Archeological Explanation: The Scientific Method in Archeology

Archeological Explanation: The Scientific Method in Archeology

LeBlanc, Steven A.

Redman, Charles L.

Watson, Patty Jo

Religion & Spirituality

Columbia Univ. Pr.

With armed conflict in the Persian Gulf now upon us, Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc takes a long-term view of the nature and roots of war, presenting a controversial thesis: The notion of the "noble savage" living in peace with one another and in harmony with nature is a fantasy. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, LeBlanc contends that warfare and violent conflict have existed throughout human history, and that humans have never lived in ecological balance with nature. 
The start of the second major U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, combined with regular headlines about spiraling environmental destruction, would tempt anyone to conclude that humankind is fast approaching a catastrophic end. But as LeBlanc brilliantly argues, the archaeological record shows that the warfare and ecological destruction we find today fit into patterns of human behavior that have gone on for millions of years.
Constant Battles surveys human history in terms of social organization-from hunter gatherers, to tribal agriculturalists, to more complex societies. LeBlanc takes the reader on his own digs around the world -- from New Guinea to the Southwestern U.S. to Turkey -- to show how he has come to discover warfare everywhere at every time. His own fieldwork combined with his archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research, presents a riveting account of how, throughout human history, people always have outgrown the carrying capacity of their environment, which has led to war. 
Ultimately, though, LeBlanc's point of view is reassuring and optimistic. As he explains the roots of warfare in human history, he also demonstrates that warfare today has far less impact than it did in the past. He also argues that, as awareness of these patterns and the advantages of modern technology increase, so does our ability to avoid war in the future.

Constant Battles: Why We Fight

Politics & Social Sciences

Register, Katherine E.

Social Sciences

St. Martin's: Griffin

First printing. 1983. The American Southwest is the Mimbres homeland from 200 A.D. till their demise around 1150 A.D. This region gave rise to the finest ancient pottery tradition in the New World.

Mimbres People: Ancient Pueblo Painters of the American Southwest (New Aspects of Antiquity Series)

THAMES HUDSON LTD

A thousand years ago, village farmers in the Mimbres Valley of what is now southwestern New Mexico created stunning black-on-white pottery. Mimbres pottery has added a fascinating dimension to southwestern archaeology, but it has also led to the partial or total destruction of most Mimbres sites. The Mimbres Foundation, in one of the few modern investigations of a Mimbres pueblo, excavated the Mattocks site, containing about 180 surface rooms in addition to pit structures. Mimbres Life and Society details the Mattocks site’s architecture and artifacts, and it includes 160 figures, showing more than 400 photographs of painted vessels from the site. Mimbres pueblos, as early examples of people using surface room blocks, are ideal for investigating questions about how and why people moved from earlier subterranean pit structures to aboveground room blocks. The authors consider the number of households living at the site before and after the transition, as well as the lack of evidence for subsistence intensification and population growth as causes of this transition. These analyses suggest that each room block on the site housed a single family as opposed to multiple families, the more common interpretation. There were not necessarily more households on the site during the Classic period than earlier. Patricia A. Gilman and Steven A. LeBlanc spent five seasons excavating at the Mattocks site and many more analyzing and writing about Mattocks site data. They note that subtle social differences among people were at play, and they emphasize that the Mattocks site may be unique among Mimbres pueblos in many aspects. Mimbres Life and Society reveals broad-ranging implications for southwestern archaeologists and anyone interested in understanding the ancient Southwest and early village societies.

Mimbres Life and Society: The Mattocks Site of Southwestern New Mexico

History

Gilman, Patricia A.

Americas

University of Arizona Press

<div>In the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico, archaeologists have been working for decades to meticulously excavate archaeological sites. Expanding beyond studies that focus on a single pueblo, this volume represents the final report on the excavations of the Mimbres Foundation. It brings together data from a range of pithouse and pueblo sites of different sizes and histories in diverse locations--to refine the current understandings of Mimbres region archaeology in the context of the Greater Southwest. From the end of the Late Pithouse period through the Black Mountain phase, the book provides excellent documentation of the artifacts and data recovered from the sites, addresses models of Mimbres community, and tracks change and continuity in the valley over centuries. In addition, the authors consider the nature of the relationship between the Classic Mimbres period population of the valley and the people of the succeeding Black Mountain phase, as well as relationships among the Black Mountain phase people and those of neighboring parts of the region, including the Casas Grandes world and the Jornada Mogollon area. In Ancient Communities in the Mimbres Valley two leading archaeologists bring together a trove of unpublished investigations, expanding understandings and setting a course for the future. &nbsp;</div>

Ancient Communities in the Mimbres Valley: Continuity and Change from AD 750 to 1350

Anyon, Roger

The Galaz Ruin: A Prehistoric Mimbres Village in Southwestern New Mexico (Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Publication Series)

World

Univ of New Mexico Pr

Book by Nelson, Ben A., Leblanc, Steven A.

Short-Term Sedentism in the American Southwest: The Mimbres Valley Salado (Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Publication Series)

Nelson, Ben A.

Early Pithouse period villagers played a generative role in the cultural and historical sequence of the Mogollon region, which is best known for the stunning black-on-white pottery of the Classic Mimbres culture. This volume presents a complete report on the archaeology of two important Early Pithouse settlements located along the Rio Mimbres, including detailed accounts of the excavation units, depositional contexts, architectural details, radiocarbon dates, miscellaneous artifacts, and ceramic frequency distriductures.
The Thomson and McAnally sites contain architecture, artifacts, and other remains of the earliest relatively sedentary horticulturalists to occupy this part of the Southwest. The authors synthesize the data about charges over time in the villagers' lifestyle to develop a new chronology for the occupation of the region.

Early Pithouse Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond: The McAnally and Thompson Sites in Their Cultural and Ecological Contexts (Papers of the Peabody Museum)

Diehl, Michael W.

Peabody Museum Press

In late prehistory, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi in Arizona created a unique and spectacular painted pottery tradition referred to as Hopi Yellow Ware. This ceramic tradition, which includes Sikyatki Polychrome pottery, inspired Hopi potter Nampeyo’s revival pottery at the turn of the twentieth century. 
How did such a unique and unprecedented painting style develop? The authors compiled a corpus of almost 2,000 images of Hopi Yellow Ware bowls from the Peabody Museum’s collection and other museums. Focusing their work on the exterior, glyphlike painted designs of these bowls, they found that the “glyphs” could be placed into sets and apparently acted as a kind of signature.
The authors argue that part-time specialists were engaged in making this pottery and that relatively few households manufactured Hopi Yellow Ware during the more than 300 years of its production.Extending the Peabody’s influential Awatovi project of the 1930s, Symbols in Clay calls into question deep-seated assumptions about pottery production and specialization in the precontact American Southwest.

Symbols in Clay: Seeking Artists’ Identities in Hopi Yellow Ware Bowls (Papers of the Peabody Museum)

Henderson, Lucia R.

Highlighting one of the Peabody Museum's most important archaeological expeditions—the excavation of the Swarts Ranch Ruin in southwestern New Mexico by Harriet and Burton Cosgrove in the mid-1920s—Steven LeBlanc's book features rare, never-before-published examples of Mimbres painted pottery, considered by many scholars to be the most unique of all the ancient art traditions of North America. Made between A.D. 1000 and 1150, these pottery bowls and jars depict birds, fish, insects, and mammals that the Mimbres encountered in their daily lives, portray mythical beings, and show humans participating in both ritual and everyday activities. LeBlanc traces the origins of the Mimbres people and what became of them, and he explores our present understanding of what the images mean and what scholars have learned about the Mimbres people in the 75 years since the Cosgroves' expedition.

Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery from the American Southwest (Peabody Museum Collections Series)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LeBlanc, Steven A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by LeBlanc, Steven A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LeBlanc, Steven A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Archeological Explanation: The Scientific Method in Archeology

Constant Battles: Why We Fight

Mimbres People: Ancient Pueblo Painters of the American Southwest (New Aspects of Antiquity Series)

Mimbres Life and Society: The Mattocks Site of Southwestern New Mexico

Ancient Communities in the Mimbres Valley: Continuity and Change from AD 750 to 1350

The Galaz Ruin: A Prehistoric Mimbres Village in Southwestern New Mexico (Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Publication Series)

Short-Term Sedentism in the American Southwest: The Mimbres Valley Salado (Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Publication Series)

Early Pithouse Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond: The McAnally and Thompson Sites in Their Cultural and Ecological Contexts (Papers of the Peabody Museum)

Symbols in Clay: Seeking Artists’ Identities in Hopi Yellow Ware Bowls (Papers of the Peabody Museum)

Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery from the American Southwest (Peabody Museum Collections Series)