The University of Arizona Press

January 6, 2021

We are excited to participate in the first virtual Society for Historical Archaeology conference this year! You can visit our virtual exhibitor booth here.

Below, browse our recent and forthcoming historical archaeology titles, and get a 35% discount with free U.S. shipping when you use the code AZSHA21 at checkout. If you would like to know more about our publishing program, visit our proposal guidelines page here, or contact our Senior Editor, Allyson Carter, at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu.

The Global Spanish Empire tackles broad questions about indigenous cultural persistence, pluralism, and place making using a global comparative perspective grounded in the shared experience of Spanish colonialism. Through an expansive range of essays that look at Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, this volume brings often-neglected regions into conversation.

Watch a lecture with the editors, Christine D. Beaule and John G. Douglass, here, and read a Q&A with the editors here.

Tewa Worlds by Samuel Duwe offers an archaeological history of eight centuries of Tewa Pueblo history in the Rio Chama Valley through the lens of contemporary Pueblo philosophical and historical discourse. The result gives weight to the deep past, colonial encounters, and modern experiences. It challenges archaeologists to both critically reframe interpretation and to acknowledge the Tewa’s deep but ongoing connection with the land.

More than a history of coveted commodities, the unique story that unfolds in John R. Gust and Jennifer P. Mathews’s new history Sugarcane and Rum is told through the lens of Maya laborers who worked under brutal conditions on small haciendas to harvest sugarcane and produce rum in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

Read an excerpt from the book here. We are thrilled that Smithsonian Magazine chose Sugarcane and Rum for their weekly reading series!

Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of California’s Ohlone and Paipai people over the past five centuries. Lee M. Panich draws connections between the events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities.

Read a Q & A with author Lee M. Panich here.

Discover our forthcoming historical archaeology titles below.

Decolonizing “Prehistory” critically examines and challenges the paradoxical role that modern historical-archaeological scholarship plays in adding legitimacy to, but also delegitimizing, contemporary colonialist practices. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume empowers Indigenous voices and offers a nuanced understanding of the American deep past.

How people eat today is a record of food use through the ages, and Famine Foods offers the first ever overview of the use of alternative foods during food shortages. Paul E. Minnis explores the unusual plants that have helped humanity survive throughout history.

Alluvium and Empire examines the archaeology of Indigenous communities and landscapes that were subject to Spanish colonial forced resettlement during the sixteenth century. Written at the intersections of history and archaeology, the book critiques previous approaches to the study of empire and models a genealogical approach that attends to the open-ended—and often unpredictable—ways in which empires take shape.