Books published by AltaMira Press

A new volume exploring spiritual transformation from various disciplinary perspectives.

Edited volume of reflections on museum philosophy for the 21st century from an international group of contributors.

The Lost Legions offers a discussion of the interaction between Australian Aborigines and the first European pastoralists, with comparisons to similar interactions elsewhere around the world.

Looks at the dynamics of a federally funded research and development project. This book analyzes what happened when university researchers and school district administrators attempted to introduce an experimental planning and evaluation system in an operating school district.

Darwin's Legacy provides a fascinating history of ideas about human evolution, which have been developed and debated since Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871.

Olivier's ambitious work, newly translated into English from the French, brilliantly explicates the new approach to archaeological remains based on the theory that archaeology is the science of constantly reconstituted memory.

This book takes a comprehensive look at the environmental costs of wars around the world since the end of World War II, drawing on case studies from Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Africa, and other regions.

Effectively managing people, facilities, and partnerships can make or break an institution. In this book, we look at managing those paid or unpaid staff who contribute daily to the museum, provide tools for operations, address maintenance and safety issues, and discuss collaboration with outside organizations.

This book presents the voices of foreign brides from 123 countries who married Korean men in response to a critical shortage of marriageable women in rural Korea since the early 1990s.

Shamans of the Lost World examines the archaeological evidence of Hopewell peoples to deepen our understanding of their practice of shamanism.

What Makes Learning Fun? presents a set of tested principles and strategies for the design of museum exhibits, with concrete examples of design successes and failures drawn from the author's many years in the field.

The book combines case studies with diverse groups across the country that are using different media - including mural arts, dance, and video - with an informed introduction to the theory and history of community-based art. It is a perfect handbook for those looking to transform their communities through art.

This first major anthropological reference book on childhood learning considers the cultural aspects of learning in childhood from the points of view of psychologists, sociologists, educators, and anthropologists.

Bodley trenchantly critiques the most pressing global mega-problems, such as unsustainable growth, resource depletion, global warming, and poverty and conflict, and shows how anthropology makes it possible to find solutions.

Anthropologists in Arms traces the troubled history of social scientists' collaboration with national military, security, and intelligence organizations and analyzes the moral and ethical debates provoked by the rise of "military anthropology"-particularly the practice of embedding anthropologists with combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This book explores the burgeoning interest in human cooperation among anthropologists, political scientists, economists, evolutionary psychologists, and biologists. Though typically neglected, cooperation is a crucial part of the triangle of allocation, formed with competition and obedience.

This book presents evidence of Polynesian settlement along the western coasts of North and South America prior to European contact - a controversial viewpoint throughout the last century. The contributors address the evidence offered by DNA, radiocarbon tests, comparative linguistics, the archaeological record, and oral tradition.

This important work of archaeological theory challenges us to reconsider our ideas about the nature of things, past and present, arguing that objects themselves possess a dynamic presence that we must take into account if we are to understand the world we and they inhabit.

This textbook explores Southeast Asia's modern peoples and their cultural ways and patterns of adaptation. It introduces the region's geography, languages, prehistory, and history, then delves into religion, ethnic complexity, food production, development, and tourism, and the changes that these evolving aspects of life have upon Southeast Asia's peoples and cultures.

This textbook introduces archaeology students to the field of cultural resources archaeology.

By considering the museum itself as art, rather than as a receptacle, Hein's Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently argues for an improved understanding of the role museums play in shaping public discourse.

Computing Our Way to Paradise? challenges key assumptions concerning the role of Internet and communication technologies in globalization processes. While globalization is predicated upon a strong, extensive, and interconnected network of products, processes, and services, the real environmental and health benefits remain far from certain.

A handbook for the methodology of team-based qualitative research in the social sciences.

Examines the challenges and dilemmas facing minority members who choose the route of educational leadership. This book includes a list of suggestions concerning activism, leadership style, institutional politics, mentorship, and roles to help those who contemplate a career path in the field of education.

The Anthropology of Health and Healing is the first text to take an integrative approach to the discipline of medical anthropology. In this book, Mari Womack champions a practice of medicine that includes the maintenance of health as well as treatment of illness, emphasizing the importance of lifestyle and the life cycle.

From 1952 to 1962, anthropologists funded by Cornell University sought to apply anthropological knowledge to improving life in Vicos, a village of about 1,800 people in the Peruvian Andes. This collection evaluates the methods and results of the famous, and even infamous, Vicos Project.

Consumer Research for Museum Marketers creatively instructs museum staff on how to study their visitors to make their museums, exhibits, and programs more appealing for all segments of the public. The author's approach explains how all museum personnel can participate in valuable consumer research without breaking the bank on expensive studies.

This is a textbook in the form of a novel. Readers are taught archeological theory through the novel, as they attempt to solve the mystery of the Washington Venus.

San Clemente Island serves as a microcosm of California maritime archaeology from prehistoric through historic times. The authors use findings from nearly two decades of research on the island to present a cultural history that defies many previous assumptions about the coastal prehistory of the Pacific Northwest.