Hardcover; 409 pp.,

Fine condition.

In a brilliant work of scholarly detection, Susan Heuck Allen shows that the relentlessly self-promoting Heinrich Schliemann took all the credit for discovering Homer's Troy, deliberately eclipsing the man who had guided him. She restores the British archaeologist Frank Calvert to his place in the identification and excavation of the city of Priam. He was the first to test the hypothesis that the mound at Hisarlik would be a good place to look for the Troy of Hector and Helen. To have unrestricted access to the site, he purchased part of the mound and conducted the first excavations there. Running out of funds, he interested Schliemann in the site and aided him in his excavations. Then Schliemann stole Calvert's ideas -- and his glory. This meticulously researched book tells the story of Calvert's development as an archaeologist, as well as his adventures and discoveries. It focuses on his turbulent relationship with the perfidious Schliemann, and on the successful conclusion of their quest.

Paperback; 365 pp., photos , drawings

Fine condition.

Best known for his writings on cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropology, Franz Boas is also recognized for his groundbreaking studies of so-called primitive art. In the 19th century, scholars assumed that all art lay on a continuum from primitive to advanced: artworks of non-literate peoples were therefore examples of early development. Boas set out to dispute this, having "divined what a wealth of thought lay hidden behind the grotesque masks and the elaborately decorated utensils of these tribes." This volume includes Boas' most significant writings on art, many originally published in obscure sources now difficult to locate. The essays are illustrated with their original photographs and drawings, and the collection is supported by an extensive bibliography.

Hardcover; 240 pp., 280 illus, 170 in color

Fine condition.

Long known but little understood, the art of Maya writing has now largely been deciphered, leading to a new understanding of Maya society. Sumptuously illustrated with 280 images (including 117 color plates), this book begins by examining the origins and character of the script, then explores the world of the scribes and "keepers of the holy books," decoding their work in Maya art and describing their mediums, tools, and techniques. The artist-calligraphers, both men and women, held such high status in Classic Maya society (A.D. 250-900) that they lived in their own palaces and worshipped their own patron gods. They painted or carved on stone, stucco, wood, shell, bone, and in screenfold books, and, most strikingly of all, on magnificent ceramic vessels used as offerings to the dead or to gods.

Hardcover; 12.5 inches, 240 pp., color photos

Fine condition.

"In the isolated, mountainous regions of Burma (now called Myanmar) live more than thirty tribes separated from modernity by terrain, liguistic differences, and cultural variation. Undisturbed for centuries, today their way of life is threatened with extinction...."

A must-have book if you are interested in Burmese or Naga material!

Hardcover; 239 pp., color photos

Fine condition.

It was batik from Java's north coast, a region known as the Pasisir, that propelled photographer Inger McCabe Elliott from the world of black-and-white to that of color. "One day more than 30 years ago my black-and-white world exploded into glorious color. It happened in a hole-in-the-wall Hong Kong curio shop -- that moment when the splendors of Java's north coast batik burst upon me. Entranced by what I had first glimpsed in Hong Kong, I set out on a new mission: to unravel the mystery of batik," Elliott says. This volume celebrates Elliott's mission, with color reproductions from her batik collection. Scholars from around the world have contributed essays that shed new light on these colorful, intricate, and sometimes fanciful textiles, textiles that have many stories to tell about their creators and wearers; their images and meanings; their historical context and social milieu. Perhaps the most interesting story is that of the artistic flowering of a culturally and ethnically diverse society whose major creative expression was on cloth.

Paperback; 159 pp., color photos.

Fine condition.

The rich culture of the ancient Incas, with its high degree of engineering and artistic sophistication, is reflected in their cities and architecture, their textiles, and their beautiful ceramics and metalwork -- cataloged here in hundreds of sharp color photographs. Framing a narrative history of the Incan civilizations of Peru, these annotated images from a major museum exhibit reveal an amazing range of endeavor over two thousand years, from tiny golden nose ornaments to man-made mountains.

Paperback; 168 pp., photographs

Fine condition.

Magnificent tribal masks and ceremonial carvings from New Ireland, in Papua New Guinea, are pictured and cataloged here in color and black and white photographs with captions. Collected from museums around the world for an exhibit coordinated by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, these pieces reveal the incredibly rich and complex artistic tradition of this people, further explored in six essays.

Hardcover; 198 pp.

Fine condition.

Men killed for them, stole for them, died for them. "Dragon bones," coveted throughout China for their medicinal powers, were actually animal fossils, ground down and sold through back-street Chinese apothecaries. Yet these bones led to the 19th-century unearthing of one of the most famous hominid fossils of all time -- Peking Man, the first convincing evidence that humans arose from apelike hominids. Australian ecologist and science writer Penny van Oosterzee's fast-moving historical account of the discovery of Peking Man reads like an adventure story, from the excavation of one small fossilized molar to the disappearance of priceless skulls during the brutal Japanese occupation of China in World War II.

Hardcover; 125 pp., color reproductions

Fine condition.

An artistic community unique in American history flourished in St. Augustine, Florida, between 1875 and 1878. Some 70 Plains Indians, imprisoned for their refusal to accept life on the reservations, produced a body of work that chronicled their history, their lives, and their experience of exile from the freedom so central to their heritage. Called "ledger arts" after the large lined books that, in most cases, were the first form of paper they used, these pencil and ink depictions are evocations of a poignant chapter in American history. An annotated reproduction of one such ledger, Warrior Artists swirls with color and movement, and presents more than 50 drawings by two practitioners of this traditional narrative art.

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