For the ancient Maya, food was both sustenance and a tool for building a complex society. This collection, the first to focus exclusively on the social uses of

Presenting new data from leading scholars in the field, this collection uses evidence from archaeology, hieroglyphic texts, chemical analyses, and art to explor

Writing and the Ancient State explores the early development of writing and its relationship to the growth of political structures. The first part of the book f

Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics establishes the central importance of plants to the histories and cultures of the extended tropical reg

New case studies documenting ten thousand years of cuisines across the cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico, from the earliest gathered plants, such as guajes, to the con