Peacock In The Desert

A beautiful book that presents nearly four centuries of artistic creation from one of the largest former princely states in India, the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur in southwestern Rajasthan​ Peacock in the Desert traces the evolution of royal identity in the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur in southwestern Rajasthan from the 17th century to the establishment of independence after 1947, presenting the area as a microcosm of India's extraordinarily vibrant culture. An international team of contributors has contextualized these regional narratives in relation to external--and even global--forces. The book thus offers a new perspective on the acquisition and commissioning of objects through patronage, diplomacy, matrimonial alliances, trade, and conquest. It sheds fresh light on the influential role of women at the royal courts and examines monarchies as lenses onto cross-cultural relationships, the unrecognized roles of groups marginalized in earlier accounts, cultural heterodoxy, and large-scale multicultural exchange. Exploring these webs of connection, Peacock in the Desert makes a transformative contribution to scholarship. Its multidisciplinary approach to artistic and cultural exchange offers pathbreaking insights, adding crucial chapters to the story of India's royal visual splendor. Distributed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Exhibition Schedule: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (03/04/18-08/19/18) Seattle Art Museum (10/18/18-01/21/19) Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (03/09/19-09/02/19)

"Amy Irvine implores us to trade in our solitude for solidarity, to recognize ourselves in each other and in the places we love, so that we might come together to save them." —PAM HOUSTON As Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness turns fifty, its iconic author, who has inspired generations of rebel-rousing advocacy on behalf of the American West, is due for a tribute as well as a talking to. In Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness, Amy Irvine admires the man who influenced her life and work while challenging all that is dated—offensive, even—between the covers of Abbey’s environmental classic. From Abbey’s quiet notion of solitude to Irvine’s roaring cabal, the desert just got hotter, and its defenders more nuanced and numerous.

The last quarter century has seen extensive research on the ports of the Red Sea coast of Egypt, the road systems connecting them to the Nile, and the mines and quarries in the region. Missing has been a systematic study of the peoples of the Eastern Desert--the area between the Red Sea and the Nile Valley--in whose territories these ports, roads, mines, and quarries were located. The historical overview of the Eastern Desert in the shape of a roughly chronological narrative presented in this book fills that gap. The multidisciplinary perspective focuses on the long-term history of the region. The extensive range of topics addressed includes specific historical periods, natural resources, nomadic survival strategies, ancient textual data, and the interaction between Christian hermits and their neighbors. The breadth of perspective does not sacrifice depth, for all authors deal in some detail with the specifics of their subject matter. As a whole, this collection provides an outline of the history and sociology of the Eastern Desert unparalleled in any language for its comprehensiveness. As such, it will be the essential starting point for future research on the Eastern Desert. Includes a CD of eleven audio files with music of the Ababda Nomads, and six short videos of Ababda culture.

This volume presents a completely new and very substantial body of information about the origin of agriculture and plant use in Africa. All the evidence is very recent and for the first time all this archaeobotanical evidence is brought together in one volume (at present the information is unpublished or published in many disparate journals, confer ence reports, monographs, site reports, etc. ). Early publications concerned with the origins of African plant domestication relied almost exclusively on inferences made from the modem distribution of the wild progenitors of African cultivars; there existed virtually no archaeobotanical data at that time. Even as recently as the early 1990s direct evidence for the transition to farming and the relative roles of indigenous versus Near Eastern crops was lacking for most of Africa. This volume changes that and presents a wide range of ex citing new evidence, including case studies from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, and Sudan, which range in date from 8000 BP to the present day. The volume ad dresses topics such as the role of wild plant resources in hunter-gatherer and farming com munities, the origins of agriculture, the agricultural foundation of complex societies, long-distance trade, the exchange of foods and crops, and the human impact on local vege tation-all key issues of current research in archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, ecol ogy, and economic history.

More than twenty-five years after his death, iconic writer and nature activist Edward Abbey (1929–1989) remains an influential presence in the American environmental movement. Abbey’s best known works continue to be widely read and inspire discourse on the key issues facing contemporary American society, particularly with respect to urbanization and technology. Abbey in America, published forty years after Abbey’s popular novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, features an all-star list of contributors, including journalists, authors, scholars, and two of Abbey’s best friends as they explore Abbey’s ideas and legacy through their unique literary, personal, and scholarly perspectives.