Abstract Current research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding outlier communities is at an
important juncture. Rather than trying to argue for the presence or absence of complexity …

Ongoing debates over the significance of specialized production in ancient political
economies frequently hinge on questions of whether elites or commoners controlled craft …

This volume is the first text to focus specifically on the archaeology of domestic architecture.
Covering major theoretical and methodological developments over recent decades in areas …

The role of social valuables in establishing and defeating hierarchies in prestate societies is
explored through the use of Annette Weiner's concept of “inalienable possessions.” …

Marine shell ornaments have several characteristics that make them significant for
archaeological analysis. Made from a raw material valued by cultures throughout the world …

A Material Culture focuses on objects in Swahili society through the elaboration of an
approach that sees both people and things as caught up in webs of mutual interaction. It …

In this book, Kenneth Hirth provides a comparative view of the organization of ancient and
premodern society and economy. Hirth establishes that humans adapted to their …

Abstract The Prestige Goods Economy Model invoked by archaeologists to explain the
development of power in middle-range societies generally fails to discriminate the varied …

This article explores the relationship between craft production, exchange, and power in the
pre-Incaic Andes, with a focus on recent archaeological evidence from Chavín, Nasca …

Who benefits from complexity? Is it the general populace as systems theorists and
functionalists would have it, or is it the elites as Marxists would have it? And if the latter, is it …