Cheryl Claassen offers an authoritative, readable and clear guide to the study of shells, which is addressed to students and professional archaeologists and palaeontologists. She considers the history of archaeological interest in shells, the biology of freshwater and marine molluscs, and critically discusses current techniques, methods, and research problems. Drawing on examples worldwide, and covering prehistoric and historic periods, among the topics covered are: is shell deposit natural or cultural? How long do shells last? What can shells tell us about the environmental characteristics and ancient habitats or about the people who collected them? What symbolic roles have shells served in human societies? This is a well balanced account, and all aspects of the subject are clearly represented.
Cheryl Claassen offers an authoritative, readable and clear guide to the study of shells, which is addressed to students and professional archaeologists and palaeontologists. She considers the history of archaeological interest in shells, the biology of freshwater and marine molluscs, and critically discusses current techniques, methods, and research problems. Drawing on examples worldwide, and covering prehistoric and historic periods, among the topics covered are: is shell deposit natural or cultural? How long do shells last? What can shells tell us about the environmental characteristics and ancient habitats or about the people who collected them? What symbolic roles have shells served in human societies? This is a well balanced account, and all aspects of the subject are clearly represented.
Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico explores the development of religion as transferred from Spain to Tenochtitlan. The religious world of both Aztecs and Spanish Catholics at time of encounter was organized through large and small scale community, family, and personal devotions. Devotion expressed through cults was the single most salient aspect in the transfer of Catholicism to New World people. This book highlights the role that ideas such as afterlife, apocalypticism, iconoclasm, Marianism, resistance, and saints played in the emergence of Mexican Catholicism in the sixteenth century. The larger Atlantic world context, as seen in the regions of Iberia, Anahuac, and 'New Spain', or central Mexico from Zacatecas to Oaxaca, is explored in detail. Beginning with an extensive historical essay to contextualize the pre-contact period, the bulk of this volume contains 118 separate keywords each with three comparative essays examining Aztec and Catholic religious practices before and after
In This Provocative Work, Cheryl Claassen challenges long-standing notions about hunter-gatherer life in the southern Ohio Valley as it unfolded some 8,000 to 3,500 years ago. Focusing on freshwater
Gain first-hand knowledge of how today's lesbians aged 60 and over survived the 20th century! ?I didn’t know we were lesbians. We lived together 13 years!? Whistling Women is a unique, candid collec
Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America is a landmark publication that describes, illustrates, and offers non-dogmatic interpretations of rituals and beliefs in Archaic America. In compil
"This manuscript is an edited collection of essays focusing on archaic and prehistoric North America. Cheryl Claassen argues that specifically focusing on an engendered landscape study allows the cont
"Pt. 1 of this collection presents a history of women in Americanist archaeology, including a biography of Dorothy Hughes Popenoe who conducted early stratigraphic excavations in Honduras. Pt. 2 focu
During the 1960s, in such works as Man the Hunter, scholars constructed a model of cultural evolution in which men were characterized as "cooperative hunters of big game." Women fit neatly into this m
