The prehistoric Pueblo world, A.D. 1150-1350

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Jason S. Shapiro

"Until recently, archaeologists have rarely studied prehistoric architecture as if it were an artifact comparable to pottery or stone tools. Following the premise that built space embodies social organization, Jason Shapiro takes a fresh look at architectural data from Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, a fourteenth-century site in the northern Rio Grande Valley of present-day New Mexico, in order to explore what it might reveal about people's social lives. Noticeable differences exist in the way that Ancestral Pueblo peoples organized space at Arroyo Hondo during its two periods of occupation, including a significant shift toward greater residential "privacy" during the later period. This pattern was no isolated phenomenon." "Comparing Arroyo Hondo with other sites, Shapiro shows similar changes for the contemporaneous pueblos of Tijeras and Puye as well as twentieth-century Acoma Pueblo. The shift from a more openly interconnected, "accessible" plan to a more restricted, spatially segregated plan may have marked a shift in Pueblo social organization - probably related to rapid population growth and immigration - that endured for centuries."--Jacket.

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Ruth D. Lechuga, Chloë Sayer

In rural Mexico, folk festivals and the dances that accompany them mark the high point of local life. In preparation for these festivities, Old and New World traditions fuse to forge an awe-inspiring array of masks made by artisans whose talent is legendary. Mask Arts of Mexico provides a comprehensive and celebration of these wonderfully inventive masks and their creators in a rich display of artistry, vitality, beauty, and whimsy.

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Ada Gabucci

This pocket-size reference draws on the vast treasures of this ancient civilization to illustrate the remarkable achievements of one of the great empires of the West, from the traditional date of Rome's founding - 754 B.C. - -until the fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 476, the year in which the last emperor, the boy Romulus Augustus, was deposed by the Goths and the imperial insignia was sent to Constantinople. Rome opens with a section on the major personages, such as Romulus and Remus, Pompey, and Constantine; each concise biography is complemented by full-color reproductions of portraits, ivories, coins, and monuments. A section on power and public life includes the grain dole, the army, the city's archives, and its imperial triumphs. A chapter on religion considers the major gods and cults, "Oriental" rites, and Christianity. The chapter devoted to daily life includes makeup, gambling, and portraiture, and is followed by a section on funerals and the dead. A section on the layout of the city is a must-read for any tourist to Rome. The book includes a map of the ancient city, a chronology, accounts of the major museums, an index, and a bibliography.

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Lydia H. Liu

The problem of translation has become increasingly central to critical reflections on modernity and its universalizing processes. Approaching translation as a symbolic and material exchange among peoples and civilizations and not as a purely linguistic or literary matter, the essays in Tokens of Exchange focus on China and its interactions with the West to historicize an economy of translation. Rejecting the familiar regional approach to non-Western societies, the contributors to this volume contend that "national histories" and "world history" must be read with absolute attention to the types of epistemological translatability that have been constructed among various modern languages and cultures. By studying the production and circulation of meaning as value in areas including history, religion, language, law, visual art, music, and pedagogy, the essays consider exchanges between Jesuit and Protestant missionaries and the Chinese between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and focus on the interchanges occasioned by the spread of capitalism and imperialism. Concentrating on ideological reciprocity and nonreciprocity in science, medicine, and cultural pathologies, the contributors also posit that such exchanges often lead to racialized and essentialized ideas about culture, sexuality, and nation. The collection then turns to the role of language itself as a site of the universalization of knowledge in the contemplation of such processes as the invention of Basic English and the global teaching of the English language. By focusing on the moments wherein meaning-value is exchanged in the translation from one language to another, the essays highlight the circulation of the global in the local as they address the role played by historical translation in the universalizing processes of modernity and globalization.