Outstanding Academic Titles 2025: Anthropology

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to anthropology

Posted on January 8, 2026 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2025 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles focused on anthropology. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Piros and prehistory: a study in Tanoan
Shaul, David Leedom. Utah, 2024

The Piro were a Puebloan people who once lived along the middle Rio Grande in south-central New Mexico. Although their language disappeared by 1900, this fresh analysis of the extant documentation places it firmly within the Tanoan family, alongside several other languages spoken in the same general area—Northern Tiwa, Southern Tiwa, Tano, and others—as well as Kiowa, whose speakers abandoned village life to become mobile buffalo hunters on the northern plains in pre-contact times. In this ambitious new book, Shaul (Univ. of Arizona) analyzes all known Piro materials to demonstrate the language’s affiliation with the Tiwa sub-branch of the family. He considers inherited Tanoan vocabulary alongside layers of borrowing and other contact phenomena to elucidate stages in the family’s prehistoric expansion and internal diversification. Given the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence, this study is likely to remain the closest we may ever come to a grammar of Piro. The book offers valuable observations on the language’s phonological and morphological structure and presents a rich array of dictionary materials. View on Amazon

2. Reframing Paquimé: community formation in northwest Chihuahua
by Michael E. Whalen and Paul E. Minnis Arizona, 2025

This collaboration between Whalen (emer., Univ. of Tulsa) and Minnis (emer., Univ. of Oklahoma) completes a trilogy—preceded by the books Casas Grande and Its Hinterland (2001) and The Neighbors of Casas Grandes (CH, Mar’10, 47-3901)—on Paquimé (Casas Grandes), a large prehistoric archaeological site in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua attributed to Mogollon culture and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Focusing on five of c. 400 smaller sites, the authors examine how and to what extent Paquimé affected its near and distant neighbors during its 150-year rise, reign, and ruin (1425 CE). Confronting the “small site problem” of the Medio period, the authors’ intensive site survey reveals architecture, room counts (3,259) and configurations, floral and faunal remains, lithics and ceramics (covered mostly in their 2009 book), exotic and ritual items (shell and copper), and trade. They also review site occupational histories, social complexity, and diversity. Supplementing the previous volumes are three maps, 88 figures (mostly line drawings, lacking photographs), 59 tables, and 286 references. Results suggest a Puebloan form of societal organization and a heavy overlay of Mesoamerican concepts and symbolism, expanding and correcting Charles Di Peso’s earlier conclusions in Casas Grandes (1974). View on Amazon

3. Jerusalem through the ages: from its beginnings to the Crusades
Magness, Jodi. Oxford, 2024

Unlike other recent publications on the archaeology and history of Jerusalem, which focus on specific periods or specific excavation projects, Magness (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) provides a timely and unparalleled overview of the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from the Bronze Age to the end of the Crusader period. Skillfully negotiating a fine line between too little and too much detail, Magness begins with an introduction covering topography and sources, followed by an overview of the work of various explorers. The next 10 chapters each begin with a historical introduction to one of the major periods in Jerusalem’s history, followed by a discussion of the archaeological evidence, including both excavated remains and relevant textual sources. A useful timeline, extensive notes, and an exhaustive, up-to-date bibliography conclude the volume. Written in an engaging but still scholarly style that does not ignore but avoids dwelling on political concerns and religious controversies, Jerusalem through the Ages is required reading for anyone interested in the archaeology of this quite small and remote city, which is of monumental importance to millions of people worldwide. View on Amazon

4. The botanic age: planting the seeds of human evolution
Falk, Dean. Toronto, 2025

Ever since first realizing that stone tools were only a minor part of hominins’ technologies, this reviewer has been looking for a book on botanical tools (i.e., nests, slings, baskets) for 50 years. Although organic technologies were much more important and central, they have often been ignored by researchers because they did not survive. Falk (Florida State Univ.) has now mined the literature, her own experience, and that of others to reveal the centrality of organic artifacts to the evolution of humanity, both well before and after the invention of lithic artifacts. She begins by looking at the baskets that our fellow hominoids make in trees to argue that hominids would have made them too, and then brought them to the ground, leading to physical and mental changes in our ancestors. Over several million years, organic technologies grew and developed, as did their users. As organic technologies evolved from baby slings to wooden spears and from sandals to spears and boats, language also developed as women used their voices to soothe their babies, and the babies responded. This marvelous book is both accessible to general readers and thought-provoking for experts. View on Amazon.

5. Ecotourism impacts on Indigenous peoples
ed. by Wayne A. Babchuk and Robert K. Hitchcock Lexington Books, 2025

Babchuk (Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln) and Hitchcock (Univ. of New Mexico) have compiled an extremely important collection on the intersection of two inextricably linked bodies of work that are rarely explicitly considered within the literature—ecotourism and Indigenous peoples. As the authors note, “Indigenous peoples have been considered to be highly vulnerable to visits of tourists,” which is likely due to their dependence on the land, difficulty adjusting to changes, and lack of political power in pushing back against tourism (p. 2). Topics covered among the 12 contributing authors include matters such as societal impacts, Indigenous identity, ecotourism challenges, traditional knowledge, cultural learning, changes in livelihood, and global health pandemics. The case study approach in each of the 10 chapters paints a rich picture with and of Indigenous peoples’ voices in Bolivia, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the US, Honduras, Australia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, providing readers with the opportunity to experience some of the most interesting Indigenous populations across the globe as they begin to understand and empathize with them. Libraries with collections focusing on tourism, cultural heritage, indigeneity, and geography should have a copy of this text.  View on Amazon.

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