University Press of Colorado

Mining, Landscape, and Race, 1840-1890Exploring the development of California and the relationship between the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emerging ethnic identities and communities in California, Mercury and the Making of California brings mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in their defining roles...

Case Studies in Resilience and VulnerabilityIn The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context, contributors reject the popularized link between societal collapse and drought in Maya civilization, arguing that a series of periodic collapses, including the infamous Terminal Classic collapse (AD 7501050), were not caused solely by climate changerelated...

Symbolic Dimensions of Obsidian in Ancient MesoamericaDeparting from the political economy perspective taken by the vast majority of volumes devoted to Mesoamerican obsidian, Obsidian Reflections is an examination of obsidian's sociocultural dimensionsparticularly in regard to Mesoamerican world view, religion, and belief systems. Exploring...

Their Ecology, Geology, and Human HistoryA companion to The Western San Juan Mountains (originally published in 1996), The Eastern San Juan Mountains details the physical environment, biological communities, human history, and points of interest in this rich and diverse mountain system. A natural division between the eastern and western slopes of...

Wearing Culture connects scholars of divergent geographical areas and academic fieldsfrom archaeologists and anthropologists to art historiansto show the significance of articles of regalia and of dressing and ornamenting people and objects among the Formative period cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Documenting the elaborate...

From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa JonesStaging Migrations toward an American West examines how black women's theatrical and everyday performances of migration toward the American West expose the complexities of their struggles for sociopolitical emancipation. While migration is often viewed as merely a physical process, Effinger-Crichlow expands...