Your Guide to Our 2020 SAA Archaeology Sale

Although the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology and the American Association for Physical Anthropologists have been canceled, our books are still available in our SAA Archaeology Book Sale. We are offering extra deep discount prices and free shipping on all orders with code SAA20 through May 17, 2020. Browse all books here. Need to know what’s new this year? View highlights below.

Approaches to Monumental Landscapes of the Ancient Maya
Edited by Brett A. Houk, Barbara Arroyo, and Terry G. Powis

This volume brings together a wide spectrum of new approaches to ancient Maya studies in an innovative exploration of how the Preclassic and Classic Maya shaped their world. Moving beyond the towering temples and palaces typically associated with the Maya civilization, contributors present unconventional examples of monumental Maya landscapes.

The Archaeology of Human-Environmental Dynamics on the North American Atlantic Coast
Edited by Leslie Reeder-Myers, John A. Turck, and Torben C. Rick

Using archaeology as a tool for understanding long-term ecological and climatic change, this volume synthesizes current knowledge about the ways Native Americans interacted with their environments along the Atlantic Coast of North America over the past 10,000 years.

Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes
Edited by Gabriel Prieto and Daniel H. Sandweiss

Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes examines how settlements along South America’s Pacific coastline played a role in the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of Andean civilizations from the Late Pleistocene era through Spanish colonization. Providing the first synthesis of data from Chile, Peru, and Ecuador, this wide-ranging volume evaluates and revises long-standing research on ancient maritime sites across the region.

Bears: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives in Native Eastern North America
Edited by Heather A. Lapham and Gregory A. Waselkov

Although scholars have long recognized the mythic status of bears in indigenous North American societies of the past, this is the first volume to synthesize the vast amount of archaeological and historical research on the topic. Bears charts the special relationship between the American black bear and humans in eastern Native American cultures across thousands of years.

Dogs: Archaeology beyond Domestication
Edited by Brandi Bethke and Amanda Burtt

While previous studies of dogs in human history have focused on how people have changed the species through domestication, this volume offers a rich archaeological portrait of the human-canine bond. Contributors investigate the ways people have viewed and valued dogs in different cultures around the world and across the ages.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica
Edited by Christopher S. Beekman

Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact.

Ancient West Mexicos: Time, Space, and Diversity
Edited by Joshua D. Englehardt, Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, and Christopher S. Beekman

This volume highlights the diversity and complexity of western Mexico’s pre-Hispanic cultures and argues that the region was more similar than many researchers have believed to the rest of the Mesoamerican world.

Archaeological Interpretations: Symbolic Meaning within Andes Prehistory
Edited by Peter Eeckhout

Presenting studies in Andean archaeology and iconography by leading specialists in the field, this volume tackles the question of how researchers can come to understand the intangible, intellectual worlds of ancient peoples. Archaeological Interpretations is a fascinating ontological journey through Andean cultures from the fourth millennium BC to the sixteenth century, A.D.

Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community
Erin S. Nelson

This book is the first detailed investigation of the important archaeological site of Parchman Place in the Mississippi Delta, a defining area for understanding the Mississippian culture that spanned much of what is now the United States Southeast and Midwest before the fifteenth century.

Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States
Edited by Edmond A. Boudreaux III, Maureen Meyers, and Jay K. Johnson

The years 1500–1700 AD were a time of dramatic change for the indigenous inhabitants of southeastern North America, yet Native histories during this era have been difficult to reconstruct due to a scarcity of written records before the eighteenth century. Using archaeology to enhance our knowledge of the period, Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States presents new research on the ways Native societies responded to early contact with Europeans.

The Archaeology of Southeastern Native American Landscapes of the Colonial Era
Charles R. Cobb

This volume describes the ways Native American populations accommodated and resisted the encroachment of European powers in southeastern North America from the arrival of Spaniards in the sixteenth century to the first decades of the American Republic. Tracing changes to the region’s natural, cultural, social, and political environments, Charles Cobb provides an unprecedented survey of the landscape histories of Indigenous groups across this critically important area and time period.

Bioarchaeology and Identity Revisited
Edited by Kelly J. Knudson and Christopher M. Stojanowski

This volume highlights new directions in the study of social identities in past populations. Contributors expand the scope of the field regionally, methodically, and theoretically, moving behind the previous focus on single aspects of identity by demonstrating multi-scalar approaches and by explicitly addressing intersectionality in the archaeological record.

The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials
Edited by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases.

Bioarchaeology of Frontiers and Borderlands
Edited by Cristina I. Tica and Debra L. Martin

Essays in this volume examine borderland settings in cultural contexts that include Roman Egypt, Iron Age Italy, eleventh-century Iceland, and the precontact American Great Basin and Southwest. Contributors look at isotope data, skeletal stress markers, craniometric and dental metric information, mortuary arrangements, and other evidence to examine how frontier life can affect health and socioeconomic status. Illustrating the many meanings and definitions of frontiers and borderlands, they question assumptions about the relationships between people, place, and identity.

Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America
Edited by Chelsea Rose and J. Ryan Kennedy

Showcasing the enormous amount of archaeological data available on the experiences of Chinese people who migrated to the United States and Canada in the nineteenth century, this volume charts new directions for the field of Chinese diaspora archaeology by providing fresh, more nuanced approaches to interpreting immigrant life.

Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration: Discovering Histories That Have Futures
D. Rae Gould, Holly Herbster, Heather Law Pezzarossi, and Stephen A. Mrozowski

Highlighting the strong relationship between New England’s Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture.

The Archaeology of Magic: Gender and Domestic Protection in Seventeenth-Century New England
C. Riley Augé

In this book, C. Riley Augé provides a trailblazing archaeological study of magical practice and its relationship to gender in the Anglo-American culture of colonial New England.

Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism during Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair
Rebecca S. Graff

Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, this book explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century.

Historical Ecology and Archaeology in the Galápagos Islands: A Legacy of Human Occupation
Peter W. Stahl, Fernando J. Astudillo, Ross W. Jamieson, Diego Quiroga, and Florencio Delgado

The Galápagos Islands are one of the world’s premiere nature attractions, home to unique ecosystems widely thought to be untouched and pristine. This volume reveals that the archipelago is not as isolated as many imagine, examining how centuries of human occupation have transformed its landscape.

“Robert J. Walker”: The History and Archaeology of a U.S. Coast Survey Steamship
James P. Delgado and Stephen D. Nagiewicz

This book tells the story of the steamship Robert J. Walker, an early coastal survey ship for the agency that would later become the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that sank with loss of 21 crew off the coast of New Jersey in 1860. The wreck was a frequent stop for divers and anglers before it was identified by a team of researchers in 2013. Here, leaders in the documentation efforts describe the history of the ship and the archaeology of the shipwreck, emphasizing the collaborative community participation that made the project successful.

An Archaeology and History of a Caribbean Sugar Plantation on Antigua
Edited by Georgia L. Fox

This volume uses archaeological and historical evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that multidisciplinary studies can provide about the effects of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people.

Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean
Edited by James A. Delle and Elizabeth C. Clay

While previous research on household archaeology in the colonial Caribbean has drawn heavily on artifact analysis, this volume provides the first in-depth examination of the architecture of slave housing during this period. It examines the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting living spaces for the enslaved and reveals the diversity of people and practices in these settings.