Voices from the dust

Sample

Michael A. Adler

From the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century, the world of the ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi) was in transition, undergoing changes in settlement patterns and community organization that resulted in what scholars now call the Pueblo III period. This book synthesizes the archaeology of the ancestral Pueblo world during the Pueblo III period, examining twelve regions of the Anasazi world that embrace nearly the entire range of major topographic features, ecological zones, and prehistoric Puebloan settlement patterns found in the northern Southwest. Drawn from the 1990 Crow Canyon Archaeological Center conference "Pueblo Cultures in Transition," the book serves as both a data resource and a summary of ideas about prehistoric changes in Puebloan settlement and in regional interaction across nearly 150,000 square miles of the Southwest. The volume provides a compilation of settlement data for over 800 large sites occupied between A.D. 1100 and 1400 in the Southwest. These data provide new perspectives on the geographic scale of culture change in the Southwest during this period. Twelve chapters analyze the archaeological record for specific districts and provide a detailed picture of settlement size and distribution, community architecture, and population trends during the period. Additional chapters cover warfare and carrying capacity and provide overviews of change in the region. Throughout the chapters, the contributors address the unifying issues of the role of large sites in relation to smaller ones, changes in settlement patterns from the Pueblo II to Pueblo III periods, changes in community organization, and population dynamics.

Sample

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.

Sample

Graham Webster

"This classic work of scholarship scrutinizes all aspects of Roman military forces throughout the Roman Empire, in Europe, North Africa, and the Near and Middle East. Graham Webster describes the Roman army's composition, frontier systems, camps and forts, activities in the field (including battle tactics, signaling, and medical services), and peacetime duties, as well as the army's overall influence in the Empire. First published in 1969, the work is corrected and expanded in this third edition, which includes new information from excavations and the findings of contemporary scholars. Hugh Elton provides an introduction surveying scholarship on the Roman army since the last edition of 1985."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Steven C. Brown

Masks, bowls, bentwood boxes, and weavings from Native artists of the Northwest Coast grace museums around the world. Northwest Coast art embodies a highly flexible tradition, reinterpreted by individuals in each generation, as is evidenced by artifacts collected from the area over the last two centuries. This richly informative book includes photographs of more than 160 objects from Seattle area private collections and the Seattle Art Museum, grouped chronologically to illustrate evolutionary changes within the Northwest Coast art tradition. This is a tradition of great antiquity which also remains vital and alive today in the work of the best contemporary Northwest Coast Native artists. Among the extraordinary artworks illustrated in Native Visions are archaeological artifacts and the earliest documented Northwest Coast objects, collected in the eighteenth century, along with numerous pieces by the nineteenth-century artist Charles Edenshaw, masks and totem pole models by Willie Seaweed, and an unusual gold sculpture by Bill Reid.