The Codex Borbonicus Veintena Imagery: Visualizing History, Time, and Ritual in Aztec Solar-Year Festivals

The sixteenth-century pictorial manuscript known as the Codex Borbonicus contains a remarkable record of the eighteen Mexica (or “Aztec”) festival periods of twenty days, known as veintenas, celebrated during the 365-day solar year. Because its indigenous artists framed the Borbonicus veintenas with historical year dates, this volume situates the annually recurring rituals within the march […]

Silver Thieves, Tin Barons, and Conquistadors: Small-Scale Mineral Production in Southern Bolivia

The Spanish conquest of Peru was motivated by the quest for precious metals, a search that resulted in the discovery of massive silver deposits in what is now southern Bolivia. The enormous flow of specie into the world economy is usually attributed to the Spanish imposition of a forced labor system on the Indigenous population […]

Infrastructure in Archaeological Discourse: Framing Society in the Past

This volume expands perspectives on infrastructure that are rooted in archaeological discourse and material evidence. The compiled chapters represent new and emerging ideas within archaeology about what infrastructure is, how it can materialize, and how it impacts and reflects human behavior, social organization, and identity in the past as well as the present. Three goals […]

Shattering Perspectives: An Exhibition of African Ceramics

Shattering Perspectives: A Teaching Collection of African Ceramics. A collaborative, student-generated exhibition catalog exploring ceramic arts from across the African continent through vessels and objects from the permanent collection at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University. Edited by David M. M. Riep, Ph.D. Features original research on ceramic arts across the […]

Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis: Recovering the Lost History and Culture of Quitobaquito

In the southwestern corner of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, on the border between Arizona and Mexico, one finds Quitobaquito, the second-largest oasis in the Sonoran Desert. There, with some effort, one might also find remnants of once-thriving O’odham communities and their predecessors with roots reaching back at least 12,000 years—along with evidence of their […]

Nomad’s Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World

Nomad’s Land investigates the relationship between Mediterranean mobile pastoralism and 19th-century French forestry. By restricting the use of shared spaces, foresters helped bring the populations of Provence, Algeria, and Anatolia under the control of the state. Locals responded through petitions, arson, violence, compromise, and adaptation. Duffy shows that French efforts to promote scientific forestry were […]

Sweeping the Way: Divine Transformation in the Aztec Festival of Ochpaniztli

Incorporating human sacrifice, flaying, and mock warfare, the pre-Columbian Mexican ceremony known as Ochpaniztli, or “Sweeping,” has long attracted attention. Although it is among the best known of eighteen annual Aztec ceremonies, Ochpaniztli’s significance nevertheless has been poorly understood. Ochpaniztli is known mainly from early colonial illustrated manuscripts produced in cross-cultural collaboration between Spanish missionary-chroniclers […]

Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks

Among Southeast Alaska’s best-known tourist attractions are its totem parks, showcases for monumental wood sculptures by Tlingit and Haida artists. Although the art form is centuries old, the parks date back only to the waning years of the Great Depression, when the US government reversed its policy of suppressing Native practices and began to pay […]