San Antonio College Library

Archaeologists excavating burials often find that they are not the first to disturb the remains of the dead. Graves from many periods frequently show signs that others have been digging and have moved or taken away parts of the original funerary assemblage. Displaced bones and artefacts, traces of pits, and damage to tombs or coffins can all provide clues about post-burial activities. The last two decades have seen a rapid rise in interest in the...

"This thrilling book takes the reader into South African caves to discover fossil remains that reframe the human family tree"--Provided by publisher.

"Living with the Dead in the Andes considers recent research by archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, ethnographers, and ethnohistorians whose work reveals the diversity and complexity of the dead-living interaction. The book's contributors reap the salient results of this new research to illuminate various conceptions and treatments of the dead: 'bad' and 'good' dead, mummified and preserved, the body represented by art or effigies, and personhood in...

In this episode, Last Human Standing explores the origins of "us"--Where modern humans and our capacities for art, invention, and survival came from, and what happened when we encountered the mysterious Neanderthals. Crucial new evidence comes from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals? Exterminate them? Becoming Human examines why "we" survived while our other ancestral cousins - including Indonesia's...

Volume I of the PRE-COLUMBIAN BURIAL RITES series consists of a comprehensive examination and discussion of mortuary behaviors by the prehistoric inhabitants of the Southwest Region of North America. The study of burial practice is useful to the discussion of the complexities of population traits and characteristics because on a societal scale, similarity or differentiation of patterning in the disposal of the dead has been considered one of the basic...

"From the tombs of the elite to the graves of commoners, mortuary remains offer rich insights into Classic Maya society. In Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul, the anthropological archaeologist and bioarchaeologist Andrew K. Scherer explores the broad range of burial practices among the Maya of the Classic period (AD 250-900), integrating information gleaned from his own fieldwork with insights from the fields of iconography,...

All that remains of "Inuk" are a few tufts of tangled human hair dug out of Greenland's permafrost, yet as scientists rebuild the identity of this 4,000-year-old arctic hunter, they rewrite the history of Greenland and the New World's settlement. From these threads of evidence, scientists attempt the impossible: to be the first to reconstruct the identity of a Stone Age human being. In this program, Professor Eske Willerslev and his colleagues analyze...

"Do Funerals Matter? is a creative interweaving of historical, sociocultural, and research-based perspectives on death rituals, drawing from myriad sources to create a picture of what death rituals have been; and where, especially in the Western world, they are going. The classic edition includes a new preface from the author reflecting on changes in the field since the book's initial publication. Death educators, researchers, counselors, clergy,...

Describes the ongoing struggle of Native Americans to repatriate the objects and remains of their ancestors that were appropriated, collected, manipulated, sold, and displayed by Europeans and Americans. Fine-Dare focuses on the history and culture of both the impetus to collect and the movement to repatriate Native American remains. Using a historical framework and case studies, Fine-Dare first examines the changing cultural reasons for the appropriation...