Books published by AltaMira Press

Harry Wolcott discusses the fundamental nature of ethnographic studies, offering important suggestions on improving and deepening research practices for both novice and expert researchers.

Highlights the importance of eliminating health disparities and increasing the access of Native Americans to critical substance abuse and mental health services. This work includes chapters that are concerned with promoting healing through changes in the way we treat our sick-spiritually, traditionally, ceremonially, and scientifically.

A fascinating, detailed study of the origins of modern humans. Includes material from Willoughby's own research in Tanzania.

In Contours of Culture the authors address practical and theoretical problems of using ethnographic methods in the study of culture, drawing on their field research with an opera company, Welsh artists, and classes on a popular Brazilian martial art.

In the fifth edition of this text, Montagu further strengthens his thesis that a woman's biological, genetic and physical makeup makes her more than man's equal, in fact his superior.

Part I and II of Handbook of Oral History, now available in paper for classroom use.

A newer edition of this book is available for ordering at the following web address: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759123298 Introduction to Cultural Ecology provides a comprehensive discussion of the history and theoretical foundations of cultural ecology, featuring nine case studies from around the world.

A. Martin Byers challenges the traditional views of the Ohio Hopewell embankment earthworks, providing an interpretation of them as sites of sacred games and world renewal rituals built and used by complex alliances of cult sodalities.

Archaeology beyond Postmodernity introduces to archaeology a new concept of culture as well as many valuable interpretive techniques that have emerged in sociology to study culture scientifically.

This food biography focuses on how people have experienced the bounty of the City by the Bay.

All archaeology students, instructors, and practitioners need this book to learn how to critically read and think about theory and methods or to improve their writing.

Ethnographers of religion have created a vast record of religious behavior from small-scale non-literate societies to globally distributed religions in urban settings. This work features a range of ethnographers who grapple critically with Harvey Whitehouse's theory of two divergent modes of religiosity.

Ethics and Anthropology: Ideas and Practice is the first comprehensive and up-to-date book embracing issues and dilemmas faced by anthropologists in the discipline's four fields.

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.

In this selection of essays from the past two decades, Vayda focuses on research and explanation concerned with causes of concrete events, especially human actions and the environmental changes brought about by them.

Anthropology and Global History explains the origin and development of human societies and cultures from their earliest beginnings to the present-utilizing an anthropological lens but also drawing from sociology, economics, political science, history, and ecological and religious studies.

This collection of original essays presents an in-depth look at the archaeology of the Eurasian steppe-from China to Europe-and the evidence of gender roles in ancient nomadic societies.

In Economics and Morality, the authors seek to illuminate the multiple kinds of analyses relating morality and economic behavior in particular kinds of economic systems.

This book of essays by medical anthropologists and other health social scientists examines the full measure of the disastrous global health effects of war in the contemporary world. It provides a political economic framework for assessing the war machine.

One of anthropology's premier writers on fieldwork methodology looks at the essential elements that constitute the art of his discipline. In The Art of Fieldwork, Wolcott compares the fieldworker to the artist, while recognizing the inherent differences between the labors of each.

Barry Lord and Gail Dexter Lord focus their two lifetimes of international experience working in the cultural sector on the challenging questions of why and how culture changes. The answer is a dynamic and fascinating discourse that sets aesthetic culture in its material, physical, social, and political context, illuminating the primary role of the artist and the essential role of patronage in supporting the artist, from our ancient origins to the knowledge economy culture of today.

This text presents research on Darwinism, race, cladistics, phylogeny, Neanderthals, dentition, craniometry, fossil evidence and cultural ecology that raise questions for the entire discipline of evolutionary anthropology.

As Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003, news accounts detailed the pillage of Iraq's National Museum. Less dramatic, though far more devastating, was the subsequent looting at thousands of archaeological sites around the country, which continues on a massive scale to this day. This book details the disasters that have befallen Iraq's cultural heritage, analyzes why all efforts to protect it have failed, and identifies new mechanisms and strategies to prevent the mistakes of Iraq from being replicated in other war-torn regions.

Little and Shackel use case studies from different regions across the world to challenge archaeologists to create an ethical public archaeology that is concerned not just with the management of cultural resources, but with social justice and civic responsibility.

Weaving the stories of the object, its original owner, and the often idiosyncratic institution where the object resides, this book reveals the darkest secret of the cultural world the precarious balance of art, culture, and politics that keep items, for decades, lost in the museum.

An edited collection of valuable and timely information concerning the care and conservation of human remains in museums and academic institutions. With a foreword by Brian Fagan.