MU Libraries New Books: Anthropology

About the new book list

11/4/2009

The RSS feeds for the new books list is updated every Wednesday and contains a list of books added to the Ellis Library collection for the last six weeks. The titles are grouped by call number classification, and are listed by week and alphabetically by title.

Books for the most recent weeks are currently on the New Books Shelves inside the north entrance of Ellis Library. They can be checked out.

Direct action : an ethnography / by David Graeber. (11/4/2009)

11/4/2009

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David Graeber is an anthropologist and activist who teaches at the University of London. Active in numerous direct-action political organizations, he has written for Harper's Magazine and is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, and Possibilities.

Call #: GN492.2 .G73 2009

Nationalizing the body : the medical market, print, and daktari medicine / Projit Bihari Mukharji. (11/4/2009)

11/4/2009

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Product Description

Nationalizing the Body revisits the history of 'western' medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali daktars who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see 'western' medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how 'western' medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave daktari medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of colonial South Asian medical history, it seeks to understand how daktari medicine re-positioned the colonized bodies as nationalized bodies.

Call #: GN635.S645 M85 2009

Toward an anthropology of government : democratic transformations and nation building in Wales / William R. Schumann. (10/21/2009)

10/21/2009

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Review

“Schumann has written a timely and important anthropological assessment of power in government and the roles which politicians, civil servants and other political leaders play in social and cultural change in a devolving United Kingdom. This is work at the cutting edge of political anthropology today.”--Thomas M. Wilson, Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton University, SUNY

Call #: GN585.G7 S38 2009

Antiquarians at the megaliths / edited by Magdalena S. Midgley. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN790 .I58 2006a

Cuba in the shadow of change : daily life in the twilight of the revolution / Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Review

"This book is a masterpiece. Accurate, lyrical, and empathetic in its illumination of the lives of ordinary Cubans, as they survive and thrive in the bizarre economic and political environment of Cuba during its 'Special Period.'" - Archibald Ritter, Carleton University"

Call #: GN564.C9 W45 2009

Cultural styles of knowledge transmission : essays in honour of Ad Borsboom / Jean Kommers and Eric Venbrux (eds.). (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN451 .C85 2008

Doing sensory ethnography / Sarah Pink. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN345 .P49 2009

Gossip and the everyday production of politics / Niko Besnier. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Product Description

Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author's intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions - the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice - that are rarely wedded successfully.Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approaches gossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelae's people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atoll's political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in which gossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it.

Call #: GN671.T88 B47 2009

Prehistory : the making of the human mind / Colin Renfrew. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Review

“In this complex, closely argued text . . . field giant Renfrew sets forth quite a task, to sum up the progress of prehistoric archaeology thus far and then explore current challenges.” —Publishers Weekly

“A remarkably useful text in that it will generate lively, thoughtful and passionate discussion and inspire new ways of examining existing evidence.” —New Scientist magazine

“An elegant and absorbing distillation of the wisdom accrued during a life in prehistory.”—Reference and Research Book News

Call #: GN740 .R46 2009

The dispersal of the Neolithic over the Arabian Peninsula / Philipp Drechsler. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN776.32.A65 D74 2009

Britain's oldest art : the Ice Age cave art of Creswell Crags / Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt with contributions by Andrew Chamberlain ... [et al.]. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Call #: GN772.22.G7 B34 2009

Measured on stone : stone artefact reduction, residential mobility, and aboriginal land use in arid Central Australia / Wallace Boone Law. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

Call #: GN434 .L39 2009

Monuments and minds : monument re-use in Scandinavia in the second half of the first millennium AD / Eva S. Thäte. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Review
"I recommend this Handbook for policy makers and practitioners seeking to promote reconciliation in war-torn societies and between people divided by conflict . . . this publication should be required reading for the blue helmets and international civil servants of the next UN operation and, indeed, for all concerned actors, including local community leaders, in nations beset by conflict." --Sergio Vieira de Mello, High Commissioner for Human Rights
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"This Handbook [is for] those who struggle for reconciliation in other contexts
around the world . . . the practical tools and lessons from experience presented here will inspire, assist, and support them in their supremely important task." —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Call #: GN780.22.S34 T48 2007

Toolkit structure and site use : results of a high-power use-wear analysis of lithic assemblages from Solutré (Saône-et-Loire), France / William E. Banks. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

Call #: GN434 .B36 2009

Megalithic Jordan : an introduction and field guide / Gajus Scheltema. (9/30/2009)

9/30/2009

Call #: GN855.J67 S34 2008

Ethnographies revisited : constructing theory in the field / edited by Antony J. Puddephatt, William Shaffir and Steven W. Kleinknecht. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

Call #: GN345 .E74 2009

Planted flags : trees, land, and law in Israel/Palestine / Irus Braverman. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

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Product Description
Planted Flags tells an extraordinary story about the mundane uses of law and landscape in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. The book is structured around the two dominant tree landscapes in Israel/Palestine: pine forests and olive groves. The pine tree, which is usually associated with the Zionist project of afforesting the Promised Land, is contrasted with the olive tree, which Palestinians identify as a symbol of their steadfast connection to the land. What is it that makes these seemingly innocuous, even natural, acts of planting, cultivating, and uprooting trees into acts of war? How is this war reflected, mediated, and, above all, reinforced through the polarization of the natural landscape into two juxtaposed landscapes? And what is the role of law in this story? Planted Flags explores these questions through an ethnographic study. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

Book Description
Planted Flags explores how the natural landscape is conscripted into the national war between Israelis and Palestinians. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

About the Author
Irus Braverman is Associate Professor of Law at University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of House Demolitions in East Jerusalem: "Illegality" and Resistance and has previously been affiliated with the Humanities Center at Harvard University, the Human Rights Program at Harvard University Law School, the Center of Criminology at the University of Toronto, and the Geography Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary study of law, geography, and anthropology.

Call #: GN635.I78 B73 2009

What anthropologists do / Veronica Strang illustrations by Blue Powell. (9/16/2009)

9/16/2009

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Review

"Veronica Strang's What Anthropologists Do provides a valuable panoramic view of wide-ranging work undertaken by anthropologists. Engagingly written and useful for school and anthropology students considering their career options, it will be accessible for any reader wondering what it is that anthropologists really do."-- Kathryn Tomlinson

Product Description

What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? What Anthropologists Do answers all these questions. And more.

Anthropology is an astonishingly diverse and engaged field of study that seeks to understand human social behavior. What Anthropologists Do presents a lively introduction to the ways in which anthropology's unique research methods and cutting edge thinking contribute to a very wide range of activities: environmental issues, aid and development, advocacy, human rights, social policy, the creative arts, museums, health, education, crime, communications technology, design, marketing, and business. In short, a training in Anthropology provides highly transferable skills of investigation and analysis.

The book will be ideal for any readers who want to know what Anthropology is all about and especially for students coming to the study of Anthropology for the first time.

About the Author

Veronica Strang is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland. An environmental anthropologist, she has written extensively on water, land and resource issues in Australia and the UK, and is the author of Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values (Berg 1997), and The Meaning of Water (Berg 2004).

Call #: GN41.8 .S77 2009

Yuendumu everyday : contemporary life in remote Aboriginal Australia / Yasmine Musharbash. (9/16/2009)

9/16/2009

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Product Description

Focusing on an isolated community in central Australia, this highly-readable examination presents insights into the cultural underpinnings of indigenous daily life through evocative narratives revolving around five Warlpiri women. The seemingly contradictory realities of a distant hunter-gatherer past and current life in a first-world nation-state are addressed as this refreshing study answers questions about the specifics of camps, sleeping arrangements, public and private boundaries, and how indigenous people in praxis relate to each other. This analysis illuminates the personal, utilizing rich vignettes and narrative portraits to expand understandings of indigenous Australia.

About the Author

Yasmine Musharbash spent three years of participant observation in the Warlpiri camps of Yuendumu as a postgraduate of the Australian National University and as a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Western Australia.

Call #: GN667.Y84 M87 2008

Le concept de territoires dans le Paléolithique supérieur européen / edited by François Djindjian, Janusz Kozlowski, Nuno Bicho. (9/9/2009)

9/9/2009

Call #: GN772.2.A1 I58 2006

Lithics in the Scandinavian late Bronze Age : sociotechnical change and persistence / Anders Högberg. (9/9/2009)

9/9/2009

Call #: GN778.22.S34 H64 2009

Non-flint raw material use in prehistory : old prejudices and new directions = L'utilisation préhistorique de matières premières lithiques alternatives : anciens préjuǵs, nouvelles perspectives / edited by Farina Sternke, Lotte Eigeland and Laurent-Jacque (9/9/2009)

9/9/2009

Call #: GN434 .I57 2006

The cave and the cathedral : how a real-life Indiana Jones and a renegade scholar decoded the ancient art of man / Amir D. Aczel. (9/9/2009)

9/9/2009

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Amazon.com Review
Product Description

What Are The Ancients Trying To Tell Us?

"Why would the Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers of Europe expend so much time and effort to penetrate into deep, dark, and dangerous caverns, where they might encounter cave bears and lions or get lost and die, aided only by the dim glow of animal fat¿burning stone candles, often crawling on all fours for distances of up to a mile or more underground . . . to paint amazing, haunting images of animals?"
—From The Cave and the Cathedral

Join researcher and scientist Amir D. Aczel on a time-traveling journey through the past and discover what the ancient caves of France and Spain may reveal about the origin of language, art, and human thought as he illuminates one of the greatest mysteries in anthropology.

"A well-researched and highly readable exploration of one of the most spectacular manifestations of the unique human creative spirit–and one of its most intriguing mysteries."
—Ian Tattersall, Curator, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, and author of The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution

Browse Relics Found by Author Amir D. Aczel

The dotted horses of the cave of Pech Merle.
(Click to enlarge)

A Mousterian stone ax.
(Click to enlarge)

Drawing of a Pyrenean ibex from the wall of the Black Salon.
(Click to enlarge)

Review
Archeologist Aczel (Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Jesuit and the Skull, etc.) has visited most of the Paleolithic caves still open to the public, and spent years researching European cave art, attempting to explain "the appearance, around 32,000 years ago, of magnificent paintings, drawings and engravings... [inside] almost inaccessible recesses of large Ice-Age caverns." First discovered in the 1870s, these caves were adorned by stone-age forebears over a 20,000-year period. Most of the paintings can be be found only after crawling for miles to where open "galleries" are decorated, wall and ceiling, with animal groups rendered in naturalistic detail. Groupings retain similar features in different locations over the whole 20,000 year period, and experts still argue over its meaning: Who were the artists? Why did they hide their art? Did it play a part in mystical ceremonies? Did they appreciate its beauty? Aczel's archeological exploration, including stories about the explorers and scientists who first discovered the ancient artwork, is a lively journey through time into the mystery of a people who may have "possessed deep understanding and perhaps even a cosmic picture of nature." *Red Star Review (PW review, August 2009)

From the Inside Flap
They stretch across stone walls located in almost inaccessible underground caverns. In drawing after drawing, in prehistoric caves in France and Spain that date from the Ice Age, horses, bison, bulls, and other animals–often painted in brilliant oranges, blacks, browns, and yellows¿stare out into darkness, as fresh and striking today as they were when they were created, some as far back as 30,000 years ago.

The art is eerily similar from cave to cave, even though the artists were separated by geography and as much as 20,000 years. There are few human figures and no trees, grass, or ground. The animals often overlap; two animals might share the same lines, for example, and at certain angles some appear three-dimensional. They are sometimes accompanied by symbols, dots, or, most riveting of all, imprints of human hands.

Who made these extraordinary drawings? How did the artists travel so far underground–often into tunnels and chambers where they could not stand up? How did they make the drawings, when all they had for lighting were candles made of animal fat? Why did they draw them?

And what about the adventurers who discovered or charted these caves? French prehistorian Abbé Henri Breuil explored the cave at Rouffignac, France, in 1915, by crawling on all fours for half a mile inside to reach the deep gallery. There, he had to lie on his back to inspect and copy the drawings from the ceiling. In 1985, diver Henri Cosquer discovered the entrance to an underwater cave 120 feet deep in the Mediterranean near Marseilles and explored it for years without telling anyone, gradually swimming farther into the narrow shaft. Eventually, over 360 feet in, he was able to surface into the air of a large underground hall, covered with ancient art.

Unfolding like an Indiana Jones adventure, this book explores what the art might mean and our own development from the strikingly modern Cro-Magnons.

About the Author
Amir D. Aczel is a research fellow in the history of science at Boston University and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University. He is the author of fifteen books, including Fermat's Last Theorem, Descartes's Secret Notebook, and The Jesuit and the Skull. He has appeared on the CBS Evening News, CNN, CNBC, and ABCis Nightline, as well as NPR's Weekend Edition and Morning Edition.

Call #: GN771 .A28 2009

The Cave of Hearths : Makapan middle pleistocene research project : field research by Anthony Sinclair and Patrick Quinney, 1996-2001 / edited by John McNabb, Anthony Sinclair. (9/9/2009)

9/9/2009

Call #: GN774.42.S6 C39 2009