A Biocultural History of the Mountain Meadows Massacre
On September 11, 1857, some 120 men, women, and children from the Arkansas hills were murdered in the remote desert valley of Mountain Meadows, Utah. This notorious massacre was, in fact, a mass execution: having surrendered their weapons, the victims were bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range. The perpetrators were local Mormon ......
Set aboard a ship carrying troops home from India at the end of World War II, Edward Lueders' autobiographical novel opens with the dramatic events that ensue when the call goes out, 'Man overboard!' As the vessel drifts, engines stopped, in search of the lost man, the story begins to delve deeper into the paradox at the center of our ......
Alcohol in Ancient Mexico reconstructs the variety and extent of distillation traditions in the ancient cultures of Mexico, describing in detail the various plants and processes used to make such beverages, their prevalence, and their significance for local culture. The art of distillation arrived in Mexico with the Spaniards in the sixteenth ......
The View from Archaeology, Art History, Ethnohistory, and Contemporary Ethnography
Ethnicity has long been a central concern of Mesoamerican ethnography, but for methodological reasons has received less attention in the archaeological, historical, and art historical literature. Using the disciplines of archaeology, art history, ethnohistory, and ethnography, Ethnic Identity in Nahua Mesoamerica provides a unique ......
The Life and Times of John Murray Murdoch, Utah Pioneer
Now in paperback, this award-winning history tells the story of the author's great-great grandfather, John Murray Murdoch, who came to America from Scotland to gather with other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the nineteenth century. Murdoch embraced Mormonism and set out for the Utah Territory in 1852 with his ......
Great Basin Human Ecology at the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition
Were the earliest inhabitants of the Great Basin 'Paleoindians' in the traditional sense? Were they highly mobile foragers? Did they hunt large, now extinct animals like mammoth, horse, and camel? Great Basin archaeologists have argued that the earliest inhabitants possessed an organization strategy of mixed 'Paleoindian' and 'Archaic' lifeways, ......
The study of craft production is a complex and challenging one that illuminates key aspects of the material, organizational, and ideological interests, values, and capacities of a given culture. Many crafts are treated as separate, but are actually practiced concurrently and in close proximity to each other, facilitating crucial interaction. ......
Diminishing oil supplies, global warming due to use of fossil fuels, persistent strife in the Middle East, and increasing demands for energy have led to the search for additional energy sources. Many feel that a significant expansion of nuclear power will be necessary to meet projected needs. However, although nuclear power has been ......
Unlike traditional archaeology, which studies the human past and examines issues of scholarly and popular interest, disaster archaeology is about the aftermath of mass-fatality events and deals with urgent needs such as victim identification and scene investigation. In this context, archaeological skills are an instrument of recovery for the ......
