Books in the School of American Research Advanced Seminars series

The study of chiefdoms has moved from a preoccupation with their formal characteristics to a concern with their dynamics as political institutions. The contributors present eleven case studies examining how ruling elites retain power through control over production and exchange, and then legitimize that control through an elaborate ideology.

The book brings together a group of authors who are addressing the nature and causes of warfare in simpler, tribal societies. The authors represent a range of different opinions about why humans engage in warfare, why wars start, and the role of war in human evolution.

The essays in this collection focus on three themes in Turko-Persian culture: the importance of literature; the tension between central and peripheral institutions in Turko-Persian societies; and the confrontation of the Turko-Persian Islamicate world with the European world.

Ancient Maya civilization, which once flourished in the rainforests of southern Mexico and Central America, possessed the only full system of writing ever to be developed in the Americas, and only recently deciphered. This volume presents the first history of the Classic Maya based on a combination of the Maya's own dynastic records and archaeological data.