Recounts the history of these structures from their first sighting by Cortes as rubble-covered mounds through four centuries of efforts to solve the mystery of their existence.

    Drawing upon oral traditions, historical documents, and accounts by observers and scholars made over a four-hundred-year period, the author recaptures the culture, society, and history of the varied Indian peoples of the southeast.

    Starting from the activity area, and moving through the house, barrio, village, and region to the interregional level, this book questions and probes archeological methods, presuppositions, and attitudes.

    Fortunately for those who missed the original coverage, Harry Burton's 1400 glass negatives made in and around the tomb over the course of six years have been preserved at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A selection of prints from them is presented here in the order they were made."For the text I have borrowed from The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen by Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, first published in 1923. Who better than Carter, who discovered the tomb, could describe the pictures that were made as his excavation progressed? The captions not otherwise credited are in his words. I have culled the other caption material from letters to and from those involved in the find and from the mass of contemporary press clippings."

    

    Developed for the instruction of students working on osteoarchaeological theses at the University of Munich, the guide has standardized how animal bones recovered from prehistoric and early historic sites are measured.

    The authors show how these techniques, when sensitively employed, can dramatically extend and refine the information presented in distribution maps and other analyses of spatial relationships. Techniques of interpretation 'by inspection' can now be made more powerful and rigorous; at the same time interest has turned from the examination of such sites and artefacts as 'things' to the spatial relationships between such things, their relationships to one another and to landscape features, soils and other resources. This book was the first to apply the available techniques systematically to the special problems and interests of archaeologists. It also demonstrates to geographers and other social scientists who may be familiar with analogous applications in their own fields the exciting interdisciplinary developments this facilitates, for example in studies of exchange networks, trade and settlement patterns, and cultural history.

    Since volcanic ash did not allow people to selectively remove artifacts, the site is well-preserved and it also largely stopped natural processes of decomposition offering this rare opportunity to study the Mayan past through household archaeology. Known as the New World Pompeii, this study provides a detailed portrait of the life, houses, artifacts, and activity areas of the people who supported the elites with labor, food and goods. As Sheets says, "With any civilization that's being studied, if the households of commoners aren't being investigated, you've eliminated the bulk of the population. How can you understand the society if you ignore most of the people? It's like an ethnography. Only we can't interview people, so their possessions have to speak for them." Art and images from the author's own collection help illuminate the discussions and bring them to life, while the author's discussion of his personal trials and triumphs add a more human dimension to working in the field.

    An illustrated book to accompany the Royal Academy of Arts' Pompeii exhibition of 1976, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco and The Daily Telegraph.