REDLANDS, Calif., Dec. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas is a chronicle of 15 years of research and documentation in northwest Mongolia, and it is now available from ESRI Press. With its extensive maps and outstanding photographs, the atlas presents the 12,000-year history and cultural heritage of the people living in the rugged landscape found along Mongolia's borders with Russia and China. The book will appeal to both specialists and general readers interested in travel, ecotourism, preservation, geography, and ancient human cultures.

"This is the first book-length examination of the archaeology and landscape in the Mongolian Altai in any language," says Dr. Jalbuu Choinkhor, former Mongolian ambassador to the United States.

Esther Jacobson-Tepfer provides a well-researched survey of the history and culture of this little-known area in Mongolia, while Gary Tepfer, her photographer husband, documents the surface monuments and burial mounds found throughout the region, as well as other natural and human-made features. What differentiates this from other archaeological books, however, are the geographic information system (GIS)-based maps by James Meacham. They provide the precise views and context needed to understand the geographic relationship between various architectural sites, settlements, migratory routes, and places of ceremony and worship.

"When people long ago constructed those monuments," says Jacobson-Tepfer, "they did so with a conscious sense of the mountain ridges, rivers, directionality, and viewsheds around them, reflecting a deep sense of the significance of natural elements, of a natural order in the world and in the cosmos."

Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas (ISBN: 9781589482326, 225 pages, $79.95) is available at online retailers worldwide, at www.esri.com/esripress, or by calling 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, visit www.esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options, or contact your local ESRI distributor. For a current distributor list, visit www.esri.com/distributors. Interested retailers can contact ESRI Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services.

About ESRI Press

ESRI Press publishes books on GIS, cartography, and the application of spatial analysis to many areas of public and private endeavor including land-use planning, health care, education, business, government, and science. The complete selection of GIS titles from ESRI Press can be found on the Web at www.esri.com/esripress.

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com/news.

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