Book Description
From the myths and legends of the ancient world to the verfied historical records of modern times, these inspiring volumes provide a window onto the past, enabling the reader to understand previous eras and the men and women who created them.

A fascinating visual guide to the history and lives of America's native peoples from early times to the present day, encompassing unique tribal traditions, practices, and beliefs. ... Read more

Product Description
"A survey of Amerindian peoples is a most complex subject, and historian Olson has done a magnificent job of compiling a dictionary that is comprehensive and well-supported by cross references and extensive bibliographies. Succinct entries provide social, demographic, and historical data on the 500 extant tribes south of Mexico. . . . [He] has incorporated and updated information from myriad sources, filling a major void in Latin American research materials. There is also an index of tribes by country, extensive bibliographies by ethnic group, and an extensive 15-page chronology. This is a book large libraries cannot afford to be without." Library Journal ... Read more

Product Description
"A veritable encyclopedia of the khipu, this volume pulls together new and groundbreaking work by the foremost experts, attacking the problem from a wide variety of perspectives and integrating analysis from historical, archaeological, and ethnographic perspectives."--Thomas A. Abercrombie, Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York UniversityThe Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology--all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings--called khipu--on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered. In this benchmark book, thirteen international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Knot Words -- Incan Kuipus
Over the past several decades scholars have proven without a doubt that the Mayans had a written language -- and taken great strides in deciphering it.Now, what about the Incas and the other pre-Columbian civilizations of the Andes?

This book consists of 15 essays by a dozen scholars about the Incan quipus (or kuipus if you prefer) -- knotted cords in complex arrangements that, everybody agrees, were used to record numbers and statistics.Did they also convey thought?Or in other words did they comprise a "written" language, albeit a very strange one in that their communications resembled a bird's nest more than a book?Were the quipus a mnemonic device only?Or could a narrative be transmitted from person to person?

These scholarly essays examine different aspects of khipus including their history, construction, mathematical theories of their meanings, and factors which might lead to their decipherment.It seems doubtful that we will learn to "read" khipus unless we have the luck to find one in a context that will suggest its meaning.However, it seems also that they truly did constitute a system of communication akin to writing.

I thought this book was fascinating -- although the essays are written in dry careful scholarly prose that can be forbidding. The Incas are one of the most mysterious of the non-Western civilizations and the study of the khipus is a real-life detective tale.Not the least interesting aspect of this is to realize that the Andean civilizations, isolated from the rest of the world, came up with unique -- often odd to our perception -- inventions and technology that worked for them.The khipu instead of writing is one.

Smallchief ... Read more

Product Description
This is a documented narration of dramas played out from 1578 to 2000 in the Cape Horn area, Tierra del Fuego, by the native Yamana and Charles Darwin, explorers, sealers, whalers, Anglican missionaries, and three other famous people who made contact with some of the last Yamana. The narration, based on geographical, historical, and ethnographic sources and Anne Chapman's fieldwork with the last few descendants of the Yamana, describes the Europeans' motives for going to Tierra del Fuego and the Yamana's motives for staying there some 6,000 years, what the outsiders gained, and what the Yamana lost. The main objective of this work is to incorporate the hunting-gathering Yamana into world history by evoking their way of life, especially Jemmy Button and Fuegia Basket in comparison with the outsiders they encountered, especially Drake, Cook, and Darwin in their scientific world in the context of their experiences with the Yamana in Tierra del Fuego and nearby areas. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
The food traditions of North America's indigenous peoples are centuries-old and endure to this day. Feasts that include a bounty of land and sea are the focal point of celebrations and ceremonies; for many, food is what connects them to family, community, and the afterlife. Where People Feast, one of the few indigenous cookbooks available, focuses on Canadian west coast Native cuisine, which takes advantage of the area's abundant seafood, game, fruits, and vegetables--with ingredients both exotic (oolichans, venison, grouse) and common (salmon, crab, berries).

The book includes 16 full-color photographs, and 120 delectable dishes that can be easily replicated by chefs at home; the authors also offer plenty of handy suggestions and substitution ideas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good ideas but tough to get the ingredients
We ate at Lilliget Restaurant before it closed so I was excited to find this book.The book certainly brought back memories of a wonderful meal at the restaurant.The pictures are very pretty.However, it would be very challenging to make many of the dishes as it requires native ingredients that are difficult to obtain in your typical supermarket - elk, venison, oolican (a kind of fish), fish eggs on kelp, etc.I will certainly try substitutes for these ingredients but the un-availability of the ingredients dampens my enthusiasm.

Contemporary, not traditional
Be aware that this is not a collection of traditional Native American recipes. These seem to have been devised for a modern restaurant as inspired by traditional ingredients. Still, the recipes are adventuresome, and the dishes certainly look appetizing. ... Read more

Product Description
Some fourteen to ten thousand years ago, as ice-caps shrank and glaciers retreated, the first bands of hunter- gatherers began to colonize the continental extremity of South America--"the uttermost end of the earth." Their arrival marked the culmination of humankind's epic journey to people the globe. Now they are extinct. This book tells their story. The book describes how these intrepid nomads confronted a hostile climate every bit as forbidding as ice-age Europe as they penetrated and settled the wilds of Fuego-Patagonia. Much later, sixteenth-century European voyagers encountered their descendants: the At0nikenk (southern Tehuelche), Selk'nam (Ona), Yt.mana (Yahgan), and Kawashekar (Alacaluf), living, as the Europeans saw it, in a state of savagery. The first contacts led to tales of a race of giants and, ever since, Patagonia has exerted a special hold on the European imagination. Tragically, by the mid-twentieth century, the last remnants of the indigenous way of life had disappeared for ever. The essays in this volume trace a largely unwritten history of human adaptation, survival, and eventual extinction. Accompanied by 110 striking photographs, they are published to accompany a major exhibition on Fuego-Patagonia at the Museum of Mankind, London.The contributors are Gillian Beer, Luis Alberto Borrero, Anne Chapman, Chalmers M. Clapperton, Andrew P. Currant, Jean-Paul Duviols, Mateo Martinic B., Robert D. McCulloch, Colin McEwan, Francisco Mena L., Alfredo Prieto, Jorge Rabassa, and Michael Taussig. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Got a good review in _Nature_
A short review in the magazine _Nature_ (9 Oct 97, p 557) has a cool picture and says "gripping read and lavishly illustrated."END ... Read more

Product Description
Offers insights into the world of the ancient Central American tribes, revealing facts about how they fought, led their troops, engendered loyalty and extended their territories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding military and social history title
It's unfortunate that this book is out of print. Based on interpretation of primary sources ( how I was taught to write history papers ), the author covers several hundred years of Mesoamerican military history. The bulk of the book deals with the Mexica alliance in general and the Atzecs in particular. The illustrations and maps are superb. As cited elsewhere, I recommend this book in addition to Aztec, Mixtec, and Zapotec Armies and The Conquistadores by Osprey. The casual reader will gather the main points made by more scholarly and less readable works. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
The twenty papers presented in this volume stem from the First AURA Congress held in Darwin in 1988, an effort on the part of the Australian Rock Art Research Association to assemble an internationally significant body of expertise in the field of prehistoric rock art. Extensively illustrated, contributors include: E B Parkman (Cupule Petroglyph occurrences in the American West); R Mark & E Newman (Cup-and-ring petroglyps in northern California); D W Ritter & E W Ritter (Line convention in rock art of North America );G Granzberg & J Steinbring (The line, tree, and circle in rock art and pictography); K M Nissen (Petroglyph research in the Western Great Basin of North America); D L Hamann (Hohokam rock art of Southern Arizona); E C Dorman (Prehistoric rock art of the San Rafael Swell); C W Meighan (Central American rock art); R E Connick & F Connick (A summer solstice petroglyph site); R Q Lewis et al (Colonial rock art in Bolivia); M Consens (Rock art sites of southeastern South America); M M Podesta (Approaches to Argentinean Puna rock art); R Q Lewis (Bolivian rock art) ... Read more

Product Description
When the regions of Pampa, Patagonia, and Tierra del Fuego were first described to the Spanish crown, they were presented as being empty of human inhabitants. In truth, the area--although indeed large with a low overall population density--supported a thriving foraging community. The research presented here testifies to the complex history of the Mapuche, Tehuelche, Rankuelche, and Fueguian peoples. Anthropological studies investigate biological and cultural population diversity, early archaeological records, and ethnographic details of kinship, religion, ritual, and language, revealing a more accurate record of the past. ... Read more

Product Description
Not every world culture that has battled colonization has suffered or died. In the Ecuadorian Andean parish of Salasaca, the indigenous culture has stayed true to itself and its surroundings for centuries while adapting to each new situation hand. Today, indigenous Salascans continue to devote a large part of their lives to their distinctive practices—both community rituals and individual behaviors—while living side by side with white-mestizo culture.

In this book Rachel Corr provides a knowledgeable account of the Salascan religion and rituals and their respective histories. Based on eighteen years of fieldwork in Salasaca, as well as extensive research in Church archives—including never-before-published documents—Corr’s book illuminates how Salasacan culture adapted to Catholic traditions and recentered, reinterpreted, and even reshaped them to serve similarly motivated Salasacan practices, demonstrating the link between formal and folk Catholicism and pre-Columbian beliefs and practices. Corr also explores the intense connection between the local Salasacan rituals and the mountain landscapes around them, from peak to valley.

Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes is, in its portrayal of Salasacan religious culture, both thorough and all-encompassing. Sections of the book cover everything from the performance of death rituals to stories about Amazonia as Salasacans interacted withoutsiders—conquistadors and camera-toting tourists alike. Corr also investigates the role of shamanism in modern Salasacan culture, including shamanic powers and mountain spirits, and the use of reshaped, Andeanized Catholicism to sustain collective memory. Through its unique insider’s perspective of Salasacan spirituality, Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes is a valuable anthropological work that honestly represents this people’s great ability to adapt. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Contrary to ingrained academic and public assumptions, wherein indigenous lowland South American societies are viewed as the product of historical emplacement and spatial stasis, there is widespread evidence to suggest that migration and displacement have been the norm, and not the exception. This original and thought-provoking collection of case studies examines some of the ways in which migration, and the concomitant processes of ecological and social change, have shaped and continue to shape human-environment relations in Amazonia. Drawing on a wide range of historical time frames (from pre-conquest times to the present) and ethnographic contexts, different chapters examine the complex and important links between migration and the classification, management, and domestication of plants and landscapes, as well as the incorporation and transformation of environmental knowledge, practices, ideologies and identities. ... Read more

Product Description
This groundbreaking multidisciplinary book presents significant essays on historical indigenous violence in Latin America from Tierra del Fuego to central Mexico. Concerned by what they see as a dangerous anti-scholarly “revisionist” movement—one that seeks to portray pre-Columbian Latin America as a “lost paradise” in which native peoples lived harmoniously together—the editors convened an international symposium at which leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers met to set the record straight. This volume, which results from the symposium, collects twelve contributions from sixteen contributors, all of whom are scholars at the forefront of their fields of study.All of the chapters advance our knowledge of the causes, extent, and consequences of indigenous violence—including ritualized violence—in Latin America. Each major historical/cultural group in Latin America is addressed by at least one contributor. Incorporating the results of dozens of years of research, this volume documents evidence of warfare, violent conflict, and human sacrifice from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, including incidents that occurred before European contact. Together the chapters present a convincing argument that bloodshed and killing have been woven into the fabric of life in Latin America since remote antiquity.For the first time, expert subject-area work on indigenous violence—archaeological, osteological, ethnographic, historical, and forensic—has been assembled in one volume. Much of this work has heretofore been dispersed across various countries and languages. With its collection into one English-language volume, all future writers—regardless of their discipline or point of view—will be required to consult these findings. ... Read more

Product Description
From Gustavo Politis, one of the most renowned South American archaeologists, comes the first in-depth study in English of the last “undiscovered” people of the Amazon. His work is groundbreaking and urgent, both because of encroaching guerrilla violence that makes Nukak existence perilously fragile, and because his work with the Nukak represented one of the last opportunities to conduct research with hunger-gatherers using contemporary methodological and the theoretical tools. Through a rich and comprehensive ethno-archaeological portrait of material culture “in the making,” this work makes methodological and conceptual advances in the interpretation of hunter-gather societies. Politis’s conclusions, based on years of original research and on comparative analysis, are integrative and contribute to the identification of the multiple factors involved in the formation of hunter-gatherer archaeological assemblages. ... Read more