Emily Lena Jones is a writer, photographer, and professor of anthropology and faculty associate of the Latin American and Iberian Institute and Center for Stable Isotopes at the University of New Mexico. She studies past human-environment interactions through the lens of archaeological animal remains, with a particular interest in the connections between humans, non-human animals, and environmental change.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection!
Nahia is my first novel! As Headwoman’s daughter, eighteen-year-old Nahia was born to lead. But when she speaks aloud a forbidden truth—that her people are facing a growing threat of invasion—her expectations are shattered when she’s punished with exile and apprenticed to the enigmatic shaman Eneko. Nahia will be published by Holiday House in April 2025. It is available for pre-order from Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers.
Update: It’s getting reviews!
“Enthralling… Unfolds from Nahia’s perspective in candid, vulnerable first-person narration… Illuminates and informs.”—Publishers Weekly
“An interesting story unfolding in an unusual setting.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A beautiful blend of my two favorite things: history and fantasy. Emily Jones masterfully transports the reader into a world both familiar and breathtakingly, brilliantly new. I couldn’t put this one down!”—Claire M. Andrews, award-winning author of the Daughter of Sparta trilogy from James Patterson Presents
“Tells the story of a young woman who faces a starkly changing world and must learn how to embrace her own power. Engrossing and nuanced, this book will captivate.”—Nicole Lesperance, award-winning author of The Wide Starlight and The Depths
“Tremendous. Combines archaeology with masterful storytelling to immerse readers in a tale of adventure, drama, and romance that brings prehistoric Europe to life.”—Dr. William Taylor, Curator of Archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and author of Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human Civilization
“Fresh and engrossing. A delight.”—Cindy Pon, award-winning author of Want and Serpentine
y Emily Lena Jones & Jacob L Fisher
Questioning Rebound explores the archaeological record of the Americas during the period immediately following European contact, a time when the human footprint on the land abruptly shifted. During this era of disease-driven mortality, genocide, incarceration, and forced labor of Indigenous peoples, American landscapes changed in fundamental ways, producing short-lived ecosystems that later became the basis of myths regarding the natural state of environments across the Americas. Questioning Rebound explores the causes of environmental change during the period following European contact, featuring case studies throughout the Americas. While both the record for and the apparent causes of the changes in the human footprint vary, the record of post- contact environmental change consistently reflects the impacts of past social upheaval.
The people who inhabited Southwest Europe from 30,000 to 13,000 years ago are often portrayed as big game hunters – and indeed, in some locations (Cantabrian Spain, the Pyrenees, the Dordogne) the archaeological record supports this interpretation. But in other places, notably Mediterranean Iberia, the inhabitants focused their hunting efforts on smaller game, such as rabbits, fish, and birds. Were they less effective hunters? Were these environments depleted of red deer and other large game? Or is this evidence of Paleolithic people’s adaptability?
This volume explores these questions, along the way delving into the history of the “bigger equals better” assumption; optimal foraging theory and niche construction theory; and patterns of environmental and subsistence change across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.
I am an environmental archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and director of the UNM Zooarchaeology Lab. My research focuses on the connections between human-animal relationships and environmental change in the past.
Among other topics, I have studied the differences (and similarities) in Neanderthal and anatomically modern human diets in Southwestern Europe; changing human-environment relationships immediately following European colonization of the Americas; and spread of the horse in the post-1492 CE North American west.
You can learn more about my academic work at my UNM website.
