This unique book offers a theoretical framework for historical archaeology that explicitly relies on network theory. Charles E. Orser, Jr., demonstrates the need to examine the impact of colonialism, Eurocentrism, capitalism, and modernity on all archaeological sites inhabited after 1492 and shows how these large-scale forces create a link among all the sites. Orser investigates the connections between a seventeenth-century runaway slave kingdom in Palmares, Brazil and an early nineteenth-century peasant village in central Ireland. Studying artifacts, landscapes, and social inequalities in...

A Primer of Population Dynamics introduces to the basics of population studies. Author Krishnan Namboodiri utilizes a question-and-answer format that explores topics such as population theories and conceptual schemes, demographic data, mortality, fertility, migration, family and household, food production, and the environment and much more. Questions are accompanied by detailed explanations as well as references for additional information. An extensive index and glossary allow for easy retrieval of information. This introductory textbook is written for students studying...

This book is about historical archaeologies all over the world; about their history, their methods, and their raison d'etre. The focus is on an existential question for archaeology: whether investigations of mate- rial culture are necessary at all when studying societies with writing. Is it not sufficient to read and interpret texts if we wish to understand and explain historical periods? This book has been written out of a conviction that archaeology is important, even in the study of literate societies. Yet the book has also been written out of a conviction that the importance of the...

James Delle has solved a number of problems in Caribbean archaeology with An Archaeology of Social Space. He deals with most of the problems by using historical archaeology, and clearly implicates Ameri- canist prehistorians. Although this book is about coffee plantations in the Blue Mountains area of Jamaica, it is actually about the whole Caribbean. Just as it is about all archaeology, not only historical archaeology, it is also a book about colonialism and national inde- pendence and how these two enormous events happened in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth century capitalism. The...

An attempt to use archaeological materials to investigate the colonization of southeastern Africa during the period 1500 to 1900. Perry demonstrates the usefulness of archaeology in bypassing the biases of the ethnohistorical and documentary record and generating a more comprehensive understanding of history. Special attention is paid to the period of state formation in Swaziland and a critique of the Settler Model', which the author finds to be invalid.

A discussion of the historical archaeology of one of the largest cities in the world following four centuries of marginal positioning in regard to empires, trade routes, and the production and accumulation of wealth. The author describes how Buenos Aires came to achieve its current status as a major urban metropolis through an analysis of settlement patterns, architecture, the lifestyle of its residents, and the access to commodities of different social groups.

Focusing on the city of Armidale during the period 1830 to 1930, this book investigates the relationship between the development of capitalism in a particular region (New England, Australia) and the expression of ideology within architectural style. The author analyzes how style encodes meaning and how it relates to the social contexts and relationships within capitalism, which in turn are related to the construction of ideology over time.

American things, American material culture, and American archaeology are the themes of this book. The authors use goods used or made in America to illuminate issues such as tenancy, racism, sexism, and regional bias. Contributors utilize data about everyday objects - from tin cans and bottles to namebrand items, from fish bones to machinery - to analyze the way American capitalism works. Their cogent analyses take us literally from broken dishes to the international economy. Especially notable chapters examine how an archaeologist formulates questions about exploitation under capitalism, and...

An archaeological analysis of the centrality of race and racism in American culture. Using a broad range of material, historical, and ethnographic resources from Annapolis, Maryland, during the period 1850 to 1930, the author probes distinctive African-American consumption patterns and examines how those patterns resisted the racist assumptions of the dominant culture while also attempting to demonstrate African-Americans' suitability to full citizenship privileges.

A glance at the title of this book might well beg the question "What in heaven's name does archaeology have to do with manners? We cannot dig up manners or mannerly behavior-or can we?" One might also ask "Why is mannerly behavior important?" and "What can archaeology contribute to our understanding of the role of manners in the devel- ment of social relations and cultural identity in early America?" English colonists in America and elsewhere sought to replicate English notions of gentility and social structure, but of necessity div- ged from the English model. The first generation of elites...