Fire and Salt
Human Niche Construction and Holocene Landscape Evolution on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica
Will be published approx. on 30. November 2024
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-8263-6677-1 (ISBN)
Description
Fire and Salt traces the history of how human activities have helped build the littoral landscape of Pacific coastal southern Mesoamerica over the past five thousand years. Evidence comes from airborne Lidar, surface reconnaissance and excavation within the mangrove-estuary zone, sediment coring, and a chronological framework encompassing nine ceramic complexes extending from Early Formative to Historic times.
In presenting the landscape as it exists today, this volume also describes what may soon be lost. The mangrove forests harbor a record of the human past, a focus of the present volume, but they also shield the coast from storms and tsunamis, provide nurseries for commercially important marine species, and store large amounts of carbon.
In presenting the landscape as it exists today, this volume also describes what may soon be lost. The mangrove forests harbor a record of the human past, a focus of the present volume, but they also shield the coast from storms and tsunamis, provide nurseries for commercially important marine species, and store large amounts of carbon.
Reviews / Votes
"Hector Neff's offers a unique and compelling analysis of the links between environment, technology, and human adaptation over the course of millennia. He brings to bear important and detailed new information and synthesizes it with older work. His distinctive contribution is to analyze how pyrotechnology, the basis of both salt production and pottery, impacted the coastal environmental zone and how the interaction between fire and salt led to the development of Mesoamerica's most enigmatic pottery, Plumbate." - Michael W. Love, co-editor of Archaeology and Identity on the Pacific Coast and Southern Highlands of MesoamericaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Albuquerque, NM
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
155 illustrations, 144 halftones, 11 tables
Dimensions
Height: 279 mm
Width: 216 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8263-6677-1 (9780826366771)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Hector Neff is a professor of anthropology at California State University, Long Beach. He is the coeditor of Ceramics of the Indigenous Cultures of South America: Studies of Production and Exchange through Compositional Analysis.
Content
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Fieldwork on the Proyecto Arqueologico Costa del Soconusco
Chapter 3. Chronology and Demography
Chapter 4. Archaic and Early Formative Niche Construction of the Soconusco Coast
Hector Neff, James T. Daniels, Paul Burger, and Heather Thakar
Chapter 5. Peak Salt: The Evolution of Specialized Salt Production during Middle through Terminal Formative Times
Hector Neff, Paul Burger, and Marx Navarro Castillo
Chapter 6. Early Classic Abandonment, the Evolution of a Mesoamerican Tradeware, and the Enigmatic Early Postclassic Period
Hector Neff, Marx Navarro Castillo, and Sachiko Sakai
Chapter 7. Late Postclassic through Modern Use of the Eastern Soconusco Wetlands
Hector Neff, Janine Gasco, and Marx Navarro Castillo
Chapter 8. Conclusion
References
List of Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Fieldwork on the Proyecto Arqueologico Costa del Soconusco
Chapter 3. Chronology and Demography
Chapter 4. Archaic and Early Formative Niche Construction of the Soconusco Coast
Hector Neff, James T. Daniels, Paul Burger, and Heather Thakar
Chapter 5. Peak Salt: The Evolution of Specialized Salt Production during Middle through Terminal Formative Times
Hector Neff, Paul Burger, and Marx Navarro Castillo
Chapter 6. Early Classic Abandonment, the Evolution of a Mesoamerican Tradeware, and the Enigmatic Early Postclassic Period
Hector Neff, Marx Navarro Castillo, and Sachiko Sakai
Chapter 7. Late Postclassic through Modern Use of the Eastern Soconusco Wetlands
Hector Neff, Janine Gasco, and Marx Navarro Castillo
Chapter 8. Conclusion
References