Peabody Museum Papers

During the early Colonial Period in the Americas, as an ancient way of life ended and the modern world began, indigenous peoples and European invaders confronted, resisted, and compromised with one another. Yet archaeological investigations of this complex era are rare. Magdalena de Cao is an exception: the first in-depth and heavily illustrated examination of what life was like at one culturally mixed town and church complex during the early Colonial Period in Peru.

The field research reported in this volume took place at the site of Magdalena de Cao Viejo, a town on the edge of the Pacific Ocean whose 150-year lifespan ran from the Late Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment. For a decade, an interdisciplinary team of researchers conducted archaeological and historical research in Peru, Spain, and the United States. Their analysis of documentary sources and recovered artifacts—including metals, textiles, beads, and fragmentary paper documents—opens new doors to understanding daily life in Magdalena de Cao during a turbulent time. Touching on themes of colonialism, cultural hybridity, resistance, and assimilation, Magdalena de Cao provides a comprehensive overview of the project itself and a rich body of data that will be of interest to researchers for years to come.

This comparative analysis aids the fieldworker in identifying fossil proboscidean bones from early man sites. It also describes the skulls, mandibles, and posteranial skeletons of forty families of birds frequently found in archaeological excavations in the United States.

Stanley Olsen’s invaluable manual presents diagnostic characteristics of the fish, amphibian, and reptile bones commonly found in archaeological sites in the southeastern and southwestern United Stares. An appendix describes in detail the osteology of the wild turkey.

This classic work provides a guide to the identification of nonhuman animal bones. Olsen illustrates various diagnostic characteristics of rodents and dogs; jaguars and other members of the cat family; the domestic horse, pig, and goat; and other animals whose bones are commonly found in archaeological sites in the southeastern United States.

This is the first of two volumes addressing the Harvard University excavations in an outlying residential zone of the Copan in Honduras. The book offers detailed descriptions of ceramics and all other artifacts during 1976–1977. The materials pertain largely to the Late Classic Period. Ceramics are presented according to the type-variety system.

In this sequel to his Cranial Variation in Man, William White Howells surveys present-day regional skull shapes by a uniform method, examining the nature and degree of cranial differences discernible between recent Homo sapiens populations around the world.

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.

The bone remains of a considerable range of vertebrate mammals have been recovered in the course of excavations at Maya archaeological sites. Many of the mammals represented in those collections are peculiar to Central America and have not been treated in osteological studies. This volume has been designed to aid in the identification of faunal remains recovered in the Maya area and is intended particularly for those archaeologists not having the large comparative mammal collections in their institutions. A number of the skeletons are figured for the first time.

A detailed report on the excavations of, and a comprehensive account and analysis of artifacts and materials from, seven settlements that varied in size from units of one or two families to small communities of several dozen individual houses.

Bones from Awatovi contains a detailed analysis of the massive collection of both the faunal remains and the bone/antler artifacts recovered from the site of Awatovi. Unique in its size and degree of preservation, the Awatovi faunal collection provides rich ground for analysis and interpretation. Olsen and Wheeler deliver an in-depth examination which is of interest to archaeologists and faunal analysts alike.