, new research in this volume reveals a landscape of influence in the regions that had and may not have had a relationship with Cahokia. Contributors find evidence for Cahokia’s hegemony—its social, cultural, ideological, and economic influence—in artifacts, burial practices, and religious iconography uncovered at far-flung sites across the Eastern Woodlands. Case studies include Kincaid in the Ohio River Valley, Schild in the Illinois River Valley, Shiloh in Tennessee, and Aztalan in Wisconsin. These essays also show how, with Cahokia’s abandonment, the diaspora continued via the Mississippi River and extended the culture’s impact southward.

Chinese diaspora archaeology in North America is at a tipping point. On one hand, archaeologists have collected tremendous amounts of data and made significant contributions to our understanding of Chinese immigrant life; on the other, the field remains slow to move past outdated approaches that rely on dichotomies of continuity and change that essentialize Chinese immigrants. This volume will challenge tired approaches and provide models for future work by bringing together chapters from scholars working on new and more nuanced approaches for interpreting Chinese diaspora archaeological sites in North America. Chapters will address the conceptualization of the field (as diaspora, in relation to Asian American studies, etc.), highlight the diversity of Chinese contexts in North America (urban and rural Chinatowns, mining communities, railroad camps, etc.), foregrounding the understudied aspects of Chinese migrant life (entrepreneurialism, cross–cultural interaction, creativity, etc.). Rather than being a report on the state of the field, our goal is that this volume will instead actualize change and shape the future direction of the sub–discipline, as well as bring Chinese diaspora archaeology into broader discussions about topics such as race and migration.

The relationship between humans and dogs has garnered considerable attention within archaeological research around the world. Investigations into the lived experiences of domestic dogs have proven to be an intellectually productive avenue for better understanding humanity in the past. This book examines the human-canine connection by moving beyond asking when, why, or how the dog was domesticated. While these questions are fundamental, beyond them lies a rich and textured history of humans maintaining a bond with another species through cooperation and companionship over thousands of years. Diverse techniques and theoretical approaches are used by authors in this volume to investigate the many ways dogs were conceptualized by their human counterparts in terms of both their value and social standing within a variety of human cultures across space and time. In this way, this book contributes a better understanding of the human-canine bond while also participating in broader anthropological discussions about how human interactions with domesticated animals shape their practices and worldviews.

This multi-authored case study of three Nipmuc sites is an introductory archaeology text that includes a tribal member as one of the scholars. Collaboration between the authors over two decades is a key theme in the book, serving as a model for a primary topic of the book. Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration engages young scholars in archaeology and Native American history, teaching them about respecting and including indigenous knowledge and perspectives on colonization and indigenous identity. A key asset is access by indigenous peoples whose past is explored in this book. The case study offers an arena in which Nipmuc history continues to unfold, from the pre-Contact period up to the present, and stresses the strong relationships between Nipmuc people of the past and present to their land and related social and political conflicts over time. A double narrative approach (the authors sharing their experiences while exploring the stories of individuals from the past whose voices emerge through their work) explores key issues of continuity, commonality, authenticity and identity many Native people have confronted today and in the past. As a model of collaborative archaeology, the relationships that developed between the authors stress the critical role personal relationships play in the development and growth of scholarly collaborations. Beyond being “engaged,” indigenous peoples need to be integral to any research focused on their history and culture. Although not entirely a new concept, this book demonstrates how collaboration can move beyond engagement and consultation to true incorporation of indigenous knowledge and scholarship.

Historical Ecology and Archaeology in the Galápagos Islands explores human history in the Galápagos Islands, which is today one of the world’s premier nature attractions. From its early beginnings, the Galápagos National Park connected a dual vision of biological conservation with responsible tourism. However, despite its popular perception as a pristine nature park, the archipelago has experienced protracted interactions with humans at least since its accidental discovery in 1535. This book contextualizes six years of interdisciplinary archaeological and historical research on San Cristóbal, the easternmost island in the archipelago. It focuses on the interior highland community of El Progreso and specifically the preserved vestiges of a 19th-century sugar plantation, the Hacienda El Progreso, which left the most intensive historic footprint of human activity in the islands. It did not do this alone, as other islands, particularly those with potable water sources, were varyingly impacted by human encounters. Proceeding within a framework of Historical Ecology, the book integrates archaeological research with historical and ecological study and incorporates three interconnected perspectives: 1. globalization and the increasing integration of the islands into an expanding network of human interests; 2. anthropogenic transformation of distinctive island habitats into novel or emerging ecosystems; and, 3. changing popular and scientific perceptions of nature and ecotourism’s role in biological conservation, preservation, and restoration.

Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes examines how settlements along South America’s Pacific coastline played a role in the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of Andean civilizations from the Late Pleistocene era through Spanish colonization. Providing the first synthesis of data from Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, this wide-ranging volume evaluates and revises long-standing research on ancient maritime sites across the region.

While death and dying are universal, the treatment of the dead is culturally and temporally specific, highlighting the influence of both the deceased individual and the living community within the mortuary process. This volume focuses specifically on non-normative or atypical mortuary practices situated within a contextually driven understanding of social and cultural norms surrounding the process of interment. Each chapter compares and contrasts the various elements of these mortuary treatments (e.g., body position, body orientation, artifact inclusion) and how they may represent specific ideological and/or cultural notions of identity and personhood after death (e.g., age, sex, gender, status, health). Care is taken to avoid simple binary classifications of “typical” and “atypical” by considering the range of mortuary treatments that characterize each society. Drawing on examples from North and South America, Europe, and Asia, this comprehensive volume stresses the commonality between non-normative or atypical treatments spanning millennia. Additionally, this volume strives to employ a holistic understanding of non-normative burials both in terms of assessing the significance and interpretation of individual cases of atypical interments, as well as to better understand the overall phenomenon of these mortuary practices, which continue to be the source of fascination and debate within mortuary archaeology.