Backlist

The transition to the Formative in the relatively high-altitude study region of Tlaxcala, Mexico is later than it was in choice regions for early agriculture elsewhere in Mesoamerica. From 900 BCE, however, population growth and sociopolitical development were rapid. A central claim in the research presented here is that a macroregional perspective is essential for understanding the local Formative sequence.

“This two volume report is not only an outstanding benchmark for integrating the wide range of high tech anthropological tools now available to the excavator, it also strongly affirms the important role that ancient texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, fulfill when interpreting artifacts and data from an Levantine site.”
  — Jeffrey P. Hudon, Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin, 2015

“The largely American team have worked closely with Albanians (both senior scholars and students), demonstrated great sensitivity to local history, politics and culture, and they have expended considerable time and effort on the conservation of finds, the analysis of local environment and survey, a summary in Albanian, and heritage management issues.”
  — James Whitley, Antiquity, 2016

Tlacuachero is the site of an Archaic-period shellmound located in the wetlands of the outer coast of southwest Mexico. This book presents investigations of several floors that are within the site's shell deposits that formed over a 600-800 year interval during the Archaic period (ca. 8000-2000 BCE), a crucial timespan in Mesoamerican prehistory when people were transitioning from full blown dependency on wild resources to the use of domesticated crops. 

"The authors’ new survey and excavation work stands on its own, but it also makes an invaluable contribution to the growing literature on indigenous life in the early colonial Andes. From a historiographic perspective, Bauer and colleagues provide a complete overview of the essential early colonial sources as well as descriptions of twentieth- century expeditions in the region."
  — R. Alan Covey, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2016

ASOR 2017 winner of the G. Ernest Wright Award

“… Schwartz provides a masterful updated overview of the points of comparison and contrast amongst the Khabur rescue sites. This new publication provides a stimulating research framework, and adds a huge amount of detail. Schwartz and his team are to be congratulated on shifting the focus of early complexity studies through their systematic work at this small village located in a region of Syria.”
 — Roger Matthews, Antiquity, 2016

Winner of the 2014 John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography

Recipient of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century cross-cuts the ranks of important books on social history, consumerism, contemporary culture, the meaning of material culture, domestic architecture, and household ethnoarchaeology. Far richer in information and more incisive than America at Home (Smolan and Erwitt), this innovative book also moves well beyond Rick Smolan's Day in the Life series.

ASOR 2011 winner of the G. Ernest Wright Award

In 2007 the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) was established as a joint research endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The volume looks very good and represents a significant contribution toward California prehistory. The Cotsen Institute is to be commended for the quality of publications and for providing the means whereby these scholarly articles are available to other researchers and the public.”
  — Patricia Martz

“This work is not so much a book as a database with extensive commentary.”
  — L. Richardson, Jr., American Journal of Archaeology, 2005

Studies of Pompeian material culture have traditionally been dominated by art historical approaches, but recently there has been a renewed and burgeoning interest in Pompeian houses for studies of Roman domestic behavior.