Synopses & Reviews
Paleonutrition is the analysis of prehistoric human diets and the interpretation of dietary intake in relation to health and nutrition. As a field of study, it addresses prehistoric diets in order to determine the biological and cultural implications for individuals as well as for entire populations, placing archaeological interpretations into an anthropological context. Throughout history, and long before written records, human culture has been constantly in flux. The study of paleonutrition provides valuable insights into shifts and changes in human history, whatever their causes.
This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the topic. Intended for students and professionals, it describes the nature of paleonutrition studies, reviews the history of paleonutrition research, discusses methodological issues in the reconstruction of prehistoric diets, presents theoretical frameworks frequently used in paleonutrition research, and showcases examples in which paleonutritional analyses have been successfully conducted on prehistoric individuals, groups, and populations. It offers an integrative approach to understanding state-of-the-art anthropological dietary, health, and nutritional assessments. The most recent and innovative methods used to reconstruct prehistoric diets are discussed, along with the major ways in which paleonutrition data are recovered, analyzed, and interpreted.
Paleonutrition includes five contemporary case studies that provide useful models of how to conduct paleonutrition research. Topics range from ancient diets in medieval Nubia to childrens health in the prehistoric American Southwest to honey use by an ethnographic group of East African foragers. As well as providing interesting examples of applying paleonutrition techniques, these case studies illustrate the mutually beneficial linkages between ethnography and archaeology.
Review
"This book of accessible poems not only shows what it feels like to be a Cuban American but probes beneath the memories of white Cuban beaches and finds the spirit of the exile experience." Hispanic Magazine"Suarez's mini-memoirs read like a photo album of verse, one which seems instantly familiar. . . . The accessibility of these poems should make them attractive to After Night Falls fans and others looking for representations of Cuba." Publishers Weekly"Poignant, vividly descriptive poems that capture the longing, regret, resignation, and identity-quest characteristic of the vast number of immigrant who have mixed emotions about their exile from their homeland." World Literature Today
Synopsis
Hibiscus, banyan trees, and royal palms. Mango jam, white slices of sugarcane, and oxtail stew. Childhood games with fireflies and snail shells. These are images of a Cuba that many remember and others have never known, captured here in the powerful poems of Virgil Suárez.
Born in Havana in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, Suárez is now one of more than a million Cubans living in the United States. In Palm Crows Suárez offers a compelling canción of loss, longing, and memory as he explores the meaning of exile. In poems that range from playful and fantastic to elegiac and meditative, he writes about the in-betweenness of spirit of those who have left their home and must try to forge a new one in the United States.
Invoking water, song, earth, and darkness, he seeks to create his place in the worlda place for his family and his spirit to call home. He constructs a slippery camouflage of animals: fish-beings, turtles, chupacabras, birds. As Suárezs poem-stories drift from one form and species to another, these creatures reincarnate and retell their lives to each other and to us.
Like the crows of Hialeah, Virgil Suárez sings of exile, of absence, of captured cities, lost love, and claimed lives. Palm Crows shows us an almost mythical Cuba, offering a compelling testament both to the immigrant experience and to our own search for home.