This book tells the story of the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Saba prior to European colonization, based on 30 years of archaeological research conducted by Leiden University in collaboration with the government and people of Saba. The pre-colonial history of Saba begins around 3800 years ago with the first fishers-foragers and plant managers occupying the interior of the island at Plum Piece, Fort Bay, The Level and Great Point. The exceptional character of Saba with its volcano, diverse vegetation, and fauna, attracted Amerindian communities from the prime episode of human occupation of the insular Caribbean, first on a temporary basis and later, from AD 400 on, permanently. They then settled in Spring Bay, Kelbey's Ridge, Windwardside, St. Johns, and The Bottom just like today. Their villages consisted of a series of dwellings of wood, fibers and leafs, surrounded by hearths and garbage dumps. The deceased were buried in the village, often under the floor of the houses. The Amerindians on Saba maintained extensive relationships with communities and kin on neighboring islands. The artefacts which have been found on Saba show these connections.

St. Sabas (439-532 CE), was one of the principal leaders of Palestinian monasticism, that had flourished in the sixth century in the desert of Jerusalem. As an abbot he was the first in Palestine to formulate a monastic rule in writing, and his activity as an ecclesiastical leader bore upon the life of the entire Christian community in the Holy land. He and his monks were active in the theological disputes that affected the fate of the Christian Church of Palestine, and shaped it as a stronghold of Orthodoxy. But his activity has transcended his place and time. His largest monastery - the Great Laura (Mar saba), functioned from the sixth to the ninth century as the intellectual centre of the See of Jerusalem. The most distinguished among its authors were Cyril of Scythopolis, Leontius of Byzantium, John Moschus and Sophronius, Antiochus Monachos, John of Damascus, Cosmas the Hymnographer, Leontius of Damascus and Stephen Mansur. Their treatises on dogma, and prayer, shaped Orthodox theology, liturgy and hymnography in Palestine and beyond. This literary activity in Greek was complemented by scribal activity of copying and translating of Greek manuscripts into Arabic and Georgian. There was also original composition in Arabic by Theodore Abu Qurrah and others. Monastic life in Mar Saba, that continued under Muslim rule with only short intermissions, preserved the Sabaite tradition, and contributed to its reputation, parallel to that of Jerusalem. Sabaite monks were renown as paragons of monasticism and dogma, who had inspired monastic and ecclesiastical reformers in later centuries throughout the Orthodox world. Its fame spread far and wide, from Rome and North Africa in the west, to Serbia, Russia and Georgia in the east, affecting Christian dogma and liturgy therein. The thirty-one studies included in this volume, each written by an expert in his field, present the various facets of the Sabaite heritage in the Orthodox Church, from the sixth century to the present.

Forced into the war to save their remaining territory, the indigenous peoples join the Huhui in their continuing struggle against the Shan.".

Classic history of Ancient Ethiopia, as researched and written by a heralded African American woman activist.

Montserrat is a small island in the Leeward islands of the eastern Caribbean and at present a British Overseas Territory. It has suffered greatly in recent times, first from the devastations of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and since 1995 from the still-ongoing eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano that has caused two-thirds of the island’s population to emigrate and left half the island a dangerous exclusion zone. Archaeological research here began only in the late 1970s, but work over the past four decades has now made it possible to present an archaeological history of Montserrat, from the earliest known traces of human activity on the island about 5,000 years ago to the present. This book draws on all the available archaeological evidence (including that from the co-authors’ own island-wide survey and excavation project since 2010), as well as newly available archival documents, to trace this little island’s long history and heritage. This is not the story of an isolated and remote island: Montserrat is shown rather to be a place intricately connected to the flows of people and goods that have travelled between islands and across the Atlantic at various points in time, both Amerindian and historical. Despite its small size and seeming irrelevance, Montserrat has in fact always been networked into regional and global systems of connectivity. An underlying theme of this volume is resilience. It presents insights from the archaeological and documentary evidence on how the island’s inhabitants have coped with often adverse conditions throughout the course of its history – hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, slavery, disease, invasions, and impoverishment – all while remaining proudly connected to heritage that celebrates the accomplishments of island residents.

This archaeological study reconstructs Pre-Columbian exchange networks in the Lesser Antilles based on lithic artefact distributions among the different islands.

For review see: A. Krumeich, in Medische antropologie : tijdschrift voor gezondheid en cultuur, jrg. 2, nr. 2 (1990); p. 286; Michael D. Hoyos, in European review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 50 (June 1991); p. 181. - For abstract see: Caribbean Abstracts, nr. 1 (1990); p. 95, nr. 429; Itinerario, vol. 14, nr. 3/4 (1990); p. 48, nr. 4558.

In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States. Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain's colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating. In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian's craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation's birth and identity.