RECENT PUBLICATIONS
First Peoples In a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10794.php
In the late 1920s outside a sleepy remote New Mexico village, prehistory was made. Spear points, found embedded between the ribs of an extinct Ice Age bison at the site of Folsom, finally resolved decades of bitter scientific controversy over whether the first Americans had arrived in the New World in Ice Age times. Although Folsom is justly famous in the history of archaeology for resolving that dispute, for decades little was known of the site except that it was very old. This book for the first time tells the full story of Folsom. David J. Meltzer deftly combines the results of extensive new excavations and laboratory analyses from the late 1990s, with the results of a complete examination and analysis of all the original artifacts and bison remains recovered in the 1920s - now scattered in museums and small towns across the country. Using the latest in archaeological method and technique, and bringing in data from geology and paleoecology, this interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive look at the adaptations and environments of the late Ice Age Paleoindian hunters who killed a large herd of bison at this spot, as well as a measure of Folsom's pivotal role in American archaeology. |
Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the United States Immigration is continuously and rapidly changing the face of Western countries. While newcomers are harbingers of change, host nations also participate in how new populations are incorporated into their social and political fabric. Bringing together a transcontinental group of anthropologists, this book provides an in-depth look at the current processes of immigration, political behavior, and citizenship in both the United States and Europe. Essays draw on issues of race, national identity, religion, and more, while addressing questions, including: How should citizenship be defined? In what ways do immigrants use the political process to achieve group aims? And, how do adults and youth learn to become active participants in the public sphere? Among numerous case studies, examples include instances of racialized citizenship in "Algerian France," Ireland's new citizenship laws in response to asylum-seeking mothers, the role of Evangelical Christianity in creating a space for the construction of an identity that transcends state borders, and the Internet as one of the new public spheres for the expression of citizenship, be it local, national, or global.
Imperial Transformations in Sixteenth-Century Yucay, Peru (Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan) In this new volume, R. Alan Covey and Donato Amado González present an archaeological and historical introduction to the Yucay Valley, as well as the complete transcription of the first volume of documents in the Betancur Collection. They show us how and why the lands and resources in the Yucay Valley (near Cusco, Peru) passed through so many hands. This book is a major contribution to Andean research because we see the disparate and competing interests harbored by diverse people from Inka emperors to the Spanish Crown, and from Colonial period elites to tributary populations all the while providing the kinds of demographic and ethnic details that archaeologists can only dream about. In sum, the legal documents published in this volume offer unprecedented data on ethnicity, demography, and the history of conflicting claims and interests of all those who worked and lived in the Yucay Valley of Peru.
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Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America From local municipalities to the campaign trail, immigration is a hot-button issue. And with the United States in the midst of a historic wave of immigration, the topic will continue to influence voters and policies for years to come. In Twenty-First-Century Gateways, a multidisciplinary group of top-flight analysts focuses on the fastest-growing immigrant populations in metropolitan areas with previously low levels of immigration—places such as Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C. These places are typical of the newest, largest immigrant gateways to America, characterized by post-WWII growth, recent burgeoning immigrant populations, and predominantly suburban settlement.
More immigrants, both legal and undocumented, arrived in the United States during the 1990s than in any other decade on record. Many continued to move into traditional urban centers such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but burgeoning numbers were attracted by the economic and housing opportunities of fast-growing metropolitan areas and their largely suburban settings. Today, one in five immigrants in the United States lives in one of these twenty-first-century gateways. The pace of change in this new geography of immigration has presented many local areas with challenges—social, fiscal, and political.
Edited by Audrey Singer, Susan W. Hardwick, and Caroline B. Brettell, Twenty-First-Century Gateways provides in-depth, comparative analysis of immigration trends and local policy responses in America's newest gateways. The case examples explore the challenges of integrating newcomers in the specific gateways, as well as their impact on suburban infrastructure such as housing, transportation, schools, health care, economic development, and public safety. The changes and trends dissected in this book present a critically important understanding of the reshaping of the United States today and the future impact of immigration.
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Desert Days My Life as a Field Archaeologist "Archaeologists know that Fred Wendorf's expeditions produced most of what we know about the stone age prehistory of northeastern Africa. They also realize that he contributed centrally to the archaeology of the American Southwest before he focused his talents on Africa. They know he's consistently reported his research in timely, thorough, and lucid monographs. In this book, they'll discover he can also describe, with modesty and candor, the circumstances that shaped his extraordinary career."—Richard Klein, Professor of Biology and Anthropology and Bass Professor in Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University "Celebrated by his colleagues in the Americas, Europe, and Africa as a brilliant innovator who made significant advances in archaeological method and theory, Fred Wendorf has been a dominant figure in American and North African archaeology in an extremely productive career spanning nearly six decades. His engaging autobiography chronicles his personal and professional lives—warts and all."—Don "Fred Wendorf is an archaeological Midas. He and his collaborators "Wendorf's rousing good story of archaeological adventures in harsh desert environments demonstrates that real archaeological adventures are only made possible by good planning, sound organization, scientific discipline, and hard work."—Raymond H. Thompson, Riecker Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of Arizona, and Director Emeritus, Arizona State Museum "Fred Wendorf's memoir is unique in the literature of American archaeology. A fascinating read."—Lewis Binford, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Southern Methodist University
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