Anthropology Faculty Book Gallery

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  Ancient Maya Commerce: Multidisciplinary Research at Chunchucmil

  Ancient Maya Commerce presents nearly two decades of multidisciplinary research at Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico—a thriving Classic period Maya center organized around commercial exchange rather than agriculture. An urban center without a king and unable to sustain agrarian independence, Chunchucmil is a rare example of a Maya city in which economics, not political rituals, served as the engine of growth. Trade was the raison d’être of the city itself.

  Using a variety of evidence—archaeological, botanical, geomorphological, and soil-based—contributors show how the city was a major center for both short- and long-distance trade, integrating the Guatemalan highlands, the Gulf of Mexico, and ...Read More

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  The Insecure City: Space, Power, and Mobility in Beirut

  Fifteen years after the end of a protracted civil and regional war, Beirut broke out in violence once again, forcing residents to contend with many forms of insecurity, amid an often violent political and economic landscape. Providing a picture of what ordinary life is like for urban dwellers surviving sectarian violence, The Insecure City captures the day-to-day experiences of citizens of Beirut moving through a war-torn landscape.

  While living in Beirut, Kristin Monroe conducted interviews with a diverse group of residents of the city. She found that when people spoke about getting around in Beirut, they were also expressing larger ...Read More

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  Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky Family Farms, 1920-1950

  The foods Kentuckians love to eat today—biscuits and gravy, country ham and eggs, soup beans and cornbread, fried chicken and shucky beans, and fried apple pie and boiled custard—all were staples on the Kentucky family farms in the early twentieth century. Each of these dishes has evolved as part of the farming lifestyle of a particular time and place, utilizing available ingredients and complementing busy daily schedules. Though the way of life associated with these farms in the first half of the twentieth century has mostly disappeared, the foodways have become a key part of Kentucky’s cultural identity.

  In this ...Read More

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  Gettin' Some Age on Me: Social Organization of Older People in a Rural American Community

  The social life of older rural Americans is made up of relationships formed through kinship, their neighborhoods, and the organizations to which they belong. These social institutions are shaped by the ways people use them, and therefore change through time. In this precedent-setting study, John van Willigen uses the concept of social network to investigate life-course changes in the relationships of older people within the context of community history.

  Gettin' Some Age on Me grew out of a study of more than 130 older people in a rural Kentucky county. They were interviewed concerning their relationships with others, and data ...Read More

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  Perspectives in Developmental Change

  In this volume a number of distinguished social scientists representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics, and political science, explore essential problems of developmental change against the theoretical background and empirical data of their own and related disciplines.

  Developmental change is here viewed under a broad perspective. The considerations range from the problems that arise when human beings are confronted by change, to investment planning and decision-making in a specific case against a background of general poverty and a high birthrate, to the problem of what it is that constitutes development. In the concluding essay it is argued that ...Read More

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  The Dover Mound

  Fifty-five burials with their accompanying artifacts were uncovered during the excavation of the Dover Mound, located in Mason County, Kentucky, yielding new data on the cultural group known as the Adena which is reported in detail by the authors.