A collection of 7 ethnoarchaeological case studies from food-producing societies.

These original articles relate to major themes in the comparative study of the dynamics of cultures, modernization, and social and political change. The authors, ranking scholars in their fields, provide fresh and important insights to the study of topics such as the interface of anthropological and sociological theory, the dynamics of Latin Americ

What happens when we blur time and allow ourselves to haunt or to become haunted by ghosts of the past? Drawing on archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data, Blurring Timescapes, Subverting Erasure demonstrates the value of conceiving of ghosts not just as metaphors, but as mechanisms for making the past more concrete and allowing the negative specters of enduring historical legacies, such as colonialism and capitalism, to be exorcised.

Catastrophes are on the rise due to climate change, as is their toll in terms of lives and livelihoods as world populations rise and people settle into hazardous places. While disaster response and management are traditionally seen as the domain of the natural and technical sciences, awareness of the importance and role of cultural adaptation is essential. This book catalogues a wide and diverse range of case studies of such disasters and human responses. This serves as inspiration for building culturally sensitive adaptations to present and future calamities, to mitigate their impact, and facilitate recoveries.

Chapters offer new understandings of how ranked societies emerged and developed in prehistoric southern Central America and northern South America (the "Isthmo-Colombian Area"). The emphasis is on integrating the results of studies of social units at a range of different scales from the household to the local commuity to the region and beyond. Complete text in English and Spanish.

Territorial behaviour among various herders and hunter-gatherers has been discussed in earlier studies, but this is the first time that a comparison of these three types of mobile populations has been attempted. The original papers presented in this volume discuss the conditions and problems of securing access to resources among pastoralists, peripatetics, and hunting, gathering and fishing communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A comprehensive introductory chapter places these empirical studies in a broader theoretical context of the behaviourial sciences.

A collection of 7 ethnoarchaeological case studies from food-producing societies. Contributors include: K E Agorsah (Archaeological considerations on social dynamics); G D Stone (Agrarian settlement and the spatial disposition of labour); A Holl (Community interaction and settlement patterning in Northern Cameroon); T E Levy (Production, space, and social change in protohistoric Palestine); I Musa (Traditional iron technology and settlement patterns in central Darfur); A Holl (Late Neolithic cultural landscape in southeastern Mauritania).