front cover of After the Ice
After the Ice
A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC
Steven Mithen
Harvard University Press, 2004

20,000 BC, the peak of the last ice age—the atmosphere is heavy with dust, deserts, and glaciers span vast regions, and people, if they survive at all, exist in small, mobile groups, facing the threat of extinction.

But these people live on the brink of seismic change—10,000 years of climate shifts culminating in abrupt global warming that will usher in a fundamentally changed human world. After the Ice is the story of this momentous period—one in which a seemingly minor alteration in temperature could presage anything from the spread of lush woodland to the coming of apocalyptic floods—and one in which we find the origins of civilization itself.

Drawing on the latest research in archaeology, human genetics, and environmental science, After the Ice takes the reader on a sweeping tour of 15,000 years of human history. Steven Mithen brings this world to life through the eyes of an imaginary modern traveler—John Lubbock, namesake of the great Victorian polymath and author of Prehistoric Times. With Lubbock, readers visit and observe communities and landscapes, experiencing prehistoric life—from aboriginal hunting parties in Tasmania, to the corralling of wild sheep in the central Sahara, to the efforts of the Guila Naquitz people in Oaxaca to combat drought with agricultural innovations.

Part history, part science, part time travel, After the Ice offers an evocative and uniquely compelling portrayal of diverse cultures, lives, and landscapes that laid the foundations of the modern world.

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front cover of Alliance and Landscape on Perry Mesa in the Fourteenth Century
Alliance and Landscape on Perry Mesa in the Fourteenth Century
David R. Abbott
University of Utah Press, 2014
About forty miles north of Phoenix, Arizona, Perry Mesa is today part of Agua Fria National Monument, but during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, this windswept arid landscape became the site of numerous farming communities. This book explores why people moved to Perry Mesa at that time. Analyses of Perry Mesa contrast with those of the iconic large-scale migrations in the prehistoric Southwest such as the Kayenta diaspora and the gathering of the clans at Hopi. Unlike those long-distance movements into occupied regions, the Perry Mesa case is one of relatively localized aggregation on a largely vacant landscape. But, as was discovered with the iconic migrations, ethnogenesis (the creation of new identities) took hold on Perry Mesa, making it an extremely interesting counterpoint to the better-known migrations of the period.
     Contributors to this volume examine the migration process under two explanatory frameworks: alliance and landscape. These frameworks are used to explore competing hypotheses, positing either a rapid colonization associated with an alliance organized for warfare at a regional scale, or a more protracted migration as this landscape became comparatively more attractive for migrating farmers in the late thirteenth century.
     As the first major publication on the archaeology of Perry Mesa, this volume contributes to theoretical perspectives on migration and ethnogenesis, the study of warfare in the prehistoric Southwest, the study of intensive agricultural practices in a marginal environment, and the cultural history of a little studied and largely unknown portion of the ancient Southwest. It not only documents the migration but also the ensuing birth of a new ethnic identity that arose from the coalescence of diverse groups atop Perry Mesa.
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The American Discovery of Europe
Jack D. Forbes
University of Illinois Press, 2011
The American Discovery of Europe investigates the voyages of America's Native peoples to the European continent before Columbus's 1492 arrival in the "New World." The product of over twenty years of exhaustive research in libraries throughout Europe and the United States, the book paints a clear picture of the diverse and complex societies that constituted the Americas before 1492 and reveals the surprising Native American involvements in maritime trade and exploration. Starting with an encounter by Columbus himself with mysterious people who had apparently been carried across the Atlantic on favorable currents, Jack D. Forbes proceeds to explore the seagoing expertise of early Americans, theories of ancient migrations, the evidence for human origins in the Americas, and other early visitors coming from Europe to America, including the Norse. The provocative, extensively documented, and heartfelt conclusions of The American Discovery of Europe present an open challenge to received historical wisdom.
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front cover of Ancestral Hopi Migrations
Ancestral Hopi Migrations
Patrick D. Lyons
University of Arizona Press, 2003
Southwestern archaeologists have long speculated about the scale and impact of ancient population movements. In Ancestral Hopi Migrations, Patrick Lyons infers the movement of large numbers of people from the Kayenta and Tusayan regions of northern Arizona to every major river valley in Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Building upon earlier studies, Lyons uses chemical sourcing of ceramics and analyses of painted pottery designs to distinguish among traces of exchange, emulation, and migration. He demonstrates strong similarities among the pottery traditions of the Kayenta region, the Hopi Mesas, and the Homol'ovi villages, near Winslow, Arizona. Architectural evidence marshaled by Lyons corroborates his conclusion that the inhabitants of Homol'ovi were immigrants from the north. Placing the Homol'ovi case study in a larger context, Lyons synthesizes evidence of northern immigrants recovered from sites dating between A.D. 1250 and 1450. His data support Patricia Crown's contention that the movement of these groups is linked to the origin of the Salado polychromes and further indicate that these immigrants and their descendants were responsible for the production of Roosevelt Red Ware throughout much of the Greater Southwest. Offering an innovative juxtaposition of anthropological data bearing on Hopi migrations and oral accounts of the tribe's origin and history, Lyons highlights the many points of agreement between these two bodies of knowledge. Lyons argues that appreciating the scale of population movement that characterized the late prehistoric period is prerequisite to understanding regional phenomena such as Salado and to illuminating the connections between tribal peoples of the Southwest and their ancestors.
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front cover of Ancient Human Migrations
Ancient Human Migrations
A Multidisciplinary Approach
Peter Peregrine
University of Utah Press, 2009
The study of human migration is integral to the understanding of essential features of human experience. Many ancient civilizations were created and modified through migrations, and migrations of later periods gave rise to the modern ethnic map of the world, affecting ideology, economy and politics. Historically, most human migration studies have taken a more specialized approach, often focusing on archaeology or linguistics. Ancient Human Migrations collects outstanding papers from internationally renowned scholars to clarify the need for multidisciplinary approaches to the topic of human migration.

This collection of papers, worldwide in scope, originated from a working conference at the Santa Fe Institute. Admixture is a common outcome of migration, and human populations are all amalgams of ancestors, neighbors, and others. As a result, the volume argues, no “pure” races, cultures, or languages can exist. The very original analyses and discussions presented here return the concept of migration to its rightful place among the known processes of human evolutionary change and variation.
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front cover of Anonimo Mexicano
Anonimo Mexicano
Richley Crapo and Bonnie Glass-Coffin
Utah State University Press, 2005
Anonimo Mexicano is the first publication of the full Nahuatl text and English translation of a rare and important Native history of preconquest Mexico. Written circa 1600 by an anonymous Tlaxcaltecan author, it is an epic account of the settling of central Mexico by Nahua peoples from the northern frontier. They developed a sophisticated culture with powerful city states and an agricultural economy, fought great wars, established dynasties, and recorded their history and legends in painted books. The Mexica became the most powerful of these nations until their conquest by the Spanish with the help of the Tlaxcalteca, who were rivals of the Mexica and whose national origin tale was recorded in Anonimo Mexicano.
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front cover of Arab-American Faces and Voices
Arab-American Faces and Voices
The Origins of an Immigrant Community
By Elizabeth Boosahda
University of Texas Press, 2003

As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants.

Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester's links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.

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front cover of Archaeology without Borders
Archaeology without Borders
Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico
Maxine E. McBrinn
University Press of Colorado, 2008
Archaeology without Borders presents new research by leading U.S. and Mexican scholars and explores the impacts on archaeology of the border between the United States and Mexico. Including data previously not readily available to English-speaking readers, the twenty-four essays discuss early agricultural adaptations in the region and groundbreaking archaeological research on social identity and cultural landscapes, as well as economic and social interactions within the area now encompassed by northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

Contributors examining early agriculture offer models for understanding the transition to agriculture, explore relationships between the spread of agriculture and Uto-Aztecan migrations, and present data from Arizona, New Mexico, and Chihuahua. Contributors focusing on social identity discuss migration, enculturation, social boundaries, and ethnic identities. They draw on case studies that include diverse artifact classes - rock art, lithics, architecture, murals, ceramics, cordage, sandals, baskets, faunal remains, and oral histories. Mexican scholars present data from Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Michoacan, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon. They address topics including Spanish-indigenous conflicts, archaeological history, cultural landscapes, and interactions among Mesoamerica, northern Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest.

Laurie D. Webster is a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Maxine E. McBrinn is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago. Proceedings of the 2004 Southwest Symposium. Contributors include Karen R. Adams, M. Nicolás Caretta, Patricia Carot, John Carpenter, Jeffery Clark, Linda S. Cordell, William E. Doolittle, Suzanne L. Eckert, Gayle J. Fritz, Eduardo Gamboa Carrera, Leticia González Arratia, Arturo Guevara Sánchez, Robert J. Hard, Kelly Hays-Gilpin, Marie-Areti Hers, Amber L. Johnson, Steven A. LeBlanc, Patrick Lyons, Jonathan B. Mabry, A. C. MacWilliams, Federico Mancera, Maxine E. McBrinn, Francisco Mendiola Galván, William L. Merrill, Martha Monzón Flores, Scott G. Ortman, John R. Roney, Guadalupe Sanchez de Carpenter, Moisés Valadez Moreno, Bradley J. Vierra, Laurie D. Webster, and Phil C. Weigand.

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front cover of Asia Inside Out
Asia Inside Out
Eric Tagliacozzo
Harvard University Press, 2019

A pioneering study of historical developments that have shaped Asia concludes with this volume tracing the impact of ideas and cultures of people on the move across the continent, whether willingly or not.

In the final volume of Asia Inside Out, a stellar interdisciplinary team of scholars considers the migration of people—and the ideas, practices, and things they brought with them—to show the ways in which itinerant groups have transformed their culture and surroundings. Going beyond time and place, which animated the first two books, this third one looks at human beings on the move.

Human movement from place to place across time reinforces older connections while forging new ones. Erik Harms turns to Vietnam to show that the notion of a homeland as a marked geographic space can remain important even if that space is not fixed in people’s lived experience. Angela Leung traces how much of East Asia was brought into a single medical sphere by traveling practitioners. Seema Alavi shows that the British preoccupation with the 1857 Indian Revolt allowed traders to turn the Omani capital into a thriving arms emporium. James Pickett exposes the darker side of mobility in a netherworld of refugees, political prisoners, and hostages circulating from the southern Russian Empire to the Indian subcontinent. Other authors trace the impact of movement on religious art, ethnic foods, and sports spectacles.

By stepping outside familiar categories and standard narratives, this remarkable series challenges us to rethink our conception of Asia in complex and nuanced ways.

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front cover of Athapaskan Migrations
Athapaskan Migrations
The Archaeology of Eagle Lake, British Columbia
R. G. Matson and Martin P. R. Magne
University of Arizona Press, 2007
Migration as an instrument of cultural change is an undeniable feature of the archaeological record. Yet reliable methods of identifying migration are not always accessible.

In Athapaskan Migrations, authors R. G. Matson and Martin P. R. Magne use a variety of methods to identify and describe the arrival of the Athapaskan-speaking Chilcotin Indians in west central British Columbia. By contrasting two similar geographic areas—using the parallel direct historical approach—the authors define this aspect of Athapaskan culture. They present a sophisticated model of Northern Athapaskan migrations based on extensive archaeological, ethnographic, and dendrochronological research.

A synthesis of 25 years of work, Athapaskan Migrations includes detailed accounts of field research in which the authors emphasize ethnic group identification, settlement patterns, lithic analysis, dendrochronology, and radiocarbon dating. Their theoretical approach will provide a blueprint for others wishing to establish the ethnic identity of archaeological materials. Chapter topics include basic methodology and project history; settlement patterns and investigation of both the Plateau Pithouse and British Columbia Athapaskan Traditions; regional surveys and settlement patterns; excavated Plateau Pithouse Tradition and Athapaskan sites and their dating; ethnic identification of recovered material; the Chilcotin migration in the context of the greater Pacific Athapaskan, Navajo, and Apache migrations; and summaries and results of the excavations. The text is abundantly illustrated with more than 70 figures and includes access to convenient online appendixes. This substantial work will be of special importance to archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, and scholars in Athapaskan studies and Canadian First Nation studies.
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