Dumbarton Oaks Publications

Beginning with the Inaugural Lectures in 1941, Dumbarton Oaks has published scholarly work. We publish in each of our fields of study: Byzantine, Garden and Landscape Architecture, and Pre-Columbian. Our books are available through this site and through Harvard University Press.

New and Recent Publications

Kourion, Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct

A. H. S. Megaw, ed.

More than fifty years after the earthquake of 365 destroyed Kourion, the seat of the Roman administration of Cyprus, a Christian basilica was built upon the remains of its pagan predecessor. This basilica became the center of a large complex that included a baptistery, atrium, and numerous other structures and buildings. Replete with mosaics and revetment, the Christian basilica was the center of the ecclesiastical administration of Cyprus until its destruction in the late seventh century. In this long-awaited report, A. H. S. Megaw and colleagues present in full the results of excavations from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s. In addition to the stratigraphic history of the complex, there are reports on the mosaics, revetment, sculpture, coins, inscriptions, glass, pottery, lamps, and small finds.

ISBN 978-0-88402-276-3 $95.00 order

Variations in the Expressions of Inka Power

Richard L. Burger, Craig Morris, and Ramiro Matos Mendieta, eds.

Until recently, little archaeological investigation has been dedicated to the Inka, the last great culture to flourish in Andean South America before the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spaniards. While the Inka have been traditionally viewed through the textual sources of early colonial histories, this volume draws on recent archaeological research to challenge theories on the chronology and development of the Inka Empire and how this culture spread across such a vast area. The volume demonstrates the great regional diversity of the Inka realm, with strategies of expansion that were shaped to meet a variety of local situations beyond the capital in Cusco. Using a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, scholars from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities provide a new understanding of Inka culture and history.

Download the corrected version of the map on page 46

ISBN 978-0-88402-326-5 $55.00 order

Dumbarton Oaks Papers 60

Alice-Mary Talbot, ed.

Volume 60 of this annual journal explores a range of Byzantine subjects: the classification of stamping objects (including six previously unpublished metal stamps); the date and purpose of the construction of Constantinople's church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus; the Coptic Church's literary construction of its identity in post-conquest Egypt; the evidence for the tenth-century revision of the so-called Chronicle of 811; an unusual development in the iconography of St. Menas; and versions of Niketas Choniates' History.

Also included are editions and translations of Byzantine communion prayers newly discovered in Massachusetts and two funerary epigrams written by Manuel Philes; both articles include commentary. The volume concludes with reports from 2003 and 2004 on Dumbarton Oaks-supported archaeological fieldwork projects on a church in Bizye and an aristocratic rock-cut Byzantine settlement in Cappadocia.

ISBN 978-0-88402-316-6 $125.00 order

Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovation and Cultural Change

Michel Conan and W. John Kress, eds.

From Roman times to the present, knowledge of plants and their cultivation have exerted a deep impact on cultural changes. This book highlights the religious, artistic, political, and economic consequences of horticultural pursuits. Far from a mere trade, horticulture profoundly affected Jewish and Persian mystical poetry and caused deep changes in Ottoman arts. It contributed to economic and political changes in Judea, Al Andalus, Japan, Yuan China, early modern Mexico, Europe, and the United States. This book explores the roles of peasants, botanists, horticulturists, nurserymen and gentlemen collectors in these developments, and concludes with a reflection on the future of horticulture in the present context of widespread environmental devastation and ecological uncertainty.

ISBN 978-0-88402-327-2 $40.00 order

Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creation and Interpretation

Michel Conan, ed.

The present renewal of garden art demands a new approach to garden aesthetics. This book considers exceptional creations around the world and proposes new forms of garden experience. Using a variety of critical perspectives, the authors demonstrate a renewal of garden design and new directions for garden aesthetics, analyzing projects by Fernando Chacel (Brazil), Andy Goldsworthy (Great Britain), Charles Jencks (Great Britain), Patricia Johanson (US), Dieter Kienast (Switzerland), Bernard Lassus (France), and Mohammed Shaheer (India). The first half of the volume begins with an argument for a return to John Dewey's focus on 'Art as Experience,' while the second half concludes with a debate on the respective roles of cognition and the senses, and of science and the visual arts.

ISBN 978-0-88402-325-8 $35.00 order

Middle East Garden Traditions: Unity and Diversity; Questions, Methods and Resources in a Multicultural Perspective

Michel Conan, ed.

This book unites new information and surprising results from the last fifteen years of garden research, at a remove from the clichés of Orientalism. Garden archaeology reveals the economic importance of Judean gardens in Roman times and the visual complexity of gardens created and transformed in Moorish Spain. More contemporary approaches unravel the cultural continuities, variations, and differences between gardens in the Middle East since Roman times and in the Islamic world. Scholars present new sources for studies of gardens in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, the Ottoman world, Judea, Morocco and Moorish Spain. They explore the interplay of conflicting influences, the cultural reception of gardens in religious and mystical societies, and the political uses of gardens, presenting an unexpected diversity of garden forms in all levels of society.

ISBN 978-0-88402-329-6 $40.00 order

Twin Tollans, Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World

Cynthia Kristan-Graham and Jeff Kowalski, eds.

This volume is the outgrowth of a two-day colloquium, "Rethinking Chichén Itzá,Tula and Tollan," that was held at Dumbarton Oaks in February 2000. The selected essays revisit the long-standing questions regarding the nature of the relationship between Chichén Itzá and Tula. Rather than use earlier perspectives based on notions of migrations and conquests, these essays place the cities in the context of the emerging social, political, and economic relationships that took shape during the transition from the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico, the Terminal Classic period in the Maya region, and the succeeding Early Postclassic period.

ISBN 0-88402-323-0 $65.00 order