New Materialisms Ancient Urbanisms

Susan M. Alt is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University and Faculty Curator at the Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology. Her research interests include the relationships of migration, violence, and gender to the built environment, especially involving the origins of Mississippianism. She is author or editor of Cahokia’s Complexities (2017), Medieval Mississippians (2015), and Ancient Complexities (2010). Timothy R. Pauketat is Professor of Anthropology and Medieval Studies, and Director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois. The author or editor of 15 books, Pauketat seeks to understand through large-scale archaeology the big historical relationships between politics, religion, climate, and urbanism.

1. Introducing New Materialisms, Rethinking Ancient Urbanisms; 2. From Weeping Hills to Lost Caves: A Search for Vibrant Matter in Greater Cahokia; 3. Chaco Gathers: Experience and Assemblage in the Ancient Southwest; 4. Assembling the City: Monte Albán as a Mountain of Creation and Sustenance; 5. Assembling Tiwanaku: Water and Stone, Humans and Monoliths; 6. Immanence and the Spirit of Ancient Urbanism at Paquimé and Liangzhu; 7. The Gathering of Swahili Religious Practice: Mosques-as-Assemblages at 1000 CE Swahili Towns; 8. Urbanism and the Temporality of Materiality on the Medieval Deccan: Beyond the Cosmograms of Social and Political Space; 9. Cities, the Underworld, and the Infrastructure: The Ecology of Water in the Hittite World; 10. Commentary: The City and the City