SAA21

Representing a new wave of thinking about material culture studies-a topic long overdue for reevaluation-the essays in this volume take a fresh look at the relationship between material culture and exchange theory and illuminate the changing patterns of cultural flow in an increasingly global economy and the cultural differences registered in “regimes of value.”

Covers manufacturing techniques, lithic types and materials, reduction strategies and techniques, worldwide lithic technology, production variables, meaning of form, and usewear and residue analysis.

The Great Maya Droughts proposes a long-sought solution to the mystery of the collapse of the Maya civilization: a series of severe droughts during the ninth and tenth centuries that brought famine, thirst, and death to the Maya lowlands.

This revolutionary synthesis dispels the stereotype of big game hunters following mammoths across the Bering Land Bridge, while painting a vivid picture of marine mammal hunters, fishers, and general foragers colonizing the New World.

One of the most challenging problems facing contemporary archaeology concerns the operation and diversity of ancient states. This volume addresses how ancient states were structured and how they operated, an understanding of which is key to our ability to interpret a state's rise or fall.

In case studies ranging from the Far East to the American Southwest, the authors of Last Hunters-First Farmers provide a global perspective on contemporary research into the origins of agriculture. Downplaying more traditional explanations of the turn to agriculture, such as the influence of marginal environments and population pressures, the authors emphasize instead the importance of the resource-rich areas in which agriculture began, the complex social organizations already in place, the role of sedentism, and, in some locales, the advent of economic intensification and competition.

Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, one of the largest fourteenth century sites in the northern Rio Grande region, was excavated by the School of American Research under the leadership of Douglas W. Schwartz between 1970 and 1974. In this eighth volume of the Arroyo Hondo Archaeological Series, Judith A. Habicht-Mauche presents a masterful description and interpretation of the pottery from Arroyo Hondo.

Fifty Indian nations lie within the modern American Southwest, communities sustained through four centuries of European and American contact by their cultural traditions and ties to the land. In The People, Stephen Trimble provides an introduction to these Native peoples that is unrivaled in its scope and readability.

This fifth volume presents the results of faunal analysis from the Arroyo Hondo excavations, covering the topics of prehistoric vegetation and climate; the importance of various animals in the diet; seasonal hunting patterns; methods of butchering, skinning and cooking; the prehistoric hunting territory; the raising of domesticated dogs and turkeys; and trade in animals and animal products.

Chaco Canyon is the first complete account of Chacoan archaeology, from the discovery of the ruins by Spanish soldiers in the seventeenth century, through the scientific analyses of the 1970s.