Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain, about fifth-millennium BC settlements that reveal the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age, when these prehistoric societies developed new agropastoral subsistences, burial practices and habitation patterns.

The Classic Maya of the Central Lowlands crafted one of the ancient world’s great civilizations in what is today Belize, northern Guatemala, and Yucatan, Mexico. Although the Maya have long been known for their artistic and architectural achievements, the economic and agricultural base of this society has received far less attention. Over the past couple of decades, archaeologists have begun to understand how Maya householders reliably farmed this harsh, fragile, and yet highly productive environment for two thousand years. A new view emerges of how regional polities prospered in the face of population increase, political turmoil, and environmental and climatic change.

This volume examines pre-Columbian political processes grounded in environmental productivity and a mutual interdependence between elite and non-elite classes, both contributing to the long-term success and adaptability of local and regional political communities and the networks that sustained them. 

Series: Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives 6

Over the last decades, considerable effort has been directed towards the study of early complex societies of northern Peru, and in recent years archaeologists have expressed a strong interest in the art and archaeology of the Moche, Lambayeque and Chimú societies. Yet, comparatively little attention has been paid to the earlier cultural foundations of North Coast civilization: the Gallinazo. In the recent years, however, the work of a number of North Coast specialists brought about a large quantity of data on the Gallinazo occupation of the coast, but a coherent framework for studying this culture had yet to be defined. A round table, which gathered some thirty scholars from Europe and North and South America to discuss the Gallinazo phenomenon, resulted in this volume of fourteen chapters by authors with different perspectives and backgrounds who re-consider the nature of the Gallinazo culture and its position within Peruvian North Coast cultural history. Greater issues about the development of complex societies in this area and within the Andean region in general are also examined. The contributions reveal a diversity of perspectives on North Coast archaeology, something that is likely to stimulate methodological and theoretical debates among Andeanists, pre-Columbian specialists, and New World archaeologists in general.

Series: Monographs 66

Settlement archaeology in the Maya area has focused much of its attention on the polar extremes of the settlement continuum. As a result of this urban/rural bias, a whole range of complex rural settlements remain under-explored. The chapters in this volume highlight the variable quality of these "middle level settlements".

The first of 2 volumes reporting on excavations at a middle neolithic to early bronze age site in northeast Greece. Vol. 1 presents the full sequence of culture exposed by excavation of this settlement mound, 10.5 m deep. Further studies define the environment during the 3 millennia of occupation and clarify the changing pattern of human subsistence over time. The chronological relationships for the Aegean, the Balkans, and Anatolia are examined in detail.

Altera Roma explores the confrontation of two cultures—European and Amerindian—and two empires—Spanish and Aztec. In an age of exploration and conquest, Spanish soldiers, missionaries, and merchants brought an array of cultural preconceptions. Their encounter with Aztec civilization coincided with Europe’s rediscovery of classical antiquity, and Tenochtitlán came to be regarded a “second Rome,” altera Roma. Iberia’s past as the Roman province of Hispania served to both guide and critique the Spanish overseas mission. 

The dialogue that emerged between the Old World and the New World shaped a dual heritage into the unique culture of Nueva España. In this volume, 10 eminent historians and archaeologists examine the analogies between empires widely separated in time and place, and consider how monumental art and architecture created “theater states,” a strategy that links ancient Rome, Hapsburg Spain, preconquest Mexico, and other imperial regimes.

The twenty-eight contributors to this book show how experimental and ethnographic approaches are being used to shed new light on the process of domestication, and harvesting techniques, tools and technology in the period just before and just after the appearance of agriculture. The book takes an explicitly comparative approach, with chapters on SW Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa.

This revised and expanded edition of the classic 1999 edited book includes all the chapters from the original volume plus a new, updated, introduction and several new chapters. The current book is an up-to-date review of research into Mycenaean palatial systems with chapters by archaeologists and Linear B specialists that will be useful to scholars, instructors, and advanced students.

This book aims to define more accurately the term “palace” in light of both recent archaeological research in the Aegean and current anthropological thinking on the structure and origin of early states. Regional centers do not exist as independent entities. They articulate with more extensive sociopolitical systems. The concept of palace needs to be incorporated into enhanced models of Mycenaean state organization, ones that more completely integrate primary centers with networks of regional settlement and economy.

Series: Monographs 60