Publications

Bookshelves filled completely with books of different colors and sizes.

Publications

The Peabody Museum has long published a variety of print and electronic publications relating to collections, projects, and excavations conducted by Peabody Museum staff and Department of Anthropology faculty.

Current publications can be found under Books with links to purchase, while pre-1970s publications include links to texts when available. 

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Books

Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, IV

Citation:

III Gair Tourtellot. 10/5/1989. Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, IV. Edited by Gordon R. Willey, Pp. 496. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, IV

Abstract:

Peripheral Survey and Excavation, Settlement and Community Patterns

Seibal is a major ruin of the southern Maya lowlands, its vast ceremonial center covering several high hills on the banks of the Pasion River in the Guatemalan Department of Peten. In five volumes published over a 15-year period, the archaeological team headed by Gordon R. Willey presents a comprehensive review of their fieldwork from 1964 to 1968 and the results of many years of subsequent data analysis. The volumes also report on explorations in the peripheral settlements outside of the Seibal center and provide a regional view of the evolution of lowland Maya culture from the Middle and Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, V

Citation:

Gordon R. Willey, John A. Graham, III Gair Tourtellot, and Mary Pohl. 12/12/1990. Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, V, Pp. 290. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Excavations at Seibal, Department of Peten, Guatemala, V

Abstract:

Volume 1. Monumental Sculpture and Hieroglyphic Inscriptions
Volume 2. Burials
Volume 3. The Ethnozoology of the Maya
Volume 4. General Summary and Conclusions

Seibal is a major ruin of the southern Maya lowlands, its vast ceremonial center covering several high hills on the banks of the Pasion River in the Guatemalan Department of Peten. In five volumes published over a 15-year period, the archaeological team headed by Gordon R. Willey presents a comprehensive review of their fieldwork from 1964 to 1968 and the results of many years of subsequent data analysis. The volumes also report on explorations in the peripheral settlements outside of the Seibal center and provide a regional view of the evolution of lowland Maya culture from the Middle and Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume III: The Third Millennium

Citation:

D. T. by Potts. 11/14/2001. Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume III: The Third Millennium. Edited by C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Pp. 388. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume III: The Third Millennium

Abstract:

Situated roughly midway between the great cities of the Indus Valley and those of the Mesopotamian plains, Tepe Yahya occupies a special place in our conceptions of relations between these distant territories during the early Bronze Age. Its third-millennium levels, dating from 3000 to 2100 B.C., are particularly important.

In this definitive study, D. T. Potts describes the stratigraphy, architecture, ceramics, and chronology of the site and presents a full inventory of the small finds. Holly Pittman contributes comprehensive illustrations and a discussion of the seals and sealings, and Philip Kohl provides an analysis of the carved chlorite industry. In a foreword and afterword, project director C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky tells the story of the archaeological expedition and reflects on the contributions of the Tepe Yahya project.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume IV: The Iron Age Settlement

Citation:

Peter Magee. 7/26/2004. Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume IV: The Iron Age Settlement, Pp. 108. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Excavations at Tepe Yahya, Iran, 1967-1975, Volume IV: The Iron Age Settlement

Abstract:

Tepe Yahya provides a stratigraphic sequence that stretches some 6,000 years, from the Neolithic period to the early centuries AD. As a result, the site is critical for understanding cultural processes in southeastern Iran. In this fifth volume of results of the excavations at Tepe Yahya, Peter Magee presents evidence from the Iron Age occupation of the site. Looking beyond the epigraphic and historical data and examining the insights provided by the artifactual record, Magee describes how a small settlement, located some distance from the main centers of power, came into being and was affected by the emergence of the Achaemenid imperial system, which stretched from Pakistan to Libya.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Excavations at the Lake George Site, Yazoo Country, Mississippi, 1958–1960

Citation:

Stephen Williams Jeffrey P. and Brain. 7/31/1985. Excavations at the Lake George Site, Yazoo Country, Mississippi, 1958–1960, Pp. 512. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK

Abstract:

This milestone volume describes and interprets excavations at one of the greatest late prehistoric sites in the southeastern United States. Lake George reached its zenith between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries A.D., during the florescence of the Mississippian culture. This is a detailed analysis of the site and its relationship to the corpus of Southeastern archaeology.

Last updated on 12/13/2022
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Series

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 10: Part 1: Cotzumalhuapa

Citation:

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos. 1/15/2018. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 10: Part 1: Cotzumalhuapa. Edited by Barbara Fash, Pp. 64. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 10: Part 1: Cotzumalhuapa

Abstract:

For more than 45 years, the Peabody Museum has been publishing The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. The goal of this unique series of folio volumes is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art to advance the study of the ancient Maya. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world, and to source communities in in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Each volume in the series consists of three or more fascicles, which examine an individual site or group of neighboring sites and include maps of site location and plans indicating the placement monuments within each site. Each inscription is reproduced in its entirety in both photographs and line drawings with descriptive texts.

 

Last updated on 12/13/2022

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 1: Introduction

Citation:

Ian Graham. 6/10/1985. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 1: Introduction, Pp. 64. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 1: Introduction

Abstract:

For more than 45 years, the Peabody Museum has been publishing The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. The goal of this unique series of folio volumes is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art to advance the study of the ancient Maya. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world, and to source communities in in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Each volume in the series consists of three or more fascicles, which examine an individual site or group of neighboring sites and include maps of site location and plans indicating the placement monuments within each site. Each inscription is reproduced in its entirety in both photographs and line drawings with descriptive texts.

 

Volume 1 includes a Spanish translation of the Introduction text and six appendices: sources of sculpture and their codes; list of abbreviations and symbols used in the Corpus series; table of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a complete Calendar Round in tabular form, giving the position of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a method for the quick computation of Calendar Round position, by John S. Justeson; and Moon Age tables, by Lawrence Roys.

Last updated on 05/24/2022

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 2: Part 1: Naranjo

Citation:

Ian Graham and Eric von Euw. 12/1/2004. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 2: Part 1: Naranjo, Pp. 64. Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 2: Part 1: Naranjo

Abstract:

For more than 45 years, the Peabody Museum has been publishing The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. The goal of this unique series of folio volumes is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art to advance the study of the ancient Maya. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world, and to source communities in in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Each volume in the series consists of three or more fascicles, which examine an individual site or group of neighboring sites and include maps of site location and plans indicating the placement monuments within each site. Each inscription is reproduced in its entirety in both photographs and line drawings with descriptive texts.

 

Last updated on 05/24/2022

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 2: Part 3: Ixkun, Ucanal, Ixtutz, Naranjo

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 2: Part 3: Ixkun, Ucanal, Ixtutz, Naranjo

Abstract:

For more than 45 years, the Peabody Museum has been publishing The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. The goal of this unique series of folio volumes is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art to advance the study of the ancient Maya. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world, and to source communities in in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

Each volume in the series consists of three or more fascicles, which examine an individual site or group of neighboring sites and include maps of site location and plans indicating the placement monuments within each site. Each inscription is reproduced in its entirety in both photographs and line drawings with descriptive texts.

 

Last updated on 05/24/2022
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The Faunas of Hayonim Cave, Israel: A 200,000-Year Record of Paleolithic Diet, Demography, and Society

The Faunas of Hayonim Cave, Israel: A 200,000-Year Record of Paleolithic Diet, Demography, and Society

Abstract:

A decade of zooarchaeological fieldwork (1992-2001) went into Mary Stiner’s pathbreaking analysis of changes in human ecology from the early Mousterian period through the end of Paleolithic cultures in the Levant. Stiner employs a comparative approach to understanding early human behavioral and environmental change, based on a detailed study of fourteen bone assemblages from Hayonim Cave and Meged Rockshelter in Israel’s Galilee. Principally anthropological in outlook, Stiner’s analysis also integrates chemistry, foraging and population ecology, vertebrate paleontology, and biogeography. Her research focuses first on the formation history, or taphonomy, of bone accumulations, and second on questions about the economic behaviors of early humans, including the early development of human adaptations for hunting large prey and the relative "footprint" of humans in Pleistocene ecosystems of the Levant.

Last updated on 01/10/2022
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Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film

Citation:

Robert Gardner. 3/30/2008. Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film, Pp. 160. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film

Abstract:

Honorable Mention, 2008 NEMA Awards (Books Over $10)

Robert Gardner’s classic Dead Birds is one of the most highly acclaimed and controversial documentary films ever made. This detailed and candid account of the process of making Dead Birds, from the birth of the idea through filming in New Guinea to editing and releasing the finished film, is more than the chronicle of a single work. It is also a thoughtful examination of what it meant to record the moving and violent rituals of warrior-farmers in the New Guinea highlands and to present to the world a graphic story of their behavior as a window onto our own. Letters, journals, telegrams, newspaper clippings, and over 50 images are assembled to recreate a vivid chronology of events. Making Dead Birds not only addresses the art and practice of filmmaking, but also explores issues of representation and the discovery of meaning in human lives.

Gardner led a remarkable cast of participants on the 1961 expedition. All brought back extraordinary bodies of work. Probably most influential of all was Dead Birds, which marked a sea change in nonfiction filmmaking. This book takes the reader inside the creative process of making that landmark film and offers a revealing look into the heart and mind of one of the great filmmakers of our time.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Shell Gorgets: Styles of the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric Southeast

Citation:

Jeffrey P. Brain and Philip Phillips. 3/29/1996. Shell Gorgets: Styles of the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric Southeast, Pp. 544. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Shell Gorgets: Styles of the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric Southeast

Abstract:

Engraved shell gorgets are found throughout prehistoric southeastern North America. The artistic sophistication of these gorgets lends itself to the sensitive stylistic and chronological analysis offered here. In part one of this volume, the gorgets are classified into styles; in part two, described archaeological sites are analyzed for associations and chronology; and in part three, information about the gorgets is correlated with other artifactual evidence, and patterns of intersite distribution are examined for chronological insights and dynamic interpretations.

Last updated on 01/10/2022

Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz

Citation:

Alexander L. Fattal. 12/1/2020. Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz, Pp. 252. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz

Abstract:

Bronze Medal, 2021 IPPY Awards

Winner, 2021 John Collier Jr. Award

Honorable Mention, 2022 LASA Visual Culture Section Book Award

As a young Fulbright scholar in Bogotá determined to democratize the photographic gaze and bring new visions and voices to public debate about Colombia’s armed conflict, Alexander L. Fattal founded Disparando Cámaras para la Paz (Shooting Cameras for Peace). The project taught photography to young people in El Progreso, a neighborhood on the city’s outskirts that was home to families displaced by violence in the countryside. Cameras in hand, the youth had a chance to record and reimagine their daily existence.

Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz is a penetrating look at one of Latin America’s most dynamic participatory media projects. The haunting and exuberant photographs made under its auspices testify to young people’s will to play, to dream, and to survive. The images bear witness to the resilience and creativity of lives marked by a war that refuses to die.

With text in English and Spanish, Shooting Cameras for Peace / Disparando Cámaras para la Paz makes vital contributions to studies of collaborative media, photographic activism, and peace and conflict in Colombia. Fattal’s insightful text offers critical reflection on the genre of participatory photography and the structural challenges faced by similar media projects.

Last updated on 08/18/2022

Still Points

Citation:

Robert Gardner. 9/10/2018. Still Points, Pp. 112. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Still Points

Abstract:

Still Points is a collection of remarkable and evocative still photographs taken by award-winning nonfiction filmmaker and author Robert Gardner during his anthropological and filming expeditions around the world. Thousands of his original photographic transparencies and negatives from the Kalahari Desert, New Guinea, Colombia, India, Ethiopia, Niger, and other remote locations are now housed in the Photographic Archives of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. This elegantly produced volume presents a curated selection of more than 70 color and black-and-white images made by Gardner between the 1950s and the 1980s. Edited by Adele Pressman, Gardner’s wife and literary executor, and with a foreword by Eliot WeinbergerStill Points both honors an important and influential artist and reveals new dimensions in his work.

Last updated on 01/13/2022
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Gifts of the Great River: Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection

Citation:

John H. House. 1/22/2004. Gifts of the Great River: Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection, Pp. 120. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Gifts of the Great River: Arkansas Effigy Pottery from the Edwin Curtiss Collection

Abstract:

Foreword by Ian W. Brown

In 1879 Edwin Curtiss set out for the wild St. Francis River region of northeastern Arkansas to collect archaeological specimens for the Peabody Museum. By the time Curtiss completed his fifty-six days of Arkansas fieldwork, he had sent nearly 1,000 pottery vessels to Cambridge and had put the Peabody on the map as the repository of one of the world’s finest collections of Mississippian artifacts. John House brings us a lively account of the work of this nineteenth-century fieldworker, the Native culture he explored, and the rich legacies left by both. The result is a vivid re-creation of the world of Indian peoples in the Mississippi River lowlands in the last centuries before European contact. The volume’s focus is Curtiss’s collection of charming and expressive effigy vessels: earthenware bowls and bottles that incorporate forms of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and humans, including the Peabody’s famous red-and-white head vase.

John H. House is Station Archaeologist, Pine Bluff Research Station, and Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Last updated on 01/13/2022

Hunters, Carvers & Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art

Citation:

Maija M. Lutz. 11/12/2012. Hunters, Carvers & Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art, Pp. 128. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Hunters, Carvers & Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art

Abstract:

In the late 1950s, Chauncey C. Nash started collecting Inuit carvings just as the art of printmaking was being introduced in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), an Inuit community on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Nash donated some 300 prints and sculptures to Harvard’s Peabody Museum—one of the oldest collections of early modern Inuit art. The Peabody collection includes not only early Inuit sculpture but also many of the earliest prints on paper made by the women and men who helped propel Inuit art onto the world stage.

Author Maija M. Lutz draws from ethnology, archaeology, art history, and cultural studies to tell the story of a little-known collection that represents one of the most vibrant and experimental periods in the development of contemporary Inuit art. Lavishly illustrated, Hunters, Carvers, and Collectors presents numerous never-before-published gems, including carvings by the artists John Kavik, Johnniebo Ashevak, and Peter Qumalu POV Assappa. This latest contribution to the award-winning Peabody Museum Collections Series fills an important gap in the literature of Native American art.

Last updated on 01/13/2022

Painted by a Distant Hand

Citation:

Steven A. LeBlanc. 4/30/2005. Painted by a Distant Hand, Pp. 120. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Painted by a Distant Hand

Abstract:

Foreword by Rubie Watson

Photographs by Hillel S. Burger

1st place, 2006 NEMA Awards (Books Over $10)

Highlighting one of the Peabody Museum’s most important archaeological expeditions—the excavation of the Swarts Ranch Ruin in southwestern New Mexico by Harriet and Burton Cosgrove in the mid-1920s—Steven LeBlanc’s book features rare, never-before-published examples of Mimbres painted pottery, considered by many scholars to be the most unique of all the ancient art traditions of North America. Made between A.D. 1000 and 1150, these pottery bowls and jars depict birds, fish, insects, and mammals that the Mimbres encountered in their daily lives, portray mythical beings, and show humans participating in both ritual and everyday activities. LeBlanc traces the origins of the Mimbres people and what became of them, and he explores our present understanding of what the images mean and what scholars have learned about the Mimbres people in the 75 years since the Cosgroves’ expedition.

Steven A. LeBlanc is an archaeologist and former Director of Collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Rubie Watson is Curator of Comparative Ethnology in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Last updated on 01/13/2022

The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages

Citation:

Jeffrey Quilter. 2/28/2011. The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages, Pp. 172. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages

Abstract:

Peru’s ancient Moche culture is represented in a magnificent collection of artifacts at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. In this richly illustrated volume, Jeffrey Quilter presents a fascinating introduction to this intriguing culture and explores current thinking about Moche politics, history, society, and religion.

Quilter utilizes the Peabody’s collection as a means to investigate how the Moche used various media, particularly ceramics, to convey messages about their lives and beliefs. His presentation provides a critical examination and rethinking of many of the commonly held interpretations of Moche artifacts and their imagery, raising important issues of art production and its role in ancient and modern societies.

The most up-to-date monograph available on the Moche—and the first extensive discussion of the Peabody Museum’s collection of Moche ceramics—this volume provides an introduction for the general reader and contributes to ongoing scholarly discussions. Quilter’s fresh reading of Moche visual imagery raises new questions about the art and culture of ancient Peru.

Last updated on 12/13/2022
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Avenue Patrice Lumumba

Citation:

Guy Tillim. 1/9/2009. Avenue Patrice Lumumba, Pp. 128. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press.
Avenue Patrice Lumumba

Abstract:

Foreword by Robert Gardner

“Guy Tillim … combines a profound sense of historic documentation of African countries ravaged by conflicts and tragedies of all kinds and a very stringent formal aesthetic devoid of all mannerism.”'
—Michket Krifa

As the first recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum, Guy Tillim traveled through Angola, Mozambique, Congo, and Madagascar, documenting the grand colonial architecture and how it has become part of a contemporary African stage. His photographs reveal the decay and detritus of colonialism in Western and Southern Africa and convey an acute sense of humanity.

Tillim is an award-winning photographer from South Africa. His photographic documentation of social conflict and inequality in the countries of Africa has been exhibited in more than a dozen countries and widely published.


Co-published with Prestel Verlag. 

Last updated on 02/28/2024

Caspian: The Elements

Citation:

Chloe Dewe Mathews, Morad Montazami, Sean O’Hagan, and Arnold van Bruggen. 10/1/2018. Caspian: The Elements, Pp. 216. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press and Aperture. BUY THIS BOOK
Caspian: The Elements

Abstract:

Caspian: The Elements is Chloe Dewe Mathews’s record of five years spent roaming the borderlands of the Caspian Sea. In a resource-rich region roiled by contested geopolitics, Dewe Mathews found that elemental materials like oil, rock, and uranium are central to the mystical, practical, artistic, religious, and therapeutic aspects of daily life. With essays by Morad Montazami, Sean O’Hagan, and Arnold van Bruggen, Caspian: The Elements offers a series of powerful visual narratives that explore the deep links between the peoples of the Caspian and their enigmatic and coveted landscapes.

Last updated on 02/28/2024

Community Fire

Citation:

Zhang Xiao. 8/8/2023. Community Fire, Pp. 192. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press and Aperture. BUY THIS BOOK
Community Fire

Abstract:

In his project Community Fire, the photographer Zhang Xiao takes a local, hometown look at Shehuo (社火), a Chinese Spring Festival tradition celebrated in rural northern Chinese communities, including temple fairs, dragon dances, and storytelling. Shehuo—literally, “community fire”—is devoted to the worship of land and fire, and boasts a history of many thousands of years. During the festival, people hold ceremonies, pray for the next year’s good harvest, and confer blessings of peace and safety for all family members. 

However, what was once a heterogeneous cultural tradition with myriad regional variations has largely become a tourist-facing, consumption-oriented enterprise. In the early 2000s, Shehuo received an “intangible cultural heritage” designation from the People’s Republic of China, resulting in increased funding in exchange for greater government involvement. While transforming the practitioners’ relation to Shehuo, this change expresses itself most visually in the way Qing dynasty–era costumes and props have been replaced with newer, cheaper products from online shopping websites. Zhang’s photographs capture how these mass-produced substitutions have transformed the practice of Shehuo. Through a colorful and fantastical blend of portraiture and ephemera that documents the blurred edges between the everyday and the absurd, Community Fire is a dynamic visual exploration of one of China’s oldest traditions. 

Copublished by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press
Last updated on 02/28/2024

House of Love

Citation:

Dayanita Singh. 6/30/2011. House of Love, Pp. 198. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
House of Love

Abstract:

by Dayanita Singh

Finalist, 2012 New England Book Show (Pictorial)

House of Love is a work of photo fiction by Dayanita Singh. Working closely with the writer, Aveek Sen, whose prose follows a journey of its own, Singh explores the relationships among photography, memory, and writing. House of Love, designed to blur the lines between an art book of photographic images and a work of literary fiction, is a book whose images demand to be read, not just seen, and whose texts create their own sensory worlds. The combination creates a new vocabulary for the visual book.

The “House of Love” itself is the Taj Mahal, but the Taj Mahal is a recurring motif that stands for a range of meanings — meanings made up of the truths and lies of night and day, love and illusion, attachment and detachment. Through images of cities both visible and invisible, of people real and surreal, Singh creates her own mysterious and ineffable, strange yet familiar language, using her trademark black-and-white photography and her newer nocturnal color work.

Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi in 1961. She studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and later concentrated on photojournalism and documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her photos have been exhibited many times, most recently at the Venice Biennale 2011. Singh’s books include, Myself Mona Ahmed, Privacy, Go Away CloserSent a Letter, Blue book, Dream Villa and Dayanita Singh. She lives in New Delhi.

Aveek Sen is a senior assistant editor (editorial pages) of The Telegraph, Calcutta, where he has written extensively on photography. He was a Rhodes Scholar at University College, Oxford, where he studied English literature, before going on to teach English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. He is the winner of the 2009 International Center for Photography Infinity Award for Writing on Photography.

Last updated on 01/13/2022
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A Preliminary Study of the Prehistoric Ruins of Nakum, Guatemala: A Report of the Peabody Museum Expedition, 1909–1910

A Preliminary Study of the Prehistoric Ruins of Nakum, Guatemala: A Report of the Peabody Museum Expedition, 1909–1910

Abstract:

Peabody Museum Memoirs Volume 5, no. 3
Last updated on 01/03/2022

Archaeological Researches in Yucatan: Reports of Explorations for the Museum

Citation:

Edward H. Thompsonv. 1904. Archaeological Researches in Yucatan: Reports of Explorations for the Museum, Pp. 45. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. READ ONLINE
Archaeological Researches in Yucatan: Reports of Explorations for the Museum

Abstract:

Peabody Museum Memoirs Volume 3, no. 1
Last updated on 01/03/2022
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Anthropology at Harvard: A Biographical History, 1790–1940

Citation:

David L. Browman Stephen and Williams. 7/15/2013. Anthropology at Harvard: A Biographical History, 1790–1940, Pp. 602. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Anthropology at Harvard: A Biographical History, 1790–1940

Abstract:

"A monumental achievement"—American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Anthropology at Harvard recounts the rich and complex history of anthropology at America’s oldest university, beginning with the earliest precursors of the discipline within the study of natural history. The story unfolds through fascinating vignettes about the many individuals—famous and obscure alike—who helped shape the discipline at Harvard College and the Peabody Museum. Lively anecdotes provide in-depth portraits of dozens of key individuals, including Louis and Alexander Agassiz, Frederic Ward Putnam, Mary Hemenway, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Sylvanus Morley, A. V. Kidder, and Antonio Apache. The text also throws new light on longstanding puzzles and debates, such as Franz Boas’s censure by the American Anthropological Association and the involvement of Harvard archaeologists in espionage work for the U.S. government during World War I.

The authors take a “cohort” perspective, looking beyond the big names to the larger network of colleagues that formed the dynamic backdrop to the development of ideas. The significant contributions of amateurs and private funders to the early growth of the field are highlighted, as is the active participation of women and of students and scholars of diverse ethnic backgrounds. A monumental achievement, Anthropology at Harvard makes an important contribution to the history of Americanist anthropology.

"Overall, Anthropology at Harvard provides a comprehensive view of the East Coast development of the discipline and handles a prodigious amount of data remarkably well."—Donald McVicker, Isis >> read the full review

 

"Anthropology at Harvard will serve as an important, though limited, work of reference for historians of archaeology and anthropology."—Vincent Crapanzano, "Natives," The Times Literary Supplement >> read the full review

Last updated on 01/13/2022

Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites

Citation:

Lorna J. Marshall. 1/24/2000. Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites, Pp. 400. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites

Abstract:

With style and depth, Lorna Marshall leads the reader through the intricacies, ambiguities, and silences of !Kung beliefs. Her narrative, based on fieldwork among the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the early 1950s, brings into focus a way of life that appears to have existed for millennia. She presents the culture, beliefs, and spirituality of one of the last true hunting-and-gathering peoples by focusing on members of different bands as they reveal their own views. This account, with photography by John Marshall, presents a system of beliefs, one in which personified deities and unpersonifled supernatural forces (n!ow and n/um) interact with man and the natural world. The !Kung believe that this interaction accounts for much of the mystery of life and the vicissitudes of the good and evil that befall mankind. The book also depicts an egalitarian lifestyle based on sharing and group awareness, a lifestyle that has not survived intact the increasing integration of the Bushmen into the modern world.

A companion volume to her 1976 work, The !Kung of Nyae Nyae, this book was published to mark the one-hundredth birthday of Lorna Marshall (1898 – 2002).

Last updated on 01/13/2022

Remembering Awatovi: The Story of an Archaeological Expedition in Northern Arizona, 1935-1939

Citation:

Hester A. Davis. 12/15/2008. Remembering Awatovi: The Story of an Archaeological Expedition in Northern Arizona, 1935-1939, Pp. 240. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
Remembering Awatovi: The Story of an Archaeological Expedition in Northern Arizona, 1935-1939

Abstract:

Winner, 2008 New England Book Show (General Trade, Cover)

Gold Medal, 2009 IPPY Awards (West Mountain - Best Regional Non-Fiction)

Remembering Awatovi is the engaging story of a major archaeological expedition on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Centered on the large Pueblo village of Awatovi, with its Spanish mission church and beautiful kiva murals, the excavations are renowned not only for the data they uncovered but also for the interdisciplinary nature of the investigations. In archaeological lore they are also remembered for the diverse, fun-loving, and distinguished cast of characters who participated in or visited the dig.

Hester Davis’s lively account—part history of archaeology, part social history—is told largely in the words of the participants, among whom were two of Davis’s siblings, artist Penny Davis Worman and archaeologist Mott Davis. Life in the remote field camp abounded with delightful storytelling, delicious food, and good-natured high-jinks. Baths were taken in a stock tank, beloved camp automobiles were given personal names, and a double bed had to be trucked across the desert and up a mesa to celebrate a memorable wedding.

Remembering Awatovi is illustrated with over 160 portraits and photographs of camp life. Essays by Eric Polingyouma and Brian Fagan enrich the presentation.

Last updated on 01/13/2022

The Breakout: The Origins of Civilization

Citation:

Martha Lamberg-Karlovsky. 10/18/2020. The Breakout: The Origins of Civilization, Pp. 152. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press. BUY THIS BOOK
The Breakout: The Origins of Civilization

Abstract:

For much of the twentieth century, Mesopotamia was thought to he the singular "Cradle of Civilization;" and the agents of change that brought it about were thought to be demographic, ecological, and technological. Bronze Age Mesopotamian accomplishments were believed to have diffused outward, influencing the development of civilization in the rest of the world. Part of this Mesopocentric view was revised as archaeological evidence revealed that other unique civilizations had existed in both the Old and New Worlds, but the traditional Near Eastern pattern of development continued to serve as a model.

In the mid-1980s, however, Harvard’s Kwang-chih Chang proposed in Symbols--a publication of Harvard’s Peabody Museum and Department of Anthropology--that China’s first civilization did not evolve according to the conventional Mesopotamian model and argued instead for a new paradigm for understanding the origins of civilization in ancient China and the New World.

In this collection of subsequent Symbols articles and other essays, Maya and Near Eastern studies specialists engage in a stimulating debate of Chang’s thesis, also presented here.

Last updated on 01/13/2022
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Anthropological Literature

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