The University of Arizona Press
April 21, 2025
The University of Arizona Press will be at the 2025 Society for American Archaeology Conference and bookfair! From April 23 to 27, find us at booth 311/313 to browse our books and meet our staff.
Take a peek below at this year’s incredible new work: a sweeping edited volume on warfare, a gorgeous glimpse into Hohokam art and iconography, an immersive Cold War era tale of the anthropologist Isabel T. Kelly, and much more.
The 35% conference discount code is good for all books on our website through May 21, 2025! Just enter AZSAA25 when you checkout.
New & Featured Titles
Editor Brian R. Billman’s Warfare and the Dynamics of Political Control draws on a wealth of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how conflict shapes the establishment and maintenance of political institutions, from small-scale societies to expansive empires. The book examines the material and ideological factors that drive warfare, the organization of combatants, the ways leaders use violence to consolidate power, and how groups resist political domination in times of conflict. By posing critical questions about the efficacy of strategies and the varied outcomes of conflict-driven power struggles, this volume offers profound insights into the dynamics of political control throughout history.
Authors Linda M. Gregonis and Victoria R. Evans discuss how artists drew inspiration from their Sonoran Desert homeland and were also influenced by the cultures of western Mexico, the hunter-gatherers of the western desert, the Mogollon to the east, and the Pueblo cultures of the northern Southwest. Unlike traditional archaeological texts, The Hohokam and Their World takes a holistic approach by examining a diverse range of artistic expressions used by the Hohokam. From intricately crafted pottery to mesmerizing carvings in rock, each medium offers a unique glimpse into the Hohokam’s relationship with their environment and the wider world.
Landscapes of Movement and Predation is a global study of times and places where people were subject to brutality, displacement, and loss of life, liberty, livelihood, and possessions. With contributions from archaeologists and a historian, editors Brenda J. Bowser and Catherine M. Cameron provide a startling new perspective on an aspect of the past that is often overlooked: the role of violence in shaping where, how, and with whom people lived. Using ethnohistoric, ethnographic, historic, and archaeological data, the authors explore the actions of both predators and their targets and uncover the myriad responses people took to protect themselves.
In a remote desert corner of Sonora, Mexico, the site of El Fin del Mundo offers the first recorded evidence of Paleoindian interactions with gomphotheres, an extinct species related to elephants. The Clovis occupation of North America is the oldest generally accepted and well-documented archaeological assemblage on the continent. This site in Sonora, Mexico, is the northernmost dated late Pleistocene gomphothere and the youngest in North America. Editors Vance T. Holliday, Guadalupe Sánchez, and Ismael Sánchez-Morales present and synthesize the archaeological, geological, paleontological, and paleoenvironmental records of an important Clovis site in their book El Fin del Mundo.
Plants for Desperate Times is an introduction to the diversity of plant foods that have saved millions of lives during lethal food shortages. While not a field guide, it addresses questions about what famine foods are and why they are important. Beyond a study of famine foods, the authors Paul E. Minnis and Robert L. Freedman, share why keeping an inventory of plant foods of last resort is so important. They help to build an understanding of little-known and underappreciated foods that may have a greater role in provisioning humanity in the future.
As an archaeologist, anthropologist, scholar, educator, and program evaluator for the U.S. State Department during the early Cold War era, Dr. Isabel T. Kelly’s (1906–1983) career presents a distinctive vantage point on the evolving landscape of U.S. foreign policy, Mexican rural welfare initiatives, and the discipline of anthropology. Organized chronologically, each chapter of Stephanie Baker Opperman’s Cold War Anthropologist delves into distinct facets of Kelly’s international journey, with a particular emphasis on her involvement in cooperative programs aimed at fostering diplomatic relations with Mexico. Through this narrative framework, readers are immersed in a compelling exploration of Kelly’s enduring impact on both the field of anthropology and the realm of international diplomacy.
Featured Series
The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas. Selected volumes in the series are now open-access titles available through the University of Arizona Campus Repository.
The Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interactions in the Americas is a series that highlights leading current research and scholarship focused on Indigenous-colonial processes and engagement throughout all regions of the Americas. The series builds on the success of its predecessor, The Archaeology of Colonialism in Native North America.
Amerind Studies in Anthropology is a series that publishes the results of the Amerind Seminars, annual professional symposia hosted by the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Arizona, and cosponsored by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). Series titles that emerge from these symposia focus on timely topics like the analysis of regional archaeological sites, current issues in methodology and theory, and sweeping discussions of world phenomena such as warfare and cultural settlement patterns.
Native Peoples of the Americas is an ambitious series whose scope ranges from North to South America and includes Middle America and the Caribbean. Each volume takes unique methodological approaches—archaeological, ethnographic, ecological, and/or ethno-historical—to frame cultural regions. Volumes cover select theoretical approaches that link regions, such as Native responses to conquest and the imposition of authority, environmental degradation, loss of Native lands, and the appropriation of Native knowledge and cosmologies. These books illuminate the strategies that Native Peoples have employed to maintain both their autonomies and identities. The series encourages the participation of Native, well-established, and emerging scholars as authors, contributors, and editors for the books.
For questions or to submit a proposal to any of these series, please contact Senior Editor Allyson Carter at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu.
