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books and edited volumes

2012. (In Press). B. Sunday Eiselt. Becoming White Clay: A History and Archaeology of Jicarilla Apache Enclavement. University of Utah Press.

For nearly 200 years the Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico thrived in the interstices of Pueblo and Spanish settlement following their expulsion from the plains on the heels of Comanche raids in the early 1700s. Critical to this success was their ability to extend key aspects of Plains-Pueblo exchange, developed during the pre-contact era, to Indian and mixed-blood communities on the fringes of colonial rule. Jicarilla trade in mountain products, including glistening micaceous cook pots, was vital to local economies where barter between women was the rule and the men trafficked in contraband, protection, and game. This book traces the emergence of the Jicarilla enclave to reveal the ideological and social underpinnings of long-term ethnic persistence in contact borderland settings.

2005. Michelle Hegmon and B. Sunday Eiselt (eds). Engaged Anthropology: Research Essays on North American Archaeology, Ethnobotany, and Museology. Anthropological Papers No. 94. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor

A collection of essays based on the 2005 Society for American Archaeology symposium, presenting research that epitomizes Richard I. Ford's approach of engaged anthropology. This transdisciplinary approach integrates archaeological research with perspectives from ethnography, history, and ecology, and engages the anthropologist with Native partners and with socio-natural landscapes. Research papers largely focus on the U.S. Southwest, but also consider other areas of North America, issues relating to museums collections, and indigenous approaches to materials research.
(Read the Review by Kristian Gremillian)