Backlist

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 volume presents translations of essays by three German scholars who were preeminent in the social and natural science study of Central America in the early part of the twentieth century. 

Although the concepts and patterns of ritual varied through time in relation to general sociopolitical transformations and local historical circumstances in ancient Mesoamerica, most archaeologists would agree that certain underlying themes and structures modeled the ritual phenomena of this complex culture area. 

Essays in this volume explore the last three and one half millennia of the long history of the California Coast, focusing on the archaeological signatures of emergent cultural complexity. Organized geographically, they provide a mosaic of archaeological, historic, and ethnographic findings that illuminate cultural changes over time. 

“… the first comprehensive publication on Iranian archaeology since Frank Hole’s 1987 collection of articles The Archaeology of Western Iran… this collection of essays is a timely reminder of the present state and requirements of Iranian archaeology.” 
  — Gabriele Puschnigg, Journal of Field Archaeology, 2002-2004

Settlement archaeology in the Maya area has focused much of its attention on the polar extremes of the settlement continuum.

“Stanish and Bauer’s publication provides an excellent overview with selected details of survey and excavation of the islands… It is recommended to Andeanists and other scholars interested in early complex societies and their ritual systems.” 
  — Mary Glowacki, Antiquity, 2005

A comprehensive work, combining traditional zooarchaeological reports and various state-of-the-art summaries of methods and theoretical perspectives. This combination of detailed discussions of basic zooarchaeological data with reviews of important themes in Maya zooarchaeology emphasizes the central issues that guide our research from basic data collection through final comparative interpretation.

“The volume looks very good and represents a significant contribution toward California prehistory. The Cotsen Institute is to be commended for the quality of publications and for providing the means whereby these scholarly articles are available to other researchers and the public.”
  — Patricia Martz

The volume presents the results on an interdisciplinary regional field project (1984 - 1987) carried out on the island of Crete. This volume traces the changing patterns of settlement and cycles of social complexity from  the Late Neolithic period to the pr