LibGuides: Archaeology 2850: Americas and Oceania: Encyclopedias & Handbooks

Specialized Encyclopedias & Reference Works

Examples of resources that provide background information relevant to Archaeology of North America:

Encyclopedia of Archaeology [E-RESOURCE] by Deborah M. Pearsall (Editor)
Publication Date: 2011
Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia [E-RESOURCE & PRINT] by Guy E. Gibbon (Editor)
Publication Date: 1998
The Archaeology of Ancient North America [PRINT] by Timothy R. Pauketat; Kenneth E. Sassaman This volume surveys the archaeology of Native North Americans from their arrival on the continent 15,000 years ago up to contact with European colonizers. Offering rich descriptions of monumental structures, domestic architecture, vibrant objects, and spiritual forces, Timothy R. Pauketat and Kenneth E. Sassaman show how indigenous people shaped both their history and North America's many varied environments. They place the student in the past as they trace how Native Americans dealt with challenges such as climate change, the rise of social hierarchies and political power, and ethnic conflict. Written in a clear and engaging style with a compelling narrative, The Archaeology of Ancient North America presents the grand historical themes and intimate stories of ancient Americans in full, living color.
Publication Date: 2020
The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology [E-Resource] This volume explores 15,000 years of indigenous human history on the North American continent, drawing on the latest archaeological theories, time-honored methodologies, and rich datasets. From the Arctic south to the Mexican border and east to the Atlantic Ocean, all of the major cultural developments are covered in 53 chapters, with certain periods, places, and historical problems receiving special focus by the volume's authors. Questions like who first peopled the continent, what did it mean to have been a hunter-gatherer in the Great Basin versus the California coast, how significant were cultural exchanges between Native North Americans and Mesoamericans, and why do major historical changes seem to correspond to shifts in religion, politics, demography, and economy are brought into focus. The practice of archaeology itself is discussed as contributors wrestle with modern-day concerns with the implications of doing archaeology and its relevance for understanding ourselves today. In the end, the chapters in this book show us that the principal questions answered about human history through the archaeology of North America are central to any larger understanding of the relationships between people, cultural identities, landscapes, and the living of everyday life.
Publication Date: 2012
Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology [E-Book] by edited by Allan S. Gilbert
Publication Date: 2016
Archaeology in America 4 volumes; This reference resource describes archaeological sites in North America. Each volume concentrates on a specific geographical area, which are subdivided into regions. Each geographical region has an introduction. Articles cover archaeological sites, listed in alphabetical order. The encyclopedia includes: bibliographies and information about public access for each site discussed; illustrations and photographs; and maps.
Call Number: Main Collection E 159.5 A68 2009
Publication Date: 2008
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers [E-Book]
Publication Date: 1999
Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians Until the last two centuries, the human landscapes of the Great Plains were shaped solely by Native Americans, and since then the region has continued to be defined by the enduring presence of its Indigenous peoples. The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians offers a sweeping overview, across time and space, of this story in 123 entries drawn from the acclaimed Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, together with 23 new entries focusing on contemporary Plains Indians, and many new photographs. nbsp; Here are the peoples, places, processes, and events that have shaped lives of the Indians of the Great Plains from the beginnings of human habitation to the present—not only yesterday’s wars, treaties, and traditions but also today’s tribal colleges, casinos, and legal battles. In addition to entries on familiar names from the past like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, new entries on contemporary figures such as American Indian Movement spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog and activists Russell Means and Leonard Peltier are included in the volume. Influential writer Vine Deloria Sr., Crow medicine woman Pretty Shield, Nakota blues-rock band Indigenous, and the Nebraska Indians baseball team are also among the entries in this comprehensive account. Anyone wanting to know about Plains Indians, past and present, will find this an authoritative and fascinating source.
Call Number: UofL Main Collection E 78 G73 E52 2007
Publication Date: 2007
Atlas of the Great Plains 2011 Booklist Editor's Choice, reference category The Great Plains, stretching northward from Texas into Canada, is a region that has been understudied and overlooked. The Atlas of the Great Plains, however, brings a new focus to North America’s midcontinent. With more than three hundred original full-color maps, accompanied by extended explanatory text, this collection chronicles the history of the Great Plains, including political and social developments. Far more than simply the geography of the region, this atlas explores a myriad of subjects from Native Americans to settlement patterns, agricultural ventures to voting records, and medical services to crime rates. These detailed and beautifully designed maps convey the significance of the region, capturing the essence of its land and life. The only current and comprehensive atlas of the Great Plains region, it is also the first atlas to include both the United States and Canada, showing the region’s full length and breadth.
Call Number: UofL Main Collection G 1382 S1 L2 2011
Publication Date: 2011

Caribbean, Mesoamerica & South America Focus

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology by William F. Keegan (Editor); Corinne L. Hofman (Editor); Reniel Rodriguez Ramos (Editor) The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea and the islands of the Bahama Archipelago. Though these islands were never isolated from thesurrounding mainland, their histories are sufficiently diverse to warrant their identification as distinct areas of culture. Over the past 20 years, Caribbean archaeology has been transformed from a focus on reconstructing culture histories to one on the mobility and exchange expressed in culturaland social dynamics. This Handbook brings together, for the first time, examples of the best research conducted by scholars from across the globe to address the complexity of the Caribbean past.The Handbook is divided into five sections. Part I, Islands of History and the Precolonial History of the Caribbean Islands, provides an introduction to Caribbean Archaeology and its history. The papers in the following Ethnohistory section address the diversity of cultural practices expressed inthe insular Caribbean and develop historical descriptions in concert with archaeological evidence in order to place language, social organization, and the native Tainos and Island Caribs in perspective. The following section, Culture History, provides the latest research on specific geographicallocations and cross-cultural engagements, from Jamaica and the Bahama archigelago to the Saladoid and the Isthmo-Antillean Engagements. Creating History, the fourth section, includes papers on specific issues related to the field, such as Zooarchaeology, Rock Art, and DNA analysis, among others. Thefinal section, World History, centers on the consequences of European colonization.
Publication Date: 2013
Handbook of South American Archaeology by Helaine Silverman (Editor); William Isbell (Editor) Perhaps the contributions of South American archaeology to the larger field of world archaeology have been inadequately recognized. If so, this is probably because there have been relatively few archaeologists working in South America outside of Peru and recent advances in knowledge in other parts of the continent are only beginning to enter larger archaeological discourse. Many ideas of and about South American archaeology held by scholars from outside the area are going to change irrevocably with the appearance of the present volume. Not only does the Handbook of South American Archaeology (HSAA) provide immense and broad information about ancient South America, the volume also showcases the contributions made by South Americans to social theory. Moreover, one of the merits of this volume is that about half the authors (30) are South Americans, and the bibliographies in their chapters will be especially useful guides to Spanish and Portuguese literature as well as to the latest research. It is inevitable that the HSAA will be compared with the multi-volume Handbook of South American Indians (HSAI), with its detailed descriptions of indigenous peoples of South America, that was organized and edited by Julian Steward. Although there are heroic archaeological essays in the HSAI, by the likes of Junius Bird, Gordon Willey, John Rowe, and John Murra, Steward states frankly in his introduction to Volume Two that "arch- ology is included by way of background" to the ethnographic chapters.
Publication Date: 2008
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology [E-Resource] by Deborah L. Nichols; Christopher A. Pool The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial andRepublican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology.The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed regional syntheses organized by time period,beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica.Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies -from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations - and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as wellas new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students andprofessional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.
Publication Date: 2012

Oceania & Australia Focus

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania by Terry L. Hunt (Editor); Ethan E. Cochrane (Editor) Oceania was the last region on earth to be permanently inhabited, with the final settlers reaching Aotearoa/New Zealand approximately AD 1300. This is about the same time that related Polynesian populations began erecting Easter Island's gigantic statues, farming the valley slopes of Tahitiand similar islands, and moving finely made basalt tools over several thousand kilometers of open ocean between Hawai'i, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, and archipelagos in between. The remarkable prehistory of Polynesia is one chapter of Oceania's human story. Almost 50,000 years prior, peopleentered Oceania for the first time, arriving in New Guinea and its northern offshore islands shortly thereafter, a biogeographic region labelled Near Oceania and including parts of Melanesia. Near Oceania saw the independent development of agriculture and has a complex history resulting in thegreatest linguistic diversity in the world.Beginning 1000 BC, after millennia of gradually accelerating cultural change in Near Oceania, some groups sailed east from this space of inter-visible islands and entered Remote Oceania, rapidly colonizing the widely separated separated archipelagos from Vanuatu to Samoa with purposeful, returnvoyages, and carrying an intricately decorated pottery called Lapita. From this common cultural foundation these populations developed separate, but occasionally connected, cultural traditions over the next 3000 years. Western Micronesia, the archipelagos of Palau, Guam and the Marianas, was alsocolonized around 1500 BC by canoes arriving from the west, beginning equally long sequences of increasingly complex social formations, exchange relationships and monumental constructions. All of these topics and others are presented in The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania written by Oceania'sleading archaeologists and allied researchers. Chapters describe the cultural sequences of the region's major island groups, provide the most recent explanations for diversity and change in Oceanic prehistory, and lay the foundation for the next generation of research.
Publication Date: 2018

Reference Materials: Encyclopedias & Handbooks -- Searching

Encyclopedias, handbooks and other "reference" sources are available electronically and in print from the University Library. The contain background information about a topic and can often help lead you to primary and secondary sources to use in your research papers.

Use the SUMMON discovery tool on the Library home page to locate encyclopedias and handbooks. Hint: When searching using SUMMON, refine search results by CONTENT TYPE > 'Reference'; you may also want to refine by DISCIPLINE > ‘History & Archaeology’ .

World History & Pre-History

General Encycopedias & Reference Works: North American History

Examples of resources that provide background information on a variety of general topics in early North American history:

The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology [E-Resource] by Chris Gosden (Editor); Rosemary A. Joyce (Editor); Barry Cunliffe (Editor)
Publication Date: 2012 (online)
Part VI includes worldwide regional overviews
Historical Archaeology, 3rd Ed. [E-Resource] by Charles E. Orser, Jr. This book provides a short, readable introduction to historical archaeology, which focuses on modern history in all its fascinating regional, cultural, and ethnic diversity. Accessibly covering key methods and concepts, including fundamental theories and principles, the history of the field, and basic definitions, Historical Archaeology also includes a practical look at career prospects for interested readers. Orser discusses central topics of archaeological research such as time and space, survey and excavation methods, and analytical techniques, encouraging readers to consider the possible meanings of artifacts. Drawing on the author's extensive experience as an historical archaeologist, the book's perspective ranges from the local to the global in order to demonstrate the real importance of this subject to our understanding of the world in which we live today. The third edition of this popular textbook has been significantly revised and expanded to reflect recent developments and discoveries in this exciting area of study. Each chapter includes updated case studies which demonstrate the research conducted by professional historical archaeologists. With its engaging approach to the subject, Historical Archaeology continues to be an ideal resource for readers who wish to be introduced to this rapidly expanding global field.
Publication Date: 2017
World Prehistory and Archaeology, 5th Ed. [PRINT] by Michael Chazan World Prehistory and Archaeology provides an integrated discussion of world prehistory and archaeological methods, presenting an up-to-date perspective on what we know about our human prehistory and how we come to know it. A cornerstone of World Prehistory and Archaeology is the discussion of prehistory as an active process of discovery. Methodological issues are addressed throughout the text to engage readers. Archaeological methods are introduced, following which the question of how we know the past is discussed. This fifth edition involves readers in the current state of archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists work and interpret what they find. Through the coverage of various new research, author Michael Chazan shows that archaeology is truly a global discipline. In this edition there is a particular emphasis on the relevance of archaeology to contemporary society and to the major issues that face us today. This edition will provide students with a necessary grounding in the fundamentals of archaeology, before engaging them with the work that goes into understanding world prehistory. They will be given the tools to place this knowledge in the context of the modern world, acknowledging the relevance of archaeology to the concerns of today.
Publication Date: 2021
Britannica academic [E-Resource]
Search using the names of the cultural groups or regions of interest for general background information.
Encyclopedia of Prehistory [PRINT]
Call Number: UofL Main Collection GN 710 E53 2001
Publication Date: 2001
World History Encyclopedia
Call Number: Main Collection D 9 W67 2011
Publication Date: 2008