An archaeological examination of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid as a symbol of power in Teotihuacan.

In the first two centuries AD, Teotihuacan was the largest urban centre in the New World and the Feathered Serpent Pyramid a spectacular symbol of state power. Sugiyama investigates the ritual sacrifices that marked the erection of the Pyramid and the role of warfare and sacrifice in early Teotihuacan statecraft.

This book examines Maya sacrifice and related posthumous body manipulation. The editors bring together an international group of contributors from the area studied: archaeologists as well as anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, art historians and bioarchaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive perspective on these sites as well as the material culture and biological evidence found there

Animal Matter uses primary excavation, zooarchaeological, and isotope data from the study of nearly 200 jaguars, pumas, wolves, rattlesnakes, and golden eagles that were sacrificed or offered to the Moon Pyramid of Teotihuacan, 1-550 AD, to take readers on a journey through the complex entanglements of ritual performances that were part of the process of sovereignty for this ancient city.

Bioarchaeological studies of children have, until recently, centered on population data-driven topics like mortality rates and growth and morbidity patterns. This volume examines emerging issues in childhood studies, looking at historic and prehistoric contexts and framing questions about the nature and quality of children’s lives. How did they develop their social identity? Were they economic actors in early civilizations? Does their health reflect the larger community? Comparing and contrasting field research from a variety of sites across Europe and the Americas, the contributors to this volume demonstrate that children not only have unique experiences but they also share, cross-culturally, in daily struggles. Their lives differ significantly from those of adults due to disparate social identities and variable growth needs. In some of the cases presented, this is the first time that child remains have been examined in any detail, making Tracing Childhood an essential resource for scholars and researchers in this growing field.

This “ingenious work about the course of human history” examines why civilizations evolved so differently in the Americas and Eurasia (Kirkus, starred review). By 15,000 BC, humans had migrated from northeastern Asia across the frozen Bering land bridge to the Americas. When the last Ice Age came to an end, the Bering Strait refilled with water, dividing America from Eurasia. This division continued until Christopher Columbus voyaged to the New World in the fifteenth century. The Great Divide compares the development of humankind in the Old World and the New between 15,000 BC and AD 1,500. Combining the most up-to-date knowledge in archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology, and mythology, Peter Watson’s masterful study offers uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.

The most comprehensive account yet of the human past from prehistory to the present.

From the fourth millennium BCE to the early second millennium CE the world became a world of cities. This volume explores this critical transformation, from the appearance of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the rise of cities in Asia and the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas. Through case studies and comparative accounts of key cities across the world, leading scholars chart the ways in which these cities grew as nodal points of pilgrimages and ceremonies, exchange, storage and redistribution, and centres for defence and warfare. They show how in these cities, along with their associated and restructured countrysides, new rituals and ceremonies connected leaders with citizens and the gods, new identities as citizens were created, and new forms of power and sovereignty emerged. They also examine how this unprecedented concentration of people led to disease, violence, slavery and subjugations of unprecedented kinds and scales.

Stelae dating to the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic from Tula, Xochicalco, and other sites in Central Mexico have been cited as evidence of Classic Maya `influence' on Central Mexican art during these periods. This book re-evaluates these claims via detailed comparative analysis of the Central Mexican stelae and their claimed Maya counterparts.