This volume provides the first critical examination of the relationship between archaeology and language, analysing the rhetorical practices through which archaeologists create representations of the past.

Rosemary A. Joyce is Associate Professor of Anthropology, and former Director of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. She was previously Assistant Director and Assistant Curator of the Peabody Museum, and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. Her publications include Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica (2001), Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies (ed. with Susan D. Gillespie, 2000), Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica (ed. with David C. Grove, 1999), Women in Prehistory: North American and Mesoamerica (ed. with Cheryl Claassen, 1997), Encounters with the Americas (with Susan A. M. Shumaker, 1995), Maya History by Tatiana Proskouriakoff (ed. 1993), and Cerro Palenque: Power and Identity on the Maya Periphery (1991).