Ethnozoology: Animals In Our Lives represents the first book about this discipline, providing a discussion on key themes on human-animal interactions and their implications, along with recent major advances in research. Humans share the world with a bewildering variety of other animals, and have interacted with them in different ways. This variety of interactions (both past and present) is investigated through ethnozoology, which is a hybrid discipline structured with elements from both the natural and social sciences, as it seeks to understand how humans have perceived and interacted with faunal resources throughout history. In a broader context, ethnozoology, and its companion discipline, ethnobotany, form part of the larger body of the science of ethnobiology. In recent years, the importance of ethnozoological/ethnobiological studies has increasingly been recognized, unsurprisingly given the strong human influence on biodiversity. From the perspective of ethnozoology, the book addresses all aspects of human connection, animals and health, from its use in traditional medicine, to bioprospecting derivatives of fauna for pharmaceuticals, with expert contributions from leading researchers in the field. - Draws on editors' and contributors' extensive research, experience and studies covering ethnozoology and ethnobiology - Covers all aspects of human-animal interaction through the lens of this emerging discipline, with coverage of both domestic and wild animal topics - Presents topics of great interest to a variety of researchers including those in wildlife/conservation (biologists, ecologists, conservationists) and domestic-related disciplines (psychologists, sociologists)

Archaeologists working in the Moche Valley of Peru have uncovered a number of tombs representing various cultures that flourished there prior to European contact. This book provides a full description of 103 such burials, spanning a period of more than 3,500 years. Each burial is documented with an accurate illustration of every artifact found, as well as details on the location, matrix, and construction of the graves, the individuals in the graves, and the placement of all the associated goods. This information constitutes an important resource for solving problems of ceramic chronology and style change. Age and sex data given for the burials will also enable scholars to establish status differences that existed in the pre-Columbian past. Finally, the authors have compared their sample with all the north coast burials previously reported, showing how their findings may be used to ascertain similarities and differences throughout the highland Andean region. Ancient Burial Patterns of the Moche Valley, Peru is the first diachronic study of burial practices for any Andean region. It not only demonstrates changes in funerary practices in the area but also provides insight into the nature of local cultural development. It will be useful to specialists in Andean and New World archaeology as well as to collectors of pre-Columbian art.

Whether humans crossed the seas between the Old World and the New in the times before Columbus is a tantalizing question that has long excited scholarly interest and tempted imaginations the world over. From the myths of Atlantis and Mu to the more credible, perhaps, but hardly less romantic tales of Viking ships and Buddhist missionaries, people have speculated upon what is, after all, not simply a question of contact, but of the nature and growth of civilization itself. To the specialist, it is an important question indeed. If people in the Western Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere developed their cultures more or less independently from the end of the last Ice Age until the voyages of Columbus, the remarkable similarities between New World and Old World cultures reveal something important about the evolution of culture. If, on the other hand, there were widespread or sustained contacts between the hemispheres in pre-Columbian times, these contacts represent events of vast significance to the prehistory and history of humanity. Originally delivered at a symposium held in May 1968, during the national meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, the papers presented here, by scholars eminent in the field, offer differing points of view and considerable evidence on the pros and cons of pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New. Various kinds of data—archaeological, botanical, geographical, and historical—are brought to bear on the problem, with provocative and original results. Introductory and concluding remarks by the editors pull together and evaluate the evidence and suggest ground rules for future studies of this sort. Man across the Sea provides no final answers as to whether people from Asia, Africa, or Europe visited the American Indian before Columbus. It does, however, present new evidence, suggested lines of approach, and a fresh attempt to delineate the problems involved and to establish acceptable canons of evidence for the future.

South America's Andean highlands have seen the rise and decline of several impressive, indigenous civilizations. Separated somewhat in time and place, each developed its distinctive socio-cultural accouterments but all shared a need to adjust to the individual, societal and environmental limitations imposed by life at high altitude. Partial oxygen pressure, temperature and humidity fall systematically as altitude rises, but there are other changes as well. Darwin, Forbes, von Humboldt, von Tschudi and other naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who weaved their way through South America commented repeatedly on the tolerance or apparent indifference of the indigenes to the rigors of life at altitudes above 3000 meters but its impact upon lowlanders. Von Tschudi (1847), for example, observed 'in the cordillera the effect of the diminished atmospheric pressure on the human frame shows itself in intolerable symptoms of weariness and an extreme difficulty of breathing . . . . The first symptoms are usually felt at the elevation of 12,600 feet (3800 m) above the sea. These symptoms are vertigo, dimness of sight and hearing, pains in the head and nausea . . . . Inhabitants of the coast and Europeans, who for the first time visit the lofty regions of the cordillera, are usually attacked with this disorder. ' But von Tschudi's description of acute mountain sickness was hardly the first; his Spanish predecessors had known and commented upon it too.

This volume provides a survey and synthesis of current knowledge of the more than 650 species of land and marine mammals found in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, as well as information on the mammalian fossil record, current biodiversity, and biogeography of this region. Chapters present up-to-date taxonomic information, ecological and behavioral characteristics, conservation status, and distribution maps for most species. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.