Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2023 - 4

EDITOR'S LETTER
Editor in Chief
IMPROVISE, ADAPT,
AND OVERCOME
T
his issue is filled with stories that explore how people of the past dealt with drastic changes
in the world around them. The different ways they responded to seismic historical shifts
speaks to their resilience and the extent to which they were able to preserve aspects of
their culture, even when their ways of life-and their very freedom-were under threat.
The shift from hunting and gathering to farming could have tremendous consequences
for a culture's social order. The Basketmaker II people, who inhabited
the Colorado Plateau for about 1,000 years beginning in the mid-first
millennium b.c., were once thought to have preserved an egalitarian
social system even after they became farmers. But researchers
studying several unusual examples of Basketmaker II jewelry have
concluded that the exotic objects were used to distinguish people
at the top of an emerging social hierarchy. This suggests that some
Basketmaker II people responded to the transition to agriculture
by amassing wealth, dividing the culture into social classes in ways
th
m
ia
s
c
a
scholars are only just now beginning to understand.
European colonization brought sweeping-and perilous-changes
s
to people's lives. In the eighteenth century, Europeans stepped up their efforts to colonize
what would become South Africa. The Indigenous Khoe and San peoples responded to
this threat to their land and personal liberty by conducting cattle raids that they depicted in
rock art panels found in their hideouts throughout South Africa's Winterberg Mountains.
In the American Southeast, when the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador Hernando de
Soto encountered the fearsome Chikasha-ancestors of the modern Chickasaw Nation-his
attempts to plunder their land and enslave some of their people were met with a decisive
military defeat. For more than a century, archaeologists have recently learned, the Chikasha's
way of life continued unimpeded and unchanged.
A single remarkable Egyptian court official named Udjahorresnet skillfully navigated the
takeover of his country by the Persian Achaemenid Empire by invoking traditions that would
resonate with the court and the people to legitimize the rule of the new Persian pharaoh.
And in Peru in about a.d. 900, when the Moche culture that had thrived for centuries came
to an end, the region's Chimú people responded by moving into a previously uninhabited
valley. There they founded a new capital city that would become the largest ancient urban
center in the Americas. To survive in such numbers in a coastal desert, the Chimú developed
sophisticated water engineering techniques and performed dramatic rituals that transformed
the landscape around them.
Jarrett A. Lobell
Deputy Editor
Eric A. Powell
Executive Editor
Daniel Weiss
Senior Editor
Benjamin Leonard
Editorial Assistant
Malin Grunberg Banyasz
Creative Director
Richard Bleiweiss
Maps
Ken Feisel
Contributing Editors
Roger Atwood, Paul Bahn,
Bob Brier, Karen Coates,
Andrew Curry, Blake Edgar,
Brian Fagan, David Freidel,
Tom Gidwitz, Andrew Lawler,
Stephen H. Lekson,
Jerald T. Milanich, Samir S. Patel,
Heather Pringle, Kate Ravilious,
Neil Asher Silberman, Julian Smith,
Nikhil Swaminathan,
Jason Urbanus, Claudia Valentino,
Zach Zorich
Publisher
Kevin Quinlan
Director of Circulation and Fulfillment
Kevin Mullen
Director of Integrated Sales
Gerry Moss
Account Manager
Karina Casines
Newsstand Consultant
T.J. Montilli
NPS Media Group
Office Manager
Malin Grunberg Banyasz
For production questions
contact materials@archaeology.org
Editorial Advisory Board
James P. Delgado, Ellen Herscher,
Ronald Hicks, Jean-Jacques Hublin,
Mark Lehner, Roderick J. McIntosh,
Susan Pollock, Kenneth B. Tankersley
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Jarrett A. Lobell
Editor in Chief
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ARCHAEOLOGY * May/June 2023

Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - May/June 2023