The transition from roll to codex as the standard format of the book is one of the most culturally significant innovations of Late Antiquity. "The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity" examines surviving evidence in order to better understand how this...

Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were pioneers in using visual anthropological techniques to study the aesthetics of bodily motion in Bali. What is less well known is that they also collected textiles, paintings, puppets, and carving...

Although craftspeople and artists often work with natural materials, the notion that making art can constitute a means of knowing nature is a novel one. This book, with contributions from historians of science, medicine, art, and material culture, sh...

Derived from Latin ex voto suscepto "in pursuance of a vow", an ex voto embodies the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of the person who deposits it. Almost anything, regardless of size, weight, form, or original function, can become a votive object. Ulti...

History is usually thought of as a tale of time, a string of events flowing in a particular chronological order. But as Karl Schlogel shows in this groundbreaking book, the where of history is just as important as the when. Schlogel relishes space th...

Today, China's classical antiquity is often studied through recovered artifacts, but before this practice became widespread, scholars instead reconstructed the distant past through classical texts and transmitted illustrations. Among the most importa...

In the late nineteenth century, the growing discipline of anthropology was both a powerful tool of colonial control and an ideological justification for it. As European empires and their commercial reach expanded, different populations became intertw...

How do works of art endure over time in the face of aging materials and changing interpretations of their meaning? How do decay, technological obsolescence, and the blending of old and new media affect what an artwork is and can become? And how can c...

In the West at the turn of the twentieth century, public understanding of science and the world was shaped in part by expeditions to Asia, North America, and the Pacific. "The Anthropology of Expeditions" draws together contributions from anthropolog...

The last forty years have seen the rise of the personal computer, a device that has enabled ordinary individuals to access a tool that had been exclusive to laboratories and corporate technology centers. During this time, computers have become smalle...