This book studies the formation of complex societies in prehistoric China during the Neolithic and early state periods, c. 7000–1500 BC. Archaeological materials are interpreted through anthropological perspectives, using systematic analytic methods in settlement and burial patterns.  Meer

This innovative analysis of archaeological settlement patterns as a guide to ancient political structure focuses on the Maya of Southeastern Mexico. Working principally with data from the Classic Period in the Rosario Valley, Dr de Montmollin relates problem orientation and theory to themes with wide currency in political anthropolgy.  Meer

Religion and Empire is an innovative and provocative study of the two largest states of the Precolumbian Americas, the Aztec and Inca Empires. By examining the causes of the formation and expansion of these two empires, the authors identify similar patterns and processes underlying their rise and decline.  Meer

In this 1996 volume, Jerry D. Moore discusses public architecture in the context of the cultural, political and religious life of the pre-hispanic Andes.  Meer

Jacques Cauvin has spent many years researching the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Near East, excavating key sites and developing new ideas to explain the hugely significant cultural, social and economic changes which transformed mobile hunter-gatherers into the first village societies and farmers in the world.  Meer

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology is a notable contribution to the debate about how we can write prehistory. Drawing on both processual and post-processual approaches, it reaffirms the central role of theory and interpretation while accepting as permanent the uncertainty which makes the testing of archaeological hypotheses difficult or even impossible.  Meer

Archaeology has made enormous advances recently, both in volume of discoveries and in its character as an intellectual discipline; new techniques have helped to further the range and rigour of enquiry, and encouraged interdisciplinary communication.  Meer

Using data drawn primarily from the American Southwest, Stephen Plog shows that there are basic problems with the methods archaeologists traditionally use to classify and analyse prehistoric pottery.  Meer

This 1976 text is a pioneering study in the applications to archaeology of modern statistical and quantitative techniques. The authors show how these techniques, when sensitively employed, can dramatically extend and refine the information presented in distribution maps and other analyses of spatial relationships.  Meer

'Living archaeology,' says Richard Gould, 'is ethnoarchaeology in the active voice'. Using as case studies his own observations of Australian Aborigines, and those of others, the author presents a unified theory of ethnoarchaeology.  Meer

Since the 1950s, when the phrase 'industrial archaeology' was coined, there has been an enormous growth of interest in what have come to be seen as the monuments of our more recent past.  Meer

Analysing the material remains left by Maryland's colonists in the eighteenth century in conjunction with historical records and works of art, archaeologists have reconstructed the daily life of the aristocratic British family of the governor of Maryland.  Meer

Interpreting the Axe Trade documents the changing character and context of stone axe production and exchange in the British Neolithic. Drawing on a variety of studies, the authors explore some of the problems and potentials that attend archaeological discussions of exchange at both a theoretical and a methodological level.  Meer

In this 1996 volume, Jerry D. Moore discusses public architecture in the context of the cultural, political and religious life of the pre-hispanic Andes.  Meer

Teotihuacan was one of the earliest and more populous preColumbian cities, and the Feathered Serpent was its vital monument, erected circa 200 AD. This work explores the religious meanings and political implications of the pyramid with meticulous and thorough analyses of substantially new excavation data.  Meer

In this study Roland Fletcher argues that the built environment becomes a constraint on the long-term development of a settlement. It is costly to move settlements, or to demolish and rebuild from scratch, so the initial layout and buildings, and the forms of communication that result, may come to shackle further development and also to place constraints on social and political change.  Meer

Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, one of the finest Italian protohistorians, deals in this monograph with a major archaeological site, the Iron Age cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa, near Rome.  Meer

John Fox here offers a fresh and persuasive view of the crucial Classic-Postclassic transition that determined the shape of the later Maya state. Drawing this data from ethnographic analogy and native chronicles as well as archaeology, he identifies segmentary lineage organisation as the key to understanding both the political organisation and the long-distance migrations observed among the Quiche Maya of Guatemala and Mexico.  Meer

How, when and why did inherited differences of wealth, status and power arise in human communities? At the heart of Emerging Complexity is the thesis that complex societies developed independently during the Copper and Bronze Ages in south-east Spain, and in the wider context of the Iberian peninsula and the west Mediterranean.  Meer

The Lake Chad region of Nigeria is an extreme environment: virtually treeless sand and a broiling clay plain in the fierce heat of the dry season, then much of it inundated and impassable in the wet season as whole areas turn into shallow lakes or marsh.  Meer