Bone Gatherers is a Beacon Press publication.

Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Lower Ohio River Valley addresses the approximately 7,000 years of the prehistory of eastern North America, termed the Archaic Period by archaeologists.

Challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity.

This book explores the archaeology of the Acacus massif and surrounding areas in southwestern Libya over approximately 2500 years of the Early Holocene, utilising fresh theoretical approaches and new explanations of the social and cultural processes of the area. Archaeological and rock art evidence, much of which is unpublished until now, is used to explore the crucial period that encompasses the onset of the “Green Sahara” to the introduction of domestic livestock. It provides a basis for understanding the original cultural and social developments of hunter-gatherers and foragers of the central ranges of the Sahara. The work also bears upon the wider area informing the reconstruction of the environment and cultural dynamics and stands as key reference point for the larger Sahara and North Africa. The book, rich in illustrations, provides a critical synthesis and overview of the developments of central Saharan archaeology within the broader African framework. The book is invaluable to archaeologists, palaeoenvironmental scientists, and rock art researchers working on the Sahara and North Africa and as comparative work for researchers in African archaeology in general.

How did warfare originate? Was it human genetics? Social competition? The rise of complexity? Intensive study of the long-term hunter-gatherer past brings us closer to an answer. The original chapters in this volume examine cultural areas on five continents where there is archaeological, ethnographic, and historical evidence for hunter-gatherer conflict despite high degrees of mobility, small populations, and relatively egalitarian social structures. Their controversial conclusions will elicit interest among anthropologists, archaeologists, and those in conflict studies.

With the publication of her first novel, Shell Shaker (2001), Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe quickly emerged as a crucial voice in twenty-first-century American literature. Her innovative, award-winning works of fiction, poetry, drama, and criticism capture the complexities of Native American life and interrogate histories of both cultural and linguistic oppression throughout the United States. In the first monograph to consider Howe’s entire body of work, LeAnne Howe at the Intersections of Southern and Native American Literature, Kirstin L. Squint expands contemporary scholarship on Howe by examining her nuanced portrayal of Choctaw history and culture as modes of expression. Squint shows that Howe’s writings engage with Native, southern, and global networks by probing regional identity, gender power, authenticity, and performance from a distinctly Choctaw perspective—a method of discourse which Howe terms “Choctalking.” Drawing on interdisciplinary methodologies and theories, Squint complicates prevailing models of the Native South by proposing the concept of the “Interstate South,” a space in which Native Americans travel physically and metaphorically between tribal national and U.S. boundaries. Squint considers Howe’s engagement with these interconnected spaces and cultures, as well as how indigeneity can circulate throughout them. This important critical work—which includes an appendix with a previously unpublished interview with Howe—contributes to ongoing conversations about the Native South, positioning Howe as a pivotal creative force operating at under-examined points of contact between Native American and southern literature.