Prehistoric Coastal Adaptations: The Economy and Ecology of Maritime Middle America is a compendium of research papers and treatises on Middle American people who lived within coastal habitats. The collection aims to reveal distinctive coastal adaptations and the role of Middle American people in major social transformations. The book discusses topics on the history of occupations of certain coastal sites; correlation of site location to resource procurement patterns; settlement locations and subsistence evidence in the coastal and inland habitats of Costa Rica; and the maritime adaptation and the rise of Maya civilization. The final chapter of the book also discusses the future research directions in the study of Middle American coastal people. The text will be of value to archeologists, anthropologists, historians, ethnologists, and researchers.

The contribution of German ethnography to Australian anthropological scholarship on Aboriginal societies and cultures has been limited, primarily because few people working in the field read German. But it has also been neglected because its humanistic concerns with language, religion and mythology contrasted with the mainstream British social anthropological tradition that prevailed in Australia until the late 1960s. The advent of native title claims, which require drawing on the earliest ethnography for any area, together with an increase in research on rock art of the Kimberley region, has stimulated interest in this German ethnography, as have some recent book translations. Even so, several major bodies of ethnography, such as the 13 volumes on the cultures of northeastern South Australia and the seven volumes on the Aranda of the Alice Springs region, remain inaccessible, along with many ethnographically rich articles and reports in mission archives. In 18 chapters, this book introduces and reviews the significance of this neglected work, much of it by missionaries who first wrote on Australian Aboriginal cultures in the 1840s. Almost all of these German speakers, in particular the missionaries, learnt an Aboriginal language in order to be able to document religious beliefs, mythology and songs as a first step to conversion. As a result, they produced an enormously valuable body of work that will greatly enrich regional ethnographies.

Includes titles on all subjects, some in foreign languages, later incorporated into Memorial Library.

E very denomination entered the Caribbean with a mission. While the general motivation was to convert the population to Christianity, the accompanying practices were undoubtedly intended to civilise and westernise. The Moravians and Methodists were the first two evangelical Protestant missions that brought the gospel to the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean.When emancipation was granted to the enslaved Africans by the British government in 1834, the newly freed Africans had their own ideas as to how they would live, work, and worship. They were in a struggle for freedom, self-affirmation, self-expression, and personal development. But the Moravians and Methodists had independently framed their thoughts on what the formerly enslaved Africans needed to survive and succeed. What the evangelical Protestants created for themselves was an image of the formerly enslaved African. They had drawn a mental picture of a European Christian of African descent who was residing in the Caribbean and practicing the Christianity of the West. The Caribbean evangelical black was a reflection of the Europeans but never managed to fit into the submissive Christian image. This book traces the eighty years during which formerly enslaved Africans adapted to their state of freedom in Antigua and Barbados and how the Moravians and Methodists sought to shape their way of life.. The book examines the theological dispositions on slavery, gender, education, religion, sexuality, and race.

"The book also features cross-references throughout, a bibliography accompanying each entry, an elaborate appendix listing biographies according to particular categories of interest, and a comprehensive index."--BOOK JACKET.