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"The Oxford Handbook of the Incas aims to be the first comprehensive book on the Inca, the largest empire in the pre-Columbian world. Using archaeology, ethnohistory and art history, the central goal of this handbook is to bring together novel recent research conducted by experts from different fields that study the Inca empire, from its origins and expansion to its demise and continuing influence in contemporary times"--Provided by publisher.
This edited volume focuses on the funerary archaeology of the Pan-Andean area in the pre-Hispanic period. The contributors examine the treatment of the dead and provide an understanding of how these ancient groups coped with mortality, as well as the ways in which they strove to overcome the effects of death. The contributors also present previously unpublished discoveries and employ a range of academic and analytical approaches that have rarely - if ever - been utilised in South America before. The book covers the Formative Period to the end of the Inca Empire, and the chapters together comprise a state-of-the-art summary of all the best research on Andean funerary archaeology currently being carried out around the globe.
On August 3, 2014, the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq was attacked by the “Islamic State”. Killing and abducting thousands, the jihadists also destroyed many of the religious minority’s shrines. Others, however, were defended by local fighters and groups affiliated with the PKK. In the aftermath of the genocide, stories of divine intervention into the defence bolstered land claims of serveral Kurdish political groups. Through extensive fieldwork in the region, I trace imaginaries of Sinjar as a landscape of resistance and a communal history of continuous persecution to current political disputes and attempts to construct a unified Yezidi identity.
New data from the past 25 years of research at an important pre-Hispanic site The sacred Andean site of Pachacamac, inhabited for over a thousand years before the Spanish Conquest, has an enduring presence in Peruvian history and plays a pivotal role in the formation of current views about religion and thought in the pre-Hispanic period. Unveiling Pachacamac is the first volume to synthesize the past quarter century’s abundance of new data and hypotheses on this important sanctuary. Gathering contributions from an international array of leading researchers working at the site, this volume examines deep theoretical questions about social change, interregional interactions, the nature of rel...
Paul Kosmin argues that the coast--not individual shores, but the coast as such--was fundamental to ancient history. The social and natural dynamics of the coast profoundly shaped not just politics and trade but also ancient peoples' sense of wonder and of self, earning constant philosophical, religious, scientific, and literary attention.
From c. 324 BCE to c. 185 BCE, the Mauryas controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent with efficiency and administrative finesse. Beginning with the origins of Magadha in the sixth century BCE, this definitive book on the Mauryas captures the drama, the colourful betrayals and the intrigues of the Mauryan dynasty in Magadha, starting with its enigmatic founder, Chandragupta Maurya, and his even more enigmatic mentor, Chanakya/ Kautilya, who helped him to get the throne. Chandragupta’s son and heir, Bindusara, is an extremely shadowy, elusive figure in the historical narrative of the Mauryas. Sandwiched between his well-known father and his even more well-known son, Ashoka, Bindusara ...
Paul Bahn has collected dozens of fun tales from the trenches to illuminate what actually occurs when archaeologists go into the field.
This book explores the central role of religion in place-making and infrastructural projects in ancient polities. It presents a trilectic approach to archaeological study of religious landscapes that combines Indigenous philosophies with the spatial and semiotic thinking of Lefebvre, Peirce, and proponents of assemblage theories. Case studies from ancient Angkor and the Andes reveal how rituals of place-making activated processes of territorialization and semiosis fundamental to the experience of political worlds that shaped power relations in past societies. The perspectives developed in the book permit a reconstruction of how landscapes were variably conceived, perceived, and lived in the ...
Part of a resurgence in the comparative study of ancient societies, this book presents a variety of methods and approaches to comparative analysis through the examination of wide-ranging case studies. Each chapter is a comparative study, and the diverse topics and regions covered in the book contribute to the growing understanding of variation and change in ancient complex societies. The authors explore themes ranging from urbanization and settlement patterns, to the political strategies of kings and chiefs, to the economic choices of individuals and households. The case studies cover an array of geographical settings, from the Andes to Southeast Asia. The authors are leading archaeologists whose research on early empires, states, and chiefdoms is at the cutting edge of scientific archaeology.
This book is a study of the ways places are created and how they attain meaning. Smith presents archaeological data from Khonkho Wankane in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia to explore how landscapes were imagined and constructed during processes of political centralization in this region. In particular he examines landscapes of movement and the development of powerful political and religious centers during the Late Formative period (200 BC–AD 500), just before the emergence of the urban state centered at Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100). Late Formative politico-religious centers, Smith notes, were characterized by mobile populations of agropastoralists and caravan drovers. By exploring ritual practice at Late Formative settlements, Smith provides a new way of looking at political centralization, incipient urbanism, and state formation at Tiwanaku.