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This book examines from an archaeological perspective the social and economic changes that took place in Yucatán, Mexico beginning in the 18th century, as the region became increasingly articulated within global networks of exchange. Of particular interest is the formation and ultimate supremacy of the hacienda system in Yucatán and the effect that new forms of capitalist organized production had on native Maya social organization. Household archaeology and spatial analysis conducted on the grounds of the former Hacienda San Juan Bautista Tabi provides the data for analyzing the results of this change on the daily lives and existence of those individuals incorporated within the hacienda system. The use of archaeological excavation to place the lives of local individuals within the context of larger global processes makes this book a worthy contribution to the study of archaeology.
“The cement slabs and decaying fountains obscured by vegetation at the site of Camp Hearne echo a time forgotten of a bustling city of nearly 5,000 men brought together by world conflict.” The oral histories, archival research, and archaeological data compiled by author Michael Waters and his team of researchers tells the story of 5,000 German soldiers held as prisoners of war in rural Texas during World War II. Camp Hearne, located on the outskirts of Hearne, Texas, was one of the first and largest POW camps in the United States. Between 1943 and 1945 nearly 50,000 German prisoners, mostly from the German Afrika Korps lived and worked at seventy POW camps across Texas. The story of Camp...
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Archaeological field schools, notably in North America but also across the world, are seminal student experiences. They are also important vehicles by which research students and academic staff carry out fieldwork research, often away from the environs of their home institution. Field schools are teaching and research projects, but they also take place within a contemporary local context. This is the first ever collection of studies examining the tensions between teaching, research and local socio-cultural conditions, and explores the range of experiences associated with field schools. It will be of interest to all those wishing to attend a field school, whether as student or junior staff member, and for novice and experienced field school directors who can gain fresh insights from others’ experiences.
This book provides a short, readable introduction to historical archaeology, which focuses on modern history in all its fascinating regional, cultural, and ethnic diversity. Accessibly covering key methods and concepts, including fundamental theories and principles, the history of the field, and basic definitions, Historical Archaeology also includes a practical look at career prospects for interested readers. Orser discusses central topics of archaeological research such as time and space, survey and excavation methods, and analytical techniques, encouraging readers to consider the possible meanings of artifacts. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as an historical archaeologist,...
The Mexican Revolution was a tumultuous struggle for social and political reform that ousted an autocrat and paved the way for a new national constitution. The conflict, however, came late to Yucatán, where a network of elite families with largely European roots held the reins of government. This privileged group reaped spectacular wealth from haciendas, cash-crop plantations tended by debt-ridden servants of Maya descent. When a revolutionary army from central Mexico finally gained a foothold in Yucatán in 1915, the local custom of agrarian servitude met its demise. Drawing on a dozen years of archaeological and historical investigation, Allan Meyers breaks new ground in the study of Yuca...
In Rooting in a Useless Land, Chelsea Fisher examines the deep histories of environmental-justice conflicts in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. She draws on her innovative archaeological research in Yaxunah, an Indigenous Maya farming community dealing with land dispossession, but with a surprising twist: Yaxunah happens to be entangled with prestigious sustainable-development projects initiated by some of the most famous chefs in the world. Fisher contends that these sustainable-development initiatives inadvertently bolster the useless-land narrative—a colonial belief that Maya forests are empty wastelands—which has been driving Indigenous land dispossession and environmental injustice for centuries. Rooting in a Useless Land explores how archaeology, practiced within communities, can restore history and strengthen relationships built on contested ground.
Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands explores what has been required of the Maya to survive both internal and external threats and other destabilizing forces. These include shifting power dynamics and sociocultural transformations, tumultuous political regimes, the precarity of newly formed nation states, migration in search of refuge, and newly globalizing economies in the Yucatecan lowlands in the Late Colonial to Early National periods—the times when formal Spanish colonial rule was giving way to Yucatecan and Mexican neocolonial settler systems. The work takes a hemispheric approach to the historical and material analysis of colonialism, bridging the often disparate literatures on colonial...
Traveling with Sugar reframes the rising diabetes epidemic as part of a five-hundred-year-old global history of sweetness and power. Amid eerie injuries, changing bodies, amputated limbs, and untimely deaths, many people across the Caribbean and Central America simply call the affliction “sugar”—or, as some say in Belize, “traveling with sugar.” A decade in the making, this book unfolds as a series of crónicas—a word meaning both slow-moving story and slow-moving disease. It profiles the careful work of those “still fighting it” as they grapple with unequal material infrastructures and unsettling dilemmas. Facing a new incarnation of blood sugar, these individuals speak back to science and policy misrecognitions that have prematurely cast their lost limbs and deaths as normal. Their families’ arts of maintenance and repair illuminate ongoing struggles to survive and remake larger systems of food, land, technology, and medicine.
The Galápagos Islands are one of the world’s premiere nature attractions, home to unique ecosystems widely thought to be untouched and pristine. Historical Ecology and Archaeology in the Galápagos Islands reveals that the archipelago is not as isolated as many imagine, examining how centuries of human occupation have transformed its landscape. This book shows that the island chain has been a part of global networks since its discovery in 1535 and traces the changes caused by human colonization. Central to this history is the sugar plantation Hacienda El Progreso on San Cristóbal Island. Here, zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical evidence documents the introduction of exotic species and landscape transformations, and material evidence attests that inhabitants maintained connections to the outside world for consumer goods. Beyond illuminating the human history of the islands, the authors also look at the impact of visitors to Galápagos National Park today, raising questions about tourism’s role in biological conservation, preservation, and restoration. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson