- The Fires of Vesuvius
- Although Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem, Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, she offers us the big picture of the inhabitants of the lost city.
- Hardcover November 2009
- Love for Lydia
- This generously illustrated volume, presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey.
- Hardcover February 2009
- Stonehenge
- Hill guides the reader on a tour of Stonehenge in all its cultural contexts, as a monument to many things—to Renaissance Humanism, Romantic despair, Victorian enterprise, and English Radicalism.
- Hardcover November 2008
- Paradise Earned
- This is a study of the twelve small gold lamellae from Crete that were tokens for entrance into a golden afterlife. The lamellae are placed within the context of a small corpus of similar texts, and published with extensive commentary on their topography, lettering and engraving, dialect and orthography, meter, chronology, and usage. This work adduces parallels to the texts on the lamellae from the Byzantine period and modern Greece to illuminate the everlasting and persistent human quest for "earning Paradise."
- Paperback September 2008
- Remembering Awatovi
- Remembering Awatovi is the engaging story of a major archaeological expedition on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Centered on the large Pueblo village of Awatovi, with its Spanish mission church and beautiful kiva murals, the excavations are renowned not only for the data they uncovered but also for the interdisciplinary nature of the investigations. In archaeological lore they are also remembered for the diverse, fun-loving, and distinguished cast of characters who participated in or visited the digs.
- Hardcover September 2008 / Paperback September 2008
- Classic-Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz
- This book explores the diverse traditions and dynamic interactions along the Mexican Gulf lowlands at the height of their cultural florescence. Best known for their elaborate ball game rituals and precocious inscriptions with long-count dates, these cultures served as a critical nexus between the civilizations of highland Mexico and the lowland Maya, influencing developments in both regions.
- Hardcover May 2008
- El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America
- This book summarizes research on the nature of El Niño events in the Americas and details specific historic and prehistoric patterns in Peru and elsewhere.
- Hardcover May 2008
- Kebara Cave, Mt. Carmel, Israel
- The recent excavations at Kebara Cave in Israel have provided data crucial for understanding the cognitive and behavioral differences between archaic and modern humans. In this first of two volumes, the authors discuss site formation processes, subsistence strategies, land-use patterns, and intrasite organization. The research at Kebara Cave allows archaeologists to document the variability observed in the strategies of the Late Middle and early Upper Paleolithic periods in the Levant.
- Paperback March 2008
- The Middle East Garden Traditions
- This book unites new information and surprising results from the last fifteen years of garden research, at a remove from the clichés of Orientalism. Garden archaeology reveals the economic importance of Judean gardens in Roman times and the visual complexity of gardens created and transformed in Moorish Spain. More contemporary approaches unravel the cultural continuities, variations, and differences between gardens in the Middle East since Roman times and in the Islamic world.
- Paperback February 2008
- Kourion
- More than fifty years after the earthquake of 365 destroyed Kourion, the seat of the Roman administration of Cyprus, a Christian basilica was built upon the remains of its pagan predecessor. Replete with mosaics and revetment, the basilica was the center of the ecclesiastical administration until its destruction in the late seventh century. In this long-awaited report, Megaw and colleagues present in full the results of excavations from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s.
- Hardcover January 2008
- Variations in the Expressions of Inka Power
- Until recently, little archaeological investigation has been dedicated to the Inka, the last great culture to flourish in Andean South America before the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spaniards. Using a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, scholars from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities provide a new understanding of Inka culture and history.
- Hardcover January 2008
- Holon
- Excavations at the open-air site of Holon, carried out by Tamar Noy between 1963 and 1970, were some of the first successful salvage projects in the region. This volume brings together the results of interdisciplinary research on the site of Holon--geology, dating, archaeology, paleontology, taphonomy, and spatial analysis--by a team of leading international researchers. This book will be an essential point of reference for students and specialists working in the archaeology of human evolution.
- Paperback January 2008
- The Singing Neanderthals
- In The Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen draws together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and musicology to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. Mithen explores music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species. The result is a fascinating work--and a succinct riposte to those who have dismissed music as a functionless evolutionary byproduct.
- Paperback October 2007
- Feeding the Ancestors
- Feeding the Ancestors presents an exquisite group of carved spoons from the Pacific Northwest that resides in the collections of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Hillel Burger's beautiful color photographs reveal every nuance of the carvers' extraordinary artistry. Anne-Marie Victor-Howe provides a fascinating glimpse into these aboriginal subsistence cultures as she explains the manufacture and function of traditional spoons. This is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Pacific Northwest Coast peoples and their art.
- Paperback June 2007
See also: All Books in SOCIAL SCIENCE.