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Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Disposing of Modernity explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring excavations of trash deposited during the fair, Rebecca Graff’s first-of-its kind study reveals changing consumer patterns, notions of domesticity and progress, and anxieties about the modernization of society. Graff examines artifacts, architecture, and written records from the 1893 fair’s Ohio Building, which was used as a clubhouse for fairgoers in Jackson Park, and the Charnley-Persky House, an aesthetically modern city residence designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of the items she uncovers were products that first debuted at world’s fairs, and materials such as mineral water bottles, cheese containers, dentures, and dinnerware illustrate how fairs created markets for new goods and influenced consumer practices. Graff discusses how the fair’s ephemeral nature gave it transformative power in Chicago society, and she connects its accompanying “conspicuous disposal” habits to today’s waste disposal regimes. Reflecting on the planning of the Obama Presidential Center at the site of the Chicago World’s Fair, she draws attention to the ways the historical trends documented here continue in the present.

The primary purpose of this edited volume is to formalize as a theory the historical turn in southeastern archaeology (and American archaeology) and provide a number of case studies illustrating the use of the theory in the region. In previous decades, archaeologists and other scholars studying what is commonly termed “prehistoric” America emphasized long-term, evolutionary change and adaptation, and archaeologists conceptualized pre-colonial societies like living organisms adapting to environmental challenges rather than as collections of people responding to historical trends and forces. The history of archaeology and the reasons for this conceptual frame are complex and deeply rooted in misconceptions about indigenous people as unchanging, static “people without history” who disappeared soon after Europeans arrived in North America. Today, however, archaeologists are combining evolutionary processes with a new understanding that so-called prehistory was also historical, contingent, and local, and historians are looking to the ancient past to better understand Indian societies of the historic era. In other words, scholars now understand that the historic and “prehistoric” eras were not categorically different and that people across this divide were subject to similar historical forces. This historicizing of prehistory represents a profound shift in our way of thinking about precolonial and colonial history and begins to erase the false divide between ancient America and colonial and even contemporary America.

Leprosy is an infection and neglected tropical disease that is steeped in myths, and, although it is described in history books, it can remain a challenge to manage today. Written in an accessible manner for professionals and the public alike, this book takes a global view of leprosy past and present. As a backdrop, it starts with exploring what we actually know about leprosy from medicine, how it is spread to humans, and its effects on the body. It then moves to consider its diagnosis and treatment in people, past and present. The focus switches next to the ways in which leprosy is diagnosed in skeletons (paleopathology), from just looking at the bones to analyzing the DNA of the bacteria preserved in the bones. By doing so, information on skeletons with evidence of leprosy across the globe is synthesized with the aim of considering the current state of global knowledge regarding the origin, evolution, and history of leprosy. In particular, the book explores how all the people diagnosed with leprosy in their skeletons in the past were buried, and the myth that everybody was ostracized and segregated into leprosy hospitals, due to stigma, is dismissed. It concludes with thoughts on a future for leprosy, the need to continue to dispel its myths and to seriously reconsider the use of the word “leper” when discussing leprosy today and in the past.

In this volume, Christina Friberg investigates the influence of Cahokia, the largest city of North America’s Mississippian culture between AD 1050 and 1350, on smaller communities throughout the midcontinent. Using evidence from recent excavations at the Audrey-North site in the Lower Illinois River Valley, Friberg examines the cultural give-and-take Audrey inhabitants experienced between new Cahokian customs and old Woodland ways of life. Comparing the architecture, pottery, and lithics uncovered here with data from thirty-five other sites across five different regions, Friberg reveals how the social, economic, and political influence of Cahokia shaped the ways Audrey inhabitants negotiated identities and made new traditions. Friberg’s broad interregional analysis also provides evidence that these diverse groups of people were engaged in a network of interaction and exchange outside Cahokia’s control. The Making of Mississippian Tradition offers a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of cultural exchange in precolonial settlements, and its detailed reconstruction of Audrey society offers a new, more nuanced interpretation of how and why Mississippian lifeways developed.

Engaging a longstanding controversy important to archaeologists and indigenous communities, Repatriation and Erasing the Past takes a critical look at laws that mandate the return of human remains from museums and laboratories to ancestral burial grounds. Anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss and attorney James Springer offer scientific and legal perspectives on the way repatriation laws impact research. Weiss discusses how anthropologists draw conclusions about past peoples through their study of skeletons and mummies and argues that continued curation of human remains is important. Springer reviews American Indian law and how it helped to shape laws such as NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). He provides detailed analyses of cases including the Kennewick Man and the Havasupai genetics lawsuits. Together, Weiss and Springer critique repatriation laws and support the view that anthropologists should prioritize scientific research over other perspectives.

A Struggle for Heritage draws on extensive archaeological, archival, and oral historical research and sets a remarkable standard for projects that engage a descendant community left out of the dominant narrative. Matthews demonstrates how archaeology can be an activist voice for a vulnerable population’s civil rights as he brings attention to the continuous, gradual, and effective economic assault on people of color living in a traditional neighborhood amid gentrification. Providing examples of multiple approaches to documenting hidden histories and silenced pasts, this study is a model for public and professional efforts to include and support the preservation of historic communities of color.

In The Valkyries’ Loom, Michèle Hayeur Smith examines Viking textiles as evidence of the little-known work of women in the Norse colonies that expanded from Scandinavia across the North Atlantic in the ninth century AD. While previous researchers have overlooked textiles as insignificant artifacts, Hayeur Smith is the first to use them to understand gender and economy in Norse societies of the North Atlantic.This groundbreaking study is based on the author’s systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (vaðmál); how they shaped the development of national identities by creating clothing; and how they helped their communities survive climate change by reengineering clothes during the Little Ice Age. She supplements her analysis by revealing societal attitudes about weaving through the poem “Darraðarljoð” from Njál’s Saga, in which the Valkyries—Óðin’s female warrior spirits—produce the cloth of history and decide the fates of men and nations.Bringing Norse women and their labor to the forefront of research, Hayeur Smith establishes the foundation for a gendered archaeology of the North Atlantic that has never been attempted before. This monumental and innovative work contributes to global discussions about the hidden roles of women in past societies in preserving tradition and guiding change.