A Prosperous Way Down considers ways in which a future with less fossil fuel could be peaceful and prosperous. Although history records the collapse of countless civilizations, some societies and ecosystems have managed to descend in orderly stages, reducing demands and selecting and saving what is most important.

Guilhem Olivier's Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God is a masterful study of Tezcatlipoca, one of the greatest but least understood deities in the Mesoamerican pantheon.

In Conquered Conquistadors, Florine Asselbergs reveals that a large pictorial map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, long thought to represent a series of battles in central Mexico, was actually painted in the 1530s by Quauhquecholteca warriors to document their invasion of Guatemala alongside the Spanish and to proclaim themselves as conquistadors. This painting is the oldest known map of Guatemala and a rare document of the experiences of indigenous conquistadors.

The Arapaho Language is the definitive reference grammar of an endangered Algonquian language. Arapaho differs strikingly from other Algonquian languages, making it particularly relevant to the study of historical linguistics and the evolution of grammar. Andrew Cowell and Alonzo Moss Sr. document Arapaho's interesting features, including a pitch-based accent system with no exact Algonquian parallels, radical innovations in the verb system, and complex contrasts between affirmative and non-affirmative statements.

Cultural astronomy, first called archaeoastronomy, has evolved at ferocious speed since its genesis in the 1960s, with seminal essays and powerful rebuttals published in far-flung, specialized journals. Until now, only the most closely involved scholars could follow the intellectual fireworks. In Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy, Anthony Aveni, one of cultural astronomy's founders and top scholars, offers a selection of the essays that built the field, from foundational works to contemporary scholarship.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of the Colorado High Country offers data on 8,000 years of cultural change across a wide area of western Colorado and updates archaeological methodology in the mountain West.

White Man's Paper Trail presents a poignant history of the U.S. government's attempts to peacefully negotiate treaties with tribes in Arkansas, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Stan Hoig shows how treaty-making - once considered a viable method of peaceably resolving conflicts - degenerated into a deeply flawed system sullied by political deceptions and broken promises.

White Man's Paper Trail illuminates the pivotal role of treaty negotiations in the buildup to the Plains Indian wars, in American Indians' loss of land and self-determination, and in Euro-American westward expansion.

Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and one of his wives, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival.

Now back in print, A Tenderfoot in Colorado is R. B. Townshend's classic account of his time in the wild frontier territory known as Colorado. Townshend arrived in the Rockies in 1869, fresh from Cambridge, England, with $300 in his pockets.

He found friends among some of Colorado's more colorful characters, people who taught him much about life on the frontier. Jake Chisolm taught him how to shoot after rescuing him from two men preparing to skin him at poker. Wild Bill of Colorado taught him the meaning of "the drop" and warned him against wearing a gun in town unless he wanted trouble. Capturing the Western vernacular more accurately than any other writer, Townshend includes vivid details of life in the West, where he killed a buffalo, prospected for gold, and was present for the official government conference with the Ute Indians after gold was discovered on their lands.

This spellbinding tribute to Puma concolor honors the big cat's presence on the land and in our psyches. In some essays, the puma appears front and center: a lion leaps over Rick Bass's feet, hurtles off a cliff in front of J. Frank Dobie, gazes at Julia Corbett when she opens her eyes after an outdoor meditation, emerges from the fog close enough for poet Gary Gildner to touch. Marc Bekoff opens his car door for a dog that turns out to be a lion. Other works evoke lions indirectly. Biologists describe aspects of cougar ecology, such as its rugged habitat and how males struggle to claim territory. Conservationists relate the political history of America's greatest cat. Short stories and essays consider lions' significance to people, reflecting on accidental encounters, dreams, Navajo beliefs, guided hunts, and how vital mountain lions are to people as symbols of power and wildness.

Dean E. Arnold made ten visits to Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico, witnessing the changes in transportation infrastructure, the use of piped water, and the development of tourist resorts. Even in this context of social change and changes in the demand for pottery, most of the potters in 1997 came from the families that had made pottery in 1965. This book traces changes and continuities in that population of potters, in the demand and distribution of pottery, and in the procurement of clay and temper, paste composition, forming, and firing.

A vivid account of the prehistory and history of Denver as revealed in its archaeological record, Denver: An Archaeological History invites us to imagine Denver as it once was.

Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains combines history, anthropology, archaeology, and geography to take a closer look at the relationships between land and people in this unique North American region.

This volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D.

Why do people fight about water rights? Who decides how much water can be used by a city or irrigator? Does the federal government get involved in state water issues? Why is water in Colorado so controversial? These questions, and others like them, are addressed in Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers.

Part biography, part medical history, and part study of Jewish life in turn-of-the-century America, Jeanne Abrams's book tells the story of Dr. Charles David Spivak - a Jewish immigrant from Russia who became one of the leaders of the American Tuberculosis Movement.

This comprehensive treatment of the smelting industry of Colorado, originally published in 1979, is now back in print with a new preface by the author. Packed with fascinating statistics and mining data, Ores to Metals details the people, technologies, and business decisions that have shaped the smelting industry in the Rockies.

udge Benjamin Barr Lindsey’s exposé of big business’s influence on Colorado and Denver politics, a best seller when it was originally published in 1911, is now back in print. The Beast reveals the plight of working-class Denver citizens—in particular those Denver youths who ended up in Lindsey’s court day after day. These encounters led him to create the juvenile court, one of the first courts in the country set up to deal specifically with young delinquents. In addition, Lindsey exposes the darker side of many well-known figures in Colorado history, including Mayor Robert W. Speer, Governor Henry Augustus Buchtel, Will Evans, and many others. When first published, The Beast was considered every bit the equal Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and sold over 500,000 copies. More than just a fascinating slice of Denver history, this book—and Lindsey’s court— offered widespread social change in the United States.

Maya Worldviews at Conquest examines Maya culture and social life just prior to contact and the effect the subsequent Spanish conquest, as well as contact with other Mesoamerican cultures, had on the Maya worldview.

Focusing on the Postclassic and Colonial periods, Maya Worldviews at Conquest provides a regional investigation of archaeological and epigraphic evidence of Maya ideology, landscape, historical consciousness, ritual practices, and religious symbolism before and during the Spanish conquest.