University of Colorado – Serie

Shamanism is the worlds oldest religion. The rituals and beliefs of this ancient tradition were carried from Asia and Siberia into the New World by nomadic hunting bands beginning 12,000 years ago. This unique collection of essays on shamanism in Central Asia and the Indian Americas provides sound and engaging scholarship that reflects the great diversity in this fascinating field. First published in 1994, Ancient Traditions has become a vital, frequently cited reference in the ongoing study of ancient religions. Over the centuries, shamanism has endured as an abiding topic of interest not only because of a human concern with the past but also because of a common yearning to acknowledge life lived in closer symbolic relationship to the earth. For readers interested in indigenous cultures and religions, this collection of essays clarifies much of the New Age speculation on universals in shamanism, offering solid research on specific ethnic and historical expressions.

The Yellowstone Story traces the history of the Yellowstone region from the time when hunters and gatherers migrated into the Rocky Mountains thousands of years ago to the post-World War II era when tourists began inundating Yellowstone National Park. Volume I takes the account from prehistoric times through the mid-1880s, with emphasis on the park's exploration and its trouble-filled early years under federal management. Volume II covers the years of military administration of the park and the more recent developments under the National Park Service.

An account of Fourth World peoples within a First World nation, TRIBAL GOVERNMENT TODAY is a critical analysis of the contemporary progress of Indian tribes toward self-government and economic sufficiency. Focusing on seven reservations in Montana representing the diverse opportunities and problems facing Indian tribes in the West, this book approaches tribal government from the twin perspectives of reservation politics and the legal context within which reservation conflicts must be solved. Unlike previous studies of Indian politics, Tribal Government Today is neither a critique of American Indian policy over the years nor an analysis of federal, state, and tribal jurisdictional ambiguities. The authors -- a political scientist, a lawyer, and a historian -- focus instead on the distinctive political culture that has evolved on each reservation in terms of the reservation settings, governmental structures and procedures, and a particular brand of politics.

Updated with a new chapter by David Carrasco describing how the Aztec world has been re-imagined by modern Mexican American communities and Chicano scholars, 'Moctezuma's Mexico' is a lavishly illustrated volume that provides an in-depth historical profile of the Aztec empire on the eve of its fateful encounter with the Europeans. Beginning with an exploration of Aztec history and cosmovision, the authors and two other prominent scholars-Anthony Aveni and Elizabeth Hill Boone-examine Aztec ceremonies, astronomy, myths, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, as well as controversies in recent Aztec scholarship using poetry, sculpture, painting, and the archaeological record. With nearly 150 full-colour illustrations, 'Moctezuma's Mexico' is an important and handsome book that will appeal to scholars and students of Mexico's indigenous past.

Academics have generally dismissed Hollywood's cowboy and Indian movies - one of its defining successful genres - as specious, one-dimensional, and crassly commercial. In Shooting Cowboys and Indians, Andrew Brodie Smith challenges this simplistic characterization of the genre, illustrating the complex and sometimes contentious process by which business interests commercialized images of the West. Tracing the western from its hazy silent-picture origins in the 1890s to the advent of talking pictures in the 1920s, Smith examines the ways in which silent westerns contributed to the overall development of the film industry. Focusing on such early important production companies as Selig Polyscope, New York Motion Picture, and Essanay, Smith revises current thinking about the birth of Hollywood and the establishment of Los Angeles as the nexus of filmmaking in the United States. Smith also reveals the role silent westerns played in the creation of the white male screen hero that dominated American popular culture in the twentieth century.Illustrated with dozens of historic photos and movie stills, this engaging and substantive story will appeal to scholars interested in Western history, film history, and film studies as well as general readers hoping to learn more about this little-known chapter in popular filmmaking.

Eight scholars examine the range of cultural expressions of atomic energy from the 1940s to the early twenty-first century, including comic books, nuclear landscapes, mushroom-cloud postcards, the Los Alamos suburbs, uranium-themed board games, future atomic waste facilities, and atomic-themed films such as Dr. Strangelove' and The Atomic Kid'. Despite the growing interest in atomic culture and history, the body of relevant scholarship is relatively sparse. "Atomic Culture" opens new doors into the field by providing a substantive, engaging, and historically based consideration of the topic that will appeal to students and scholars of the Atomic Age as well as general readers.

With contributions from sociocultural and linguistic anthropologists as well as archaeologists, this volume is the first to present case studies of social identity and feasting from throughout the Greater Southwest. A section of the book is also devoted to a synthesis and set of case studies on the archaeology of the pivotal Mexican State of Chihuahua. Unlike many previous studies, the authors of this volume place emphasis on how differences within and between societies came about rather than why dissimilar structures arose, elevating the place of both agency and history in understanding the past. Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest will be of interest to all doing archaeological research in the Southwestern United States and those conducting research on social identity, cultural affiliation, and commensal politics. Contributors include Karen R. Adams, Jeffrey J. Clark, Patricia L. Crown, T. J. Ferguson, Catherine S. Fowler, Robert J. Hard, Jane H. Hill, Jane H. Kelley, Frances Levine, Micah Loma'omvaya, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, A. C. MacWilliams, Paul E. Minnis, Scott G. Ortman, David Phillips Jr., James M. Potter, John R.Roney, Lynne Sebastian, Katherine A. Spielmann, Joe D. Stewart, Scott Van Keuren, Laurie D. Webster, Michael E. Whalen, and W. H. Wills

TIME FOR PEACE, historian Duane Smiths chronicle of southwest Colorados Fort Lewis, belies the Western myth of soldiers riding out from isolated posts to rescue wagon trains and protect pioneer towns. Long on daily routine and blissfully short on action, Fort Lewis lost nary a soldier in battle. Nevertheless, it was influential in the settlement of the West. Fort Lewis and its contemporaries provided an economic windfall, a sense of security, and a cultural hub for settlers. The presence of Fort Lewis in the four corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah attracted farmers, businesspeople, and ranchers to settle the area. The forts social season, band, and baseball team helped make this rugged outpost an agreeable destination. The men who served at Fort Lewis, who made up a diverse cross-section of nineteenth-century America, served for little pay and poor food. With Smiths history, their contribution to the settlement of the West is recognised at last. Readers interested in Western and military history and in Colorado will enjoy this long-untold story.

The myths of settlement of the Great Plains usually conjure up images of Anglo-American pioneers moving into a sea of grass, opposed by Native peoples. Such myths leave out the considerable influence of Spain. Spain and the Plains introduces and documents Spanish exploration of and migration to the Plains, examines the myths that shaped Spanish exploration and the pragmatic realities of exploration and settlement, and documents racism and misrepresentation that Hispanic groups encountered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contributors show how early explorers, shaped by the intellectual context of the Renaissance, sought mythical locales: the fountain of youth, the straits of Anian, and the city of Quivira. They describe how exploration shifted to emphasise military and economic gains in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Essays portray the diaspora of Spanish settlers and reconstruct daily life in their settlements on the Plains.

Explores the re-negotiation of race by Germans and African American GIs in post-World War II Germany. Schroer dissects the ways in which notions of blackness and whiteness became especially problematic in interactions between Germans and American soldiers serving as part of the victorious occupying army at the end of the war. The segregation of US Army forces fed a growing debate in America about whether a Jim Crow army could truly be a democratising force in post-war Germany. Schroer follows the evolution of that debate and examines the ways in which post-war conditions necessitated re-examination of race relations. He reveals how anxiety about interracial relationships between African American men and German women united white American soldiers and the German populace. He also traces the importation and influence of African American jazz music in Germany, illuminating the subtle ways in which occupied Germany represented a crucible in which to recast the meaning of race in a post-Holocaust world.

This book brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on the lord of the smoking mirror, one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipocas nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Post-classic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations -- objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull -- and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture. Contributors: Elizabeth Baquedano, Caroline Cartwright, Cecelia F. Klein, Colin McEwan, Susan Milbrath, Guilhem Oliver, Juan Jose Batalla Rosado, Nicholas Saunders, Michael E. Smith, Rebecca Stacey, Emily Umberger

Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology examines Northern Iroquoian archaeology through various lenses at multiple spatial levels, including individual households, village constructions, relationships between villages in a local region, and relationships between various Iroquoian nations and their territorial homelands. The volume includes scholars and scholarship from both sides of the US-Canadian border, presenting a contextualized analysis of settlement and landscape for a broad range of past Northern Iroquoian societies. The research in this volume represents a new wave of spatial research--exploring beyond settlement patterning to the process and the meaning behind spatial arrangement of past communities and people-and describes new approaches being used for better understanding of past Northern Iroquoian societies. Addressing topics ranging from household task-scapes and gender relations to bioarchaeology and social network analysis, Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology demonstrates the vitality of current archaeological research into ancestral Northern Iroquoian societies and its growing contribution to wider debates in North American archaeology.This cutting-edge research will be of interest to archaeologists globally, as well as academics and graduate students studying Northern Iroquoian societies and cultures, geography, and spatial analysis. Contributors: Kathleen M. S. Allen, Jennifer A. Birch, William Engelbrecht, Crystal Forrest, John P. Hart, Sandra Katz, Robert H. Pihl, Aleksandra Pradzynski, Erin C. Rodriguez, Dean R. Snow, Ronald F. Williamson, Rob Wojtowicz