The University of Arizona Press

Becoming Hopi is a comprehensive look at the history of the people of the Hopi Mesas as it has never been told before. The product of more than fifteen years of collaboration between tribal and academic scholars, this volume presents groundbreaking research demonstrating that the Hopi Mesas are among the great centers of the Pueblo world.

“Becoming Hopi brilliantly combines Hopi and non-Hopi voices in helping to rewrite Hopi history and the process of becoming Hopi. The coverage is extensive—both for Hopi as well as for wide swaths of the northern Southwest—and each chapter has something new to offer in terms of innovative data collection and interpretation. The combination and use of traditional, archaeological, and documentary histories unfolds a rare perspective on what it means to be Hopi.”—Barbara Mills, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology

From the day he was born, Federico Jiménez Caballero was predicted to be a successful man. So, how exactly did a young boy from Tututepec, Oaxaca, become a famous Indigenous jewelry artist and philanthropist in Los Angeles? Federico tells the remarkable story of willpower, curiosity, hard work, and passion coming together to change one man’s life forever.

Watch a recording of a virtual book celebration for Federico here. We’re thrilled that Federico received an honorable mention for the International Latino Book Awards!

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.

“Decolonizing “Prehistory” carries readers to the rugged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest to hear how they are known by communities with millennial depth as residents. The book adds breadth with chapters on the Penobscot River People, Maya communities living at tourist destinations Coba and Tulum, and Mammoth Cave. Philip Deloria concludes the book with a reading of his father’s no-holds-barred assertion of flaws in Western science, a position that time has brought closer to anthropologists’ own critiques seen in this volume.”—Alice Beck Kehoe, author of Traveling Prehistoric Seas: Critical Thinking on Ancient Transoceanic Voyages

The recognition of Flower Worlds is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the study of Indigenous spirituality in the Americas. Flower Worlds is the first volume to bring together a diverse range of scholars to create an interdisciplinary understanding of floral realms that extend at least 2,500 years in the past.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

“The authors are coming at Flower World concepts from different directions and perspectives, and these different ideas and perspectives speak together in a way that helps further the conversation. This volume is not about concluding ideas but about continuing the conversation. I was impressed by the multitude of strong voices—both past and present—representing elements of the Flower World. This volume will be of lasting importance in the cross-cultural study of Flower Worlds.”—John G. Douglass, co-editor of The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism

How people eat today is a record of food use through the ages—and not just the decadent, delicious foods but the less glamorous and often life-saving foods from periods of famine as well. In Famine Foods, Paul E. Minnis focuses on the myriad plants that have sustained human populations throughout the course of history, unveiling the those that people have consumed, and often still consume, to avoid starvation. For the first time, this book offers a fascinating overview of famine foods—how they are used, who uses them, and, perhaps most importantly, why they may be critical to sustain human life in the future.

Watch a recording of a virtual book release celebration for Famine Foods here, then read a review of the book on the Savor the Southwest blog here. We’re thrilled that Famine Foods author Paul E. Minnis Receives the Society of Ethnobiology’s 2021 Distinguished Ethnobiologist Award!

In Tourism Geopolitics, contributors show enacted processes such as labor migration, conservation, securitization, nation building, territorial disputes, ethnic cleansing, heritage revitalization, and global health crisis management, among others. These contended societal processes are deployed through tourism development initiatives that mobilize deeply uneven symbolic and material landscapes. The chapters reveal how a range of experiences are implicated in this process: museum visits, walking tours, architectonical evocations of the past, road construction, militarized island imaginations, gendered cultural texts, and official silences. Collectively, the chapters offer ethnographically rich illustrations from around the world that demonstrate the critical nature of tourism in formal geopolitical practices, as well as the geopolitical nature of everyday tourism encounters. This volume is a vital read for critical geographers, anthropologists, and political scientists, as well as scholars of tourism and cultural studies.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Moveable Gardens explores the ways people make sanctuaries with plants and other traveling companions in the midst of ongoing displacement in today’s world. This volume addresses how the destruction of homelands, fragmentation of habitats, and post-capitalist conditions of modernity are countered by the remembrance of tradition and the migration of seeds, which are embodied in gardening, cooking, and community building.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Indigenous Women and Violence offers an intimate view of how settler colonialism and other structural forms of power and inequality created accumulated violences in the lives of Indigenous women. The chapters in this book are engaged, feminist, collaborative, and activism focused, conveying powerful messages about the resilience of Indigenous women in the face of violence and systemic oppression.

“Bringing together leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, this volume explores the connections between structural, extreme, and everyday violence against Indigenous women across time and borders. It makes important contributions to current debates about gender violence and research methods.”—Rachel Sieder, editor of Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America

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.

“This book represents a much-welcome approach to the archaeology of empire. It combines a sophisticated theoretical framework with rigorous archival and archaeological methods to shed valuable new light on the history of Spanish empire building in Peru.”—Craig Cipolla, author of Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology

Museum Matters traces the emergence, consolidation, and dispersal of this national museum complex by telling the stories of its objects. Objects that have been separated over time are brought back together in this book in order to shed light on the interactions and processes that have forged things into symbols of science, aesthetics, and politics. The contributors to this volume illuminate how collections came into being or ceased to exist over time, or how objects moved in and out of collections and museum spaces. They explore what it means to move things physically and spatially, as well as conceptually and symbolically.

“This exciting new volume gathers penetrating new studies on the formation of Mexico’s national collections, from antiquities to natural history specimens. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the formation of museums, particularly how such institutions participate in the production of knowledge over time. Filled with strikingly original and important contributions, the volume will be widely read by scholars in history, anthropology, museum studies, art history, archaeology, and other related fields.”—Joanne Pillsbury, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book contextualizes the discovery of a Venus astronomical pattern by a female Mayan astronomer at Chich’en Itza and the discovery’s later adaptation and application at Mayapan. Calculating Brilliance brings different intellectual threads together across time and space, from the Classic to the Postclassic, the colonial period to the twenty-first century to offer a new vision for understanding Mayan astronomy.

“A truly decolonial work that strips away the Eurocentric presuppositions of a century of Mayan studies scholarship to relate new openings and possibilities in the field. Aldana masterfully crafts a new methodology and approach for understanding the development of a unique Mayan science that weaves together hieroglyphic writing, mathematics, history, and astronomy.”—Roberto D. Hernández, author of Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative

Voluntourism and Multispecies Collaboration is a lively ethnographic exploration of the world of conservation voluntourism and its engagement with marine and terrestrial biodiversity on the Honduran Bay Island of Utila, located in the ecologically critical Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.

Anthropologist Keri Vacanti Brondo provides a pioneering theoretical framework that conceptualizes conservation voluntourism as a green industry. Brondo argues that the volunteer tourism industry is the product of coloniality and capitalism that works to produce and sustain an economy of affect while generating inequalities and dispossession. Readers journey through the mangroves and waters alongside voluntourists, iguanas, whale sharks, turtles, lionfish, and islanders to build valuable research experience in environmental management while engaging in affective labor and multispecies relations of care.

Once Upon the Permafrost is a longitudinal climate ethnography about “knowing” a specific culture and the ecosystem that culture physically and spiritually depends on in the twenty-first-century context of climate change. Through careful integration of contemporary narratives, on-site observations, and document analysis, Susan Alexandra Crate shows how local understandings of change and the vernacular knowledge systems they are founded on provide critical information for interdisciplinary collaboration and effective policy prescriptions.

“The Sakha people of Siberia live far from most of us in a forbidding and changing land of extreme cold and heat, underlain with permafrost. Through many years of research with them, Susan Crate brings to life how the knowledge and narratives of local people, explorers, and scientists reveal the interplay between culture and environment and why, in a profound sense, we all do ‘live on permafrost.’”―Bonnie McCay, author of Oyster Wars and the Public Trust

Naturalizing Inequality discusses the reproduction and legitimization of racial inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Michela Marcatelli unravels this inequality paradox through an ethnography of water in a rural region of the country. She documents how calls to save nature have only deepened and naturalized inequality.

“This book takes us past generalizations about inequality to delve into the complex realities of the Waterberg. While South Africa is lauded for increasing water access, Marcatelli shows how the government’s prioritization of economic growth means that the apartheid history of unequal access to water is not only perpetuated but legitimated.”—Mary Galvin, University of Johannesburg

As an Indigenous scholar researching the history and archaeology of his own tribe, Tsim D. Schneider provides a unique and timely contribution to the growing field of Indigenous archaeology and offers a new perspective on the primary role and relevance of Indigenous places and homelands in the study of colonial encounters.

“The Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse makes a powerful and convincing case that ‘a sense of place formed the glue for reassembling shattered lives.’ During the colonial era, Coast Miwoks found recourse by traveling across the water and gathering within ancient shell middens, coastal villages, and trading posts, renewing kinship ties and reconnecting with deep traditions along the way. The study offers an innovative and compelling amalgam of theory building, storytelling, and archaeological analysis.”—Martin Gallivan, Department Chair of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary

Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas tells the story of the community’s struggle to carve out space for survival and thriving in the shadows of the U.S.-Mexico geopolitical border. This ethnography by Michelle Téllez demonstrates the state’s neglect in providing social services and local infrastructure. This neglect exacerbates the structural violence endemic to the border region—a continuation of colonial systems of power on the urban, rural, and racialized poor. Téllez shows that in creating the community of Maclovio Rojas, residents have challenged prescriptive notions of nation and belonging. Through women’s active participation and leadership, a women’s political subjectivity has emerged—Maclovianas. These border women both contest and invoke their citizenship as they struggle to have their land rights recognized, and they transform traditional political roles into that of agency and responsibility.

Read about a wonderful local event that celebrated the release of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas here.

Reflections of a Transborder Anthropologist shows how both Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and anthropology have changed and formed over a fifty-year period. Throughout, he has worked to understand how people survive and thrive against all odds. Vélez-Ibáñez has been guided by the burning desire to understand inequality, exploitation, and legitimacy, and, most importantly, to provide platforms for the voiceless to narrate their own histories.

We are so thrilled that Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez was honored with the 2020 Franz Boas Award, the inaugural AAHHE Distinguished Scholar Award, as well as the Society for the Anthropology of North America’s 2021 Distinguished Achievement Award in the Critical Study of North America. Congratulations, Carlos!

Language, Coffee, and Migration on an Andean-Amazonian Frontier takes us to remote Amazonian villages, dusty frontier towns, roadside bargaining sessions, and coffee traders’ homes to offer a new view of settlement frontiers as they are negotiated in linguistic interactions and social relationships. The book brings together a fine-grained analysis of multilingualism with urgent issues in Latin America today. It is a timely on-the-ground perspective on the agricultural colonization of the Amazon, which has triggered an environmental emergency threatening the future of the planet.

Read a Q&A with author Nicholas Q. Emlen here.