Further Reading - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Further Reading	Volume 56 Number 3, May/June 2003

First Lady of Amazonia (page 26)
Meggers' Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995) is an excellent introduction to Meggers' cultural ecology perspective on the limitations of complexity for tropical lowland cultures of South America. A series of Latin American Antiquity articles--DeBoer et al., "Ceramic Seriation and Site Reoccupation in Lowland South America," 7:3 (1996); Heckenberger et al., "Village Size and Permanence in Amazonia: Two Archaeological Examples from Brazil," 10:4 (1999); and Comments, 12:3 (2001)--features the debate between Meggers and scholars who argue for greater cultural complexity in Amazonia. For an in-depth discussion of recent studies of "anthropogenic forests" in Amazonia, see C. Mann's "1491," The Atlantic Monthly (March 2002). Meggers presents her competing hypothesis that more successful Amazonian societies may have been exploiting palm starch in the article "The Mystery of the Marajoara: An Ecological Solution," Amazoniana 16:3/4 (2001).

The Well-Dressed Dead (page 32)
For nineteenth-century accounts of the Palermo mummies, see the works of Stephens and Browne. John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petra and the Holy Land (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1837). This book has been reprinted many times: University Of Oklahoma Press, 1970; San Francisco Chronicle Books 1991; Dover Publications 1996. John Ross Browne, Yusef: Or the Journey of the Frangi: A Crusade in the East (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1853). There are many subsequent editons of this work by Harper and Brothers and at least one relatively recent reprint by Ayer Company Publishers, 1977. The texts of both books are available online courtesy of the University of Southern Colorado, Department of History's "Traveling to Jerusalem" site. For a detailed account of the drying process used at Palermo, see Arthur Aufderheide, The Scientific Study of Mummies (New York: Cambridge University Press 2003). More images of the Palermo mummies can be found at various websites. Two of the best are Kim's Capuchins' Catacombs Corpses of Palermo and PSCatacombes (in French).

Guge: Tibet's Long-Lost Kingdom (page 36)
English-language publications on the Guge kingdom are rare, and much of the information available online comes from travel agencies. The most recent publication on the subject is Roberto Vitali's Records of Tholing: A Literary and Visual Reconstruction of the 'Mother' Monastery in Guge (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 1999). Early Jesuit visits to Guge are described in S.J. Wessel's Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia 1603-1721 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1924), while Giuseppi Tucci's research can be found in "Secrets of Tibet," (New Delhi: Cosmo Pub, 1996 repr.), co-authored with E. Ghersi.

Mixed Messages (page 40)
Reisner's works include A History of the Giza Necropolis vol. I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), his monumental published work on the 1200, 2100, 4000 and 5000 series tombs at Giza, and The Development of the Egyptian Tomb Down to the Accession of Cheops (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), an assessment of the progression of tomb construction through the first half of the Old Kingdom. The memoirs of Reisner's student Dows Dunham, Recollections of an Egyptologist (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1972) have much about working in the field with the esteemed professor. An engaging account of the experiences of an artist who worked with and was confidant to Professor Reisner can be found in Joseph Lindon Smith's Tombs, Temples & Ancient Art (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956). George Steindorff, "George Andrew Reisner," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 40, (1942), pp. 92-93, is an informative and poignant tribute to Reisner from a long-time friend. John A. Wilson's Signs & Wonders Upon Pharaoh: A History of American Egyptology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964) has a good, if brief, account of Reisner's life and works along with those of many other famous Egyptologists. See also the Boston Museum website concerning Reisner's life and work at: www.mfa.org/giza/pages/reisner.html. Ann Macy Roth's A Cemetery of Palace Attendants (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1995) covers the group of mastabas just north of that containing G 2061.

Far Out Television (page 46)
One of the best books dedicated to ferreting out psuedoarchaeology is Kenneth Feder's Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archaeology (Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing, 1999). The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Committe for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, regularly runs features on archaeological topics, along with the usual Bigfoot and ESP fare.

Letter from Bolivia (page 62)
There are several good websites about Tiwanaku. Descriptions of the recent reconstruction of ancient Tiwanaku technology for stone-moving across Lake Titicaca can be found at www.reedboat.org. To see A. Vranich and colleagues in the field in 2002, visit ARCHAEOLOGY's Tiwanaku InteractiveDig. Archaeological Research on the Tiwanaku polity in Peru and Bolivia by A. Higueras, Ph.D., is described at tiwanakuarcheo.homestead.com/files/toptiwindex.html. "Ancient Agriculture at Tiwanaku", by B. Fagan, is a concise article on the rehabilitation of ancient agricultural technology. G. Gasparini and L. Margolies' Inca Architecture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980) includes a discussion of Tiwanaku architecture and the controversy surrounding the reconstructions at Tiwanaku. The ceremonial nature of the city of Tiwanaku is presented in A. Kolata and C. Ponce Sangines' article "Tiwanaku: The City at the Center," in The Ancient Americas. Art from Sacred Landscapes (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1992), R. F. Townsend, ed. V. Morell and K. Garrett's article "Empires of the Sun" (National Geographic June 2002) includes the most recent opinions on the nature of Tiwanaku and an elaborately drawn reconstruction of the city of Tiwanaku from the perspective of the Pumapunku Temple.