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The essays and original visualizations collected in Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds explore the relationships among natural things - ranging from pollen in a gust of wind to a carnivorous pitcher plant to a shell-like skinned armadillo - and the humans enthralled with them.Episodes from 1500 to the early 1900s reveal connected histories across early modern worlds as natural things traveled across the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Empire, Pacific islands, Southeast Asia, the Spanish Empire, and Western Europe. In distant worlds that were constantly changing with expanding networks of trade, colonial aspirations, and the rise of empiricism, natural things obtained new meanings and became alienated from their origins. Tracing the processes of their displacement, each chapter starts with a piece of original artwork that relies on digital collage to pull image sources out of place and to represent meanings that natural things lost and remade. Accessible and elegant, Natural Things is the first study of its kind to combine original visualizations with the history of science. Museum-goers, scholars, scientists, and students will find new histories of nature and collecting within. Its playful visuality will capture the imagination of non-academic and academic readers alike while reminding us of the alienating capacity of the modern life sciences.

Ranging across space and time, this book brings together up-to-date research on the socio-cultural phenomenon of caravans. It shows that caravans for long-distance trade in arid lands are present in both the Old and New Worlds. Alongside historical and archival records, ethnographic analyses of modern caravans provide theoretical frameworks for reconstructing aspects of ancient caravans such as behaviour, ritual and material culture. The volume reflects on the changing foci of caravan research and the future of caravans, when memories of living caravaners are fading, and the fragile and remote nature of caravan-related sites means that they are at risk. It will be relevant to scholars from anthropology, archaeology and history and others with an interest in trade, travel and nomadism.

In the ninth century AD, settlers from the heartland of the Wari Empire founded Quilcapampa, a short-lived site overlooking the Sihuas River in southern Peru. The contributors to this volume present excavation and survey data from in and around Quilcapampa that challenge long-held models of both Wari statecraft and the mechanisms that engendered the widespread societal changes of the era. Quilcapampa and other peripheral Wari settlements have generally been seen as local administrative centers that siphoned resources from conquered regions to the Wari capital. This volume demonstrates that Quilcapampa was likely founded not by Wari officials but by families looking for a new home amid the turmoil caused by increasing Wari political centralization. Botanical, faunal, ceramic, lithic, and other data sets are used to reconstruct lifeways at the site and show how the settlers interacted with others locally and across greater distances. Featuring extensive illustrations in the print edition and multimedia components in the digital edition, Quilcapampa offers an abundance of archaeological data on the site as well as new theoretical considerations of Wari expansion, laying the foundation for a better understanding of how Andean political economy and social complexity changed over time. Contributors: Aleksa Alaica | Stefanie Bautista | Stephen Berquist | Matthew E. Biwer | Luis Manuel González La Rosa | Felipe Gonzalez-Macqueen | Oscar Huamán López| Justin Jennings | Mallory A. Melton | Patricia Quiñonez Cuzcano | David Reid | Branden Rizzuto | Giles Spence-Morrow | Willy Yépez Álvarez

In this book leading experts uncover and discuss archaeological topics and themes surrounding the long-term trajectory of camelid (llama and alpaca) pastoralism in the Andean highlands of South America. The chapters open up these studies to a wider world by exploring the themes of intensification of herding over time, animal-human relationships, and social transformations, as well as navigating four areas of recent research: the origins of domesticated camelids, variation in the development of pastoralist traditions, ritual and animal sacrifice, and social interaction through caravans. Andeanists and pastoral scholars alike will find this comprehensive work an invaluable contribution to their library and studies.