Kenneth Lapatin's Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002; $24) looks at the forging of Minoan "snake goddess" figures, prompted by Arthur Evans' discoveries at Knossos. Beyond the forgery question (see January/February 2001), Lapatin considers the goddess as "a canvas on which archaeologists and curators, looters and smugglers, dealers and forgers, art patrons and museum-goers, feminists and spiritualists, have painted their preconceptions, desires, and preoccupations for an idealized past."
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Beginning with Paleoindian artifacts found on the Staten Island waterfront in the fifties and moving up through contemporary excavations like Manhattan's African Burial ground, archaeologists Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall do a masterful job of telling the Big Apple's story in Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001; $39.95). Copiously illustrated, this volume is especially strong on the rich archaeological record of Manhattan.
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There's no monument more evocative of Imperial Rome than the Colosseum, the vast amphitheater first built by the Flavian emperors, Vespasian and his son Titus, in the late first century A.D. The Colosseum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2001; $75), edited by Ada Gabucci, places the structure in its social and historical setting, giving the ABC's of the games and tracing the building's fortunes through its 1,900 years of existence.
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Over the past decade, North and South American Andeanists have revolutionized Moche studies. Leaders in the field examine how the expanding Moche archaeological record and the visual arts complement each other in Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru (Washington: National Gallery of Art; distributed by Yale University Press, 2001; $60). Joanne Pillsbury edits this compilation of 16 scholarly yet accessible articles, illustrated with the enormous corpus of fascinating Moche art.
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