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Dumbarton Oaks Papers 63
Edited by Alice-Mary Talbot
Hardcover December 2009
Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 55/56, Absconding
Edited by Francesco Pellizzi
Paperback December 2009
Script and Glyph
Dana Leibsohn

The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca was created at a pivotal transitional moment, bridging an era when pictorial manuscripts dominated and one that witnessed the rising hegemony of alphabetic texts. Script and Glyph is a particularly appropriate volume for Dumbarton Oaks, as it crosses the boundaries of Pre-Columbian and Landscape areas of study. The volume is beautifully illustrated with color images from the manuscript itself.

Hardcover September 2009 / Paperback September 2009
Paradise Earned
Yannis Tzifopoulos
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 July 2009
The Lost Capital of Byzantium
Steven Runciman
Foreword by John Freely

Clinging to a rugged hillside in the lush valley of Sparta lies Mistra, one of the most dramatically beautiful Byzantine cities in Greece, a place steeped in history, myth, and romance. Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most distinguished historians of the Byzantine period, traveled to Mistra on numerous occasions and became enchanted with the place. Now published in paperback for the first time, Lost Capital of Byzantium tells the story of this once-great city—its rise and fall and its place in the history of the Peloponnese and the Byzantine empire.

Paperback June 2009
Ancient American Art in Detail
Colin McEwan

This latest title in a strikingly beautiful series of collectable books turns our attention to the rich variety of art from the Ancient Americas. Beginning by asking what constitutes Ancient American art, Colin McEwan contextualizes this art in its complexity of form and meaning. The beauty of the smallest details is magnified and contextualized through accompanying essays written by experts in Ancient American art.

Hardcover June 2009
Symbols in Clay
Steven A. LeBlanc
Lucia R. Henderson

In late prehistory, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi in Arizona created a unique and spectacular painted pottery tradition referred to as Hopi Yellow Ware. This ceramic tradition inspired Hopi potter Nampeyo’s revival pottery at the turn of the twentieth century. Extending the Peabody’s influential Awatovi project of the 1930s, Symbols in Clay calls into question deep-seated assumptions about pottery production and specialization in the precontact American Southwest.

Paperback May 2009
Palaces of the Ancient New World
Edited by Susan Toby Evans
Edited by Joanne Pillsbury
As in the Old World, kings and nobles of ancient Mexico and Peru had luxurious administrative quarters in cities, and exquisite pleasure palaces in the countryside. This volume explores the great houses of the ancient New World, from palaces of the Aztecs and Incas, looted by the Spanish conquistadors, to those lost high in the Andes and deep in the jungle.
Paperback April 2009
Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6
John Nesbitt
Assisted by Cecile Morrisson

The combined Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg collection of Byzantine seals is one of the largest in the world, containing 17,000 specimens. Volume 6 in the catalogue presents the seals of emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople. More than 250 seals are illustrated and accompanied—where appropriate—by a full commentary regarding each specimen’s date, biographical information on its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and iconographic features.

Hardcover April 2009
Love for Lydia
Edited by Nicholas D. Cahill
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
El NiƱo, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America
Edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss
Edited by Jeffrey Quilter
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 January 2009
The Fires of Vesuvius
Mary Beard
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 December 2008
Remembering Awatovi
Hester A. Davis
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 dig.
Hardcover December 2008 / Paperback December 2008
Stonehenge
Rosemary Hill
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 December 2008