Böcker i New Studies in Archaeology-serien

Teotihuacan was one of the earliest and more populous preColumbian cities, and the Feathered Serpent was its vital monument, erected circa 200 AD. This work explores the religious meanings and political implications of the pyramid with meticulous and thorough analyses of substantially new excavation data. Challenging the traditional view of the city as a legendary, sacred, or anonymously-governed centre, the book provides significant new insights on the Teotihuacan polity and society. It provides interpretations on the pyramid's location, architecture, sculptures, iconography, mass sacrificial graves and rich symbolic offerings, and concludes that the pyramid commemorated the accession of rulers who were inscribed to govern with military force on behalf of the gods. This archaeological examination of the monument shows it to be the physical manifestation of state ideologies such as the symbolism of human sacrifice, militarism, and individual-centred divine authority, ideologies which were later diffused among other Mesoamerican urban centres.

This 1976 text is a pioneering study in the applications to archaeology of modern statistical and quantitative techniques. The authors show how these techniques, when sensitively employed, can dramatically extend and refine the information presented in distribution maps and other analyses of spatial relationships.

Drawing extensively on anthropological theory and ecological models of human adaptation, Forest Farmers and Stockherders explores the single most radical transformation in all European prehistory - the growth of a food-producing economy in the period 5000-3000 BC.

First published in 1982, this book presents the results of a series of field investigations carried out in Kenya, Zambia and the Sudan into the 'archaeological' remains and material culture of contemporary small-scale societies, and demonstrates the way in which objects are used as symbols within social action and within particular world views and ideologies.

European Bronze Age societies produced elaborate artifacts and were drawn into a European-wide trade network, yet they were economically and politically undiversified. Kristian Kristiansen offers an interesting explanation of this paradox. The result is a coherent overview that addresses some of the larger questions raised about the period.

This book addresses the problem of how to study mobile peoples using archaeological techniques. It deals not only with the prehistory of nomads but also with current issues in theory and methodology.

How might archaeologists use the traces left by a former society to discover how that society was ordered - whether a people lived under a hierarchy of different statuses or under a more egalitarian regime? What is ranking and how do different kinds of ranking affect the quality of life? These are the questions addressed by Paul Wason in The Archaeology of Rank.

Archaeology has made enormous advances recently, both in volume of discoveries and in its character as an intellectual discipline.

This is an archaeological perspective on the elaborate system of chiefdoms found in the islands of Polynesia. Using comparative ethnography, lexical reconstruction and direct archaeological evidence, the author reconstructs Ancestral Polynesian Society and details colonization, adaptation to changing environments, development of intensive production and social conflict and competition.

Christopher Tilley integrates a wide range of evidence to recreate accessibly the lives of hunter-gatherers and farmers in Sweden and Denmark. His skilful fusion of archaeology and new anthropological approaches makes this book an original contribution to a widely debated topic.

Dean Arnold's ethnoarchaeological study looks at pottery production in a contemporary Peruvian Andean community. Its main purpose is to propose a review of accepted ideas about pre-industrial pottery in the light of what has been discovered about contemporary practices and the associated beliefs and interpretations.

Interpreting the Axe Trade documents the changing character and context of stone axe production and exchange in the British Neolithic. Drawing on a variety of studies, the authors explore some of the problems and potentials that attend archaeological discussions of exchange at both a theoretical and a methodological level.

In this innovative study, James Whitley examines the relationship between the development of pot style and social changes in the Dark Age of Greece.

This ethnoarchaeological study looks at contemporary household-scale ceramic production in several Mexican communities.