Monday, October 30, 2023

Open Access Books from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

 [First posted in AWOL 14 October 2020, updated 30 October 2023]

Open Access Books from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press is the academic publishing division of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, a premier research organization dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and conservation of archaeological knowledge and heritage. The Cotsen Institute is also home to both the Interdepartmental Archaeology Program and the UCLA/Getty Master's Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation. Since 1975, the Cotsen Institute Press (formerly the Publications Unit) has served to preserve cultural heritage through the documentation and publication of scholarly archaeological research. Specializing in producing high-quality academic titles, our press publishes approximately 10 volumes per year in nine series, including a new digital series hosted on eScholarship. Acquisitions are monitored by an Editorial Board composed of distinguished UCLA and external faculty and are accepted based on the results of critical peer review. For more information about our press, please visit our Web site http://www.ioa.ucla.edu/publications/introduction.

Cotsen Digital Archaeology series

Cover page of Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the 12th IEMA Visiting Scholar’s Conference

Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the 12th IEMA Visiting Scholar’s Conference

(2022)

Every part of archaeological practice is intimately tied to digital technologies, but how deeply do we really understand the ways these technologies impact the theoretical trends in archaeology, how these trends affect the adoption of these technologies, or how the use of technology alters our interactions with the human past? This volume suggests a critical approach to archaeology in a digital world, a purposeful and systematic application of digital tools in archaeology. This is a call to pay attention to your digital tools, to be explicit about how you are using them, and to understand how they work and impact your own practice. The chapters in this volume demonstrate how this critical, reflexive approach to archaeology in the digital age can be accomplished, touching on topics that include 3D data, predictive and...

Cover page of Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration

Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration

(2011)

How is the Web transforming the professional practice of archaeology? And as archaeologists accustomed to dealing with “deep time,” how can we best understand the possibilities and limitations of the Web in meeting the specialized needs of professionals in this field? These are among the many questions posed and addressed in Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall. With contributions from a range of experts in archaeology and technology, this volume is organized around four key topics that illuminate how the revolution in communications technology reverberates across the discipline: approaches to information retrieval and information access; practical and theoretical concerns inherent in design choices for archaeology’s...

  • 1 supplemental PDF
Cover page of The World According to Basketry

The World According to Basketry

(1999)

This book was originally published in 1999 by the Leiden University, Center of Non-Western Studies. This is an unabridged re-publication of the 1999 edition, and the one-hour movie that is an integral part of the book. You can download the movie as mp4 file under the tab “Supporting Material”. At a future date the full integration of text and video (as specified in Appendix C of the book) will be offered through this stable URL as well.

  • 1 supplemental video
Cover page of Who is afraid of basketry

Who is afraid of basketry

(1991)

A guide to recording basketry and cordage for archaeologists and ethnographers

  • 1 supplemental file

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

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Cover page of Divine Consumption: Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa

Divine Consumption: Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa

(2022)

Kirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa.  Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the...

Cover page of The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

(2022)

In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period.     ...

Cover page of The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

The Archaeology of Political Organization: Urbanism in Classic Period Veracruz, Mexico

(2022)

In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period.     ...

Cover page of Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain

Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain

(2021)

Bikeri: Two Copper Age Villages on the Great Hungarian Plain, about fifth-millennium BC settlements that reveal the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age, when these prehistoric societies developed new agropastoral subsistences, burial practices and habitation patterns.

Cover page of Talepakemalai: Lapita and Its Transformations in the Mussau Islands of Near Oceania

Talepakemalai: Lapita and Its Transformations in the Mussau Islands of Near Oceania

(2021)

The definitive final report on the Lapita and post-Lapita sites investigated during the Mussau Project, fundamental to an understanding of Oceanic prehistory.

Cover page of Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center

Paso de la Amada: An Early Mesoamerican Ceremonial Center

(2021)

Paso de la Amada, an archaeological site in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast of Mexico, was among the earliest sedentary, ceramic-using villages of Mesoamerica. With an occupation that extended across 140 ha in 1600 BC, it was also one of the largest communities of its era. First settled around 1900 BC, the site was abandoned 600 years later during what appears to have been a period of local political turmoil. The decline of Paso de la Amada corresponded with a rupture in local traditions of material culture and local adoption of the Early Olmec style. Stylistically, the material culture of Paso de la Amada corresponds predominantly to the pre-Olmec Mokaya tradition...

Cover page of The Wari Enclave of Espíritu Pampa

The Wari Enclave of Espíritu Pampa

(2020)

The Wari State was the first expansionistic power to develop in the Andean highlands.  Emerging in the area of modern Ayacucho (Peru) around AD 650, the Wari expanded to control much of the central Andes by the time of their collapse at AD 1000. This book describes the discovery and excavation (2010-2012) of a major new Wari site (Espíritu Pampa), located in the subtropical region of Vilcabamba (Department of Cusco). While it was long believed that the Wari established trade networks between their highland capital and the Amazonian lowlands, the identification of a large Wari site in the Vilcabamba region came as a surprise to most Wari specialists. This book covers the first three years of excavations at the Wari site of Espíritu Pampa. It describes the identification of a central plaza surrounded by a series of D-shaped...

Cover page of Landscape History of Hadramawt: The Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA Project 1998-2008)

Landscape History of Hadramawt: The Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA Project 1998-2008)

(2020)

The rugged highlands of southern Yemen are one of the less archaeologically explored regions of the Near East. This final report of survey and excavations by the Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) Project addresses the development of food production and human landscapes, topics of enduring interest as scholarly conceptualizations of the Anthropocene take shape. Along with data from Manayzah, site of the earliest dated remains of clearly domesticated animals in Arabia, the volume also documents some of the earliest water management technologies in Arabia, thereby anchoring regional dates for the beginnings of pastoralism and of potential farming...

Cover page of Early Athens: Settlements and Cemeteries in the Submycenaean, Geometric, and Archaic Periods

Early Athens: Settlements and Cemeteries in the Submycenaean, Geometric, and Archaic Periods

(2019)

This volume is one of the most important works on ancient Athens in the last fifty years. The focus is on the early city, from the end of the Bronze Age—ca. 1200 BCE—to the Archaic period, when Athens became the largest city of the Classical period. From a systematic study of all the excavation reports and surveys in central Athens, the author has synthesized a detailed diachronic overview of the city from the Submycenaean period through the Archaic. It is a treasure-trove of information for archaeologists who work in this period. Of great value as well are the detailed maps included, which present features of ancient settlements and cemeteries, the repositories of the human physical record. Over eighty additional large-scale, interactive maps are available online to complement the book...

Cover page of Images in Action: The Southern Andean Iconographic Series

Images in Action: The Southern Andean Iconographic Series

(2018)

Emanating from a colloquium in pre-Columbian art and archaeology held at the University of Chile in Santiago, Images in Action presents interpretations of a large corpus of art and iconography from the Southern and South-Central Andes, bringing together some of the most esteemed scholars in the field. More than thirty authors, all with extensive experience in the Southern Andes, examine artifacts, artworks, textiles, archaeology and architecture to develop creative new insights on the cultural interactions between people in prehistoric western South America. The volume’s nearly 700 images are archived in an online database with metadata, fully referenced in the text, and searchable...

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