San Antonio College Library

All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World covers the widest definition of "medieval Europe" possible, not by covering history in the traditional, textbook manner of listing wars, leaders, and significant historic events, but by presenting detailed alphabetical entries that describe the artifacts of medieval Europe. By examining the hidden material culture and by presenting information about topics that few books cover--pottery, locks...

This study is the first in the English language to explore the ways medieval Japanese sought to overcome their sense of powerlessness over death. By attending to both religious practice and ritual objects used in funerals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it seeks to provide a new understanding of the relationship between the two. Karen Gerhart looks at how these special objects and rituals functioned by analyzing case studies culled from...

The pernicious combination of tribe and tradition continues to tether modern South Africans to ideas about the region's remote past as primitive, timeless, and unchanging. Any hunger for knowledge or understanding of the past before European colonialism remains to a significant degree unsated in the face of a narrowly prescribed archive and repugnant, but insidiously resilient, stereotypes. These volumes track how the domain of the tribal and traditional...

"In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on "entanglement," the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things,...

What is the significance of Shylock's ring in "The Merchant of Venice"? How does Shakespeare create Gertrude's closet in "Hamlet"? How and why does Ariel prepare a banquet in "The Tempest"? In order to answer these and other questions, "Shakespeare and material culture" explores performance from the perspective of the material conditions of staging. In a period just starting to be touched by the allure of consumer culture, in which objects were central...

"Many Voices, One Nation: Material Culture Reflections on Race and Migration in the United States shares in print the important stories, artifacts, images, and events featured in the National Museum of American History's eponymous exhibit. Through sixteen carefully selected essays from Smithsonian curators and affiliated scholars, this book reaches a broad audience and makes a major contribution to historical scholarship on the peopling of the United...

The creative accomplishments of the Andean people of the highland region of South America are prominent among folk art legacies of the world. This wide-ranging publication, examining over 850 works, is the first to present an overview of the religious, textile, costume, utilitarian, and festival folk arts made in the Andes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after the Andeans were free from Spanish colonial rule. The author offers an understanding...

Examines the historical archaeology of Virginia City, Nevada, when it was a boomtown of the American West.