In this thought-provoking book, preeminent scholar Stephen Houston turns his attention to the crucial role of young males in Classic Maya society, drawing on evidence from art, writing, and material culture. "The Gifted Passage" establishes that adol...

The history of contacts between India and Europe tends to be dominated by the British, but Denmark also played a role on the subcontinent in the colonial era. This book offers insight into that history via a close look at one very specific part of it...

This is the first book on the Guro, who live in the Ivory Coast in close contact with the neighboring Wan, Baule, Yaure, and Bete. For the Guro, the importance of masks goes well beyond aesthetics; they can be considered emblematic, allowing those wh...

Christopher A. Gregory's "Gifts and Commodities" is one of the undisputed classics of economic anthropology. On its publication in 1982, it spurred intense, ongoing debates about gifts and gifting, value, exchange, and the place of political economy...

"The Genealogical Science" analyzes the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. A biological discipline that relies on genetic data in order to reconstruct the geographic origins of contemporary population...

The pigeon is the quintessential city bird. Domesticated thousands of years ago as a messenger and a source of food, its presence on our sidewalks is so common that people consider the bird a nuisance – if they notice it at all. Yet pigeons are also...

The most detailed and well-illustrated study of material culture for any northern Athabascan language group to date, "Gwich'in Athabascan Implements" reproduces pre- and early post-contact tools that are historically important to the Athabaskan peopl...

The giving of gifts both delights the recipient and pleases the giver. Practised in all societies, gift exchange has a history as long as humanity. This gloriously illustrated catalogue is the first investigation of gift-giving and its impact on the...

For many of us, one of the most important ways of coping with the death of a close relative is talking about them, telling all who will listen what they meant to us. Yet the Gypsies of central France, the Manus, not only do not speak of their dead, t...