John Speth, professor emeritus of anthropology, and Jamie Clark, a 2009 Ph.D. graduate, have a new book out that explores the origin and development of economic and social ties between Southern Plains bison hunters and ancestral pueblo peoples in the American Southwest during the last centuries prior to the Spanish entrada. 

Additionally, John also has a new article, co-authored with Eugène Morin, a 2004 Ph.D. graduate,  that will appear this fall in the journal PaleoAnthropology entitled "Putrid Meat in the Tropics: It Wasn't Just for Inuit." Though the topic may seem rather gross and esoteric, it actually has interesting and broad implications for understanding the nature of the human disgust response and the role of the human gut flora in protecting us from botulism and other food-borne pathogens. The ethnohistoric record shows clearly that our present-day intense aversion to the sight, smell, and taste of rotten meat and maggots is a learned cultural response, not a genetically hardwired means of protecting us against pathogens. The intense aversion we have to carrion seems to be a largely Western and "Westernized" phenomenon with deep roots in the Mediterranean Bronze Age and the Judeo-Christian tradition.