This is an ethnoarchaeological study of the settlements of the Raramuri (often known as the Tarahumara), focusing primarily on their mobility strategy. This is important because this groups presents a case where the common equation of agriculturalists = sedentary, and hunter-gatherers = mobile is broken. The Raramuri are agriculturalists with a pattern of mobility between two or more settlements during the course of any year. Graham provides not only a description of this unusual pattern of mobility by a farming group but also a number of insights and suggestions on how archaeologists can detect a mobile lifestyle in the residential areas of prehistoric agriculturalists.

"Perspectives on the Past" shows how knowledge of the past is contingent and is largely determined by the social and intellectual milieux in which those who study it have received their training. This work examines major components of the general paradigms that structure hunter-gatherer research in the Mediterranean area. In the original essays that comprise the volume, field archaeologists discuss their own biases and the effects these biases have on how they do their research. For example, one contributor describes his shift from the traditional, "essentially historical view of prehistory" to "the evolutionary paradigm now advocated by many archaeologists" and explains the modifications of both theory and method that this change has necessitated. Other topics range from biases in "cave bound" archaeology to "normal science" and preconceptions in Italian hunter-gatherer research, and from paradigms for interpreting chipped stone to those that structure the linkages between foraging, sedentism and adaptive vigour.

Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society shows how the digitization of archaeological information, tools and workflows, and their interplay with both old and new non-digital practices throughout the archaeological information process, affect the outcomes of archaeological work, and in the end, our general understanding of the human past. Whereas most of the literature related to archaeological information work has been based on practical and theoretical considerations within specific areas of archaeology, this innovative volume combines and integrates intra- and extra-disciplinary perspectives to archaeological work, looking at archaeology from both the inside and outside. With fields studies from museums and society, and pioneering new academic research, Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society will interest archaeologists across the board.

Interrogating Human Origins encourages new critical engagements with the study of human origins, broadening the range of approaches to bring in postcolonial theories, and begin to explore the decolonisation of this complex topic. The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic. This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.

In recent years scholars have re-evaluated the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity, reaching new understandings of the ways shared origins gave way to two distinct and sometimes inimical religious traditions. But this has been a profoundly textual task, relying on the writings of rabbis, bishops, and other text-producing elites to map the terrain of the "parting." This book takes up the question of the divergence of Judaism and Christianity in terms of material--the stuff made, used, and left behind by the persons that lived in and between these religions as they were developing. Considering the glass, clay, stone, paint, vellum, and papyrus of ancient Jews and Christians, this book maps the "parting" in new ways, and argues for a greater role for material and materialism in our reconstructions of the past.

Archaeologists and the public at large have long been fascinated by monumental architecture built by past societies. Whether considering the earthworks in the Ohio Valley or the grandest pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, people have been curious as to how pre-modern societies with limited technology were capable of constructing monuments of such outstanding scale and quality. Architectural energetics is a methodology within archaeology that generates estimates of the amount of labor and time allocated to construct these past monuments. This methodology allows for detailed analyses of architecture and especially the analysis of the social power underlying such projects. Architectural Energetics in Archaeology assembles an international array of scholars who have analyzed architecture from archaeological and historic societies using architectural energetics. It is the first such volume of its kind. In addition to applying architectural energetics to a global range of architectural works, it outlines in detail the estimates of costs that can be used in future architectural analyses. This volume will serve archaeology and classics researchers, and lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to social power and architecture. It also will interest architects examining past construction and engineering projects.

Archaeology is a vast subject - it is the study of human society everywhere in the world, from distant human origins 3-4 million years ago up to the present day. The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology brings together 35 authors - all specialists in their own fields - to explain what archaeology is really about. This is one of the most comprehensive treatments of the subject and of the key debates ever attempted. It is designed to open up the world of archaeology to non-specialists and to provide an essential starting point for those who want to pursue particular topics in more depth.

Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.

This book provides a basic introduction to key debates in the study of hunter-gatherers, specifically from an anthropological perspective, but designed for an archaeological audience. Hunter-gatherers have been the focus of intense anthropological research and discussion over the last hundred years, and as such there is an enormous literature on communities all over the world. Yet, among the diverse range of peoples studied, there are a number of recurrent themes, including not only the way in which people make a living (hunting, gathering and fishing) but also striking similarities in other areas of life such as belief systems and social organisation. These themes are described and then explored through archaeological case-studies. The overarching theme throughout the volume is the use of ethnographic analogy, and how archaeologists should be critical in its use.

As more and more people are recognizing the need for accurately representing the story of the United States in public narratives, especially those told at museums and historic landmarks, heritage studies is emerging as an important program of study in universities across the country. These two collections are timely and valuable resources on the theory and practice of heritage education and its relationship to the discipline of archaeology. Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies presents teaching strategies for helping students think critically about the meanings of the past today. In these case studies, experienced teachers discuss ways to integrate heritage studies values into archaeology curricula, illustrating how the fields enrich each other. They argue that encouraging empathy can lead to awareness of the continuity between past and present, reflection on contemporary cultural norms, and engagement with issues of social and climate justice. These practical examples model ways to introduce diverse perspectives on history in pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate contexts. Emphasizing the importance of heritage studies principles and active learning in archaeological education, these handbooks provide tools to equip archaeologists and heritage professionals with collaborative, community-based, and activist approaches to the past.

Change and Archaeology explores how archaeologists have historically described, interpreted, and explained change, and argues that change has been under-theorised. The study of change is central to the discipline of archaeology, but change is complex, and this makes it challenging to write about in nuanced ways that effectively capture the nature of our world. Relational approaches offer archaeologists more scope to explore change in complex and subtle ways. Change and Archaeology presents a posthumanist, post-anthropocentric, new materialist approach to change. It argues that our world is constantly in the process of becoming and always on the move. By recasting change as the norm rather than the exception and distributing it between both humans and non-humans, this book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring change in the past that allows us to move beyond block-time approaches where change is located only in transitional moments and periods are characterised by blocks of stasis. Archaeologists, scholars, anthropologists and historians interested in the theoretical frameworks we use to interpret the past will find this book a fascinating new insight into the way our world changes and evolves. The approaches presented within will be of use to anyone studying and writing about the way societies and their environs move through time.

Hunter-gatherer societies are constrained by their environment and the technologies available to them. However, until now the role of culture in foraging communities has not been widely considered. 'Structured Worlds' examines the role of cosmology, values, and perceptions in the archaeological histories of hunter-fisher-gatherers. The essays examine a range of cultures - Mesolithic Europe, Siberia, Jomon Japan, the Northwest Coast, the northern Plains, and High Arctic of North America - to show the role of conceptual frameworks in subsistence and settlement, technology, mobility, migration, demography, and social organization. Spanning from the early Holocene period to the present day, 'Structured Worlds' draws on archaeology and ethnography to explore the role of beliefs, ritual, and social values in the interaction between foragers and their physical and social landscape. Material culture, animal bones and settlement patterns show that the behaviours of hunter-gatherers were shaped as much by cultural concepts as by material need.

Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Confederate statues, Egyptian pyramids, and medieval cathedrals: these are some of the places that are the subject of Making Sense of Monuments, an analysis of how the built environment molds human experiences and perceptions via bodily comparison. Drawing from recent research in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and semiotics, Michael J. Kolb explores the mechanics of the mind, the material world, and the spatialization process of monumental architecture. Three distinct spatial-cognitive metaphors-time, movement, and scale-comprise strands of knowledge that when interwoven create embodied contours of meaning of how human interact with monumental spaces. Comprehensive, lucidly written, and thoroughly illustrated, Making Sense of Monuments is a vibrant, extraordinary journey of the monuments we have constructed and inhabited.

Global Social Archaeologies contributes to the active engagement of contemporary social archaeology through addressing issues such as postcolonialism, community heritage, and Indigenous rights. It addresses the major challenge of breaking down global divides, especially in relation to fundamental human rights, inequality, and inequities of wealth, power, and access to knowledge. This authoritative volume, authored by the current and past presidents of the World Archaeological Congress, introduces readers to the various theoretical and methodological tools available for the investigation of the past. Taking into account the implications for contemporary societies, it offers a new framework for social archaeologies in a globalised world. By combining new data from their research with an innovative synthesis and analysis of leading research by others, the authors have developed fresh conceptualisations and understandings of archaeology as a social practice, and of the ways in which it simultaneously straddles the past, present, and future. Exploring a range of case studies and enhanced by a wealth of illustrations, Global Social Archaeologies highlights a new approach to archaeology, one that places human rights at the core of archaeological theory and practice.

Pilgrims in Place, Pilgrims in Motion: Sacred Travel in the Ancient Mediterranean brings together exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on the connected poles of pilgrimage: the sanctuaries being visited, and the journeys to get there. Contributions investigate different concepts of place, community, social tensions and expectations of pilgrim behaviour; long-term meanings of place as embodied in memory and topography; mobility, migration and place-making; connectivity and its relationship to pilgrimage. Individual chapters discuss shrines, sanctuaries and sacred places as well as journeys and mobility across Greek, Roman and late antique contexts, framed as part of a key debate within the study of pilgrimage, the central tension between place and motion.

Literary artefacts-the stories people tell, the songs they sing, the scenes they enact-are neither a by-product nor a side-issue in human culture. They provide a model of everything that cognition does. They refuse to separate thought from emotion, bodily responses from ethical reflection, perception from imagination, logic from desire. Above all, they demonstrate the essential fluidity and mobility of human cognition, its adaptive inventiveness. If we are astonished by the art of Chauvet or Lascaux as an early model of human cognition, then we should be continually astonished by what literature is and does as it reaches beyond itself to reimagine the world. This book argues that literary artefacts are quasi-autonomous living entities, fashioned to animate captured environments, embodied people and other creatures, ways of being and living that remain virtual. They own a freely delegated agency that allows them to speak to listeners and readers present and distant, present and future, adapting themselves and their meanings to whatever cognitive environment they encounter. Such an approach offers a way of linking a close attention to the specific properties of literary artefacts with the insights of cognitive anthropology and archaeology, and thus of satisfying the conditions for a properly interdisciplinary understanding of literature. It aims both to defend literary study against utilitarian and reductive arguments of all kinds and to argue that literary artefacts may give us new insights into how the mind (and its indispensable substratum, the brain) functions in the human ecology.

An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is the first concise introduction that lays out the epistemological foundations of evolutionary cognitive archaeology in a way that is accessible to students. The volume is divided into three sections. The first section situates cognitive archaeology in the pantheon of archaeological approaches and distinguishes between ideational cognitive archaeology and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. This is followed by a close look at the nature of cognitive archaeological inferences and concludes with brief summaries of the major methods of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The second section of the book introduces the reader to a variety of cognitive phenomena that are accessible using the methods of cognitive archaeology: memory, technical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, art and aesthetics, and symbolism and language. The third section presents a brief outline of hominin cognitive evolution from the perspective of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The authors divide the archaeological record into three major phases: The Bipedal Apes-3.3 million-1.7 million years ago; The Axe Age-1.7 million-300,000 years ago; and The Emergence of Modern Thinking-300,000-12,000 years ago. An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is an essential text for undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars across the behavioral and social sciences interested in learning about cognitive archaeology, including psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists.

The development of complex cultural behaviour in our own species is perhaps the most significant research issue in modern archaeology. Until recently, it was believed that our capacity for language and art only developed after some of our ancestors reached Europe around 40,000 years ago. Archaeological discoveries in Africa now show that modern humans were practicing symbolic behaviours prior to their dispersal from that continent, and more recent discoveries in Indonesia and Australia are once again challenging ideas about human cultural development. Despite these significant discoveries and exciting potentials, there is a curious absence of published information about Asia-Pacific region, and consequently, global narratives of our most celebrated cognitive accomplishment - art - has consistently underrepresented the contribution of Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. This volume provides the first outline of what this region has to offer to the world of art in archaeology. Readers undertaking tertiary archaeology courses interested in the art of the Asia-Pacific region or human behavioural evolution, along with anyone who is fascinated by the development of our modern ability to decorate ourselves and our world, should find this book a good addition to their library.

The second edition of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, has been thoroughly updated and revised, and features top scholars who redefine the theoretical and political agendas of the field, and challenge the usual distinctions between time, space, processes, and people. * Defines the relevance of archaeology and the social sciences more generally to the modern world * Challenges the traditional boundaries between prehistoric and historical archaeologies * Discusses how archaeology articulates such contemporary topics and issues as landscape and natures; agency, meaning and practice; sexuality, embodiment and personhood; race, class, and ethnicity; materiality, memory, and historical silence; colonialism, nationalism, and empire; heritage, patrimony, and social justice; media, museums, and publics * Examines the influence of American pragmatism on archaeology * Offers 32 new chapters by leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists

Iconoclasm, or the destruction of images and other symbols, is a subject that has significant resonance today. Traditionally focusing on examples such as those from late Antiquity, Byzantium, the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, iconoclasm implies intentioned attacks that reflect religious or political motivations. However, the evidence highlights considerable variation in intentionality, the types and levels of destruction and the targets attacked. Such variation has been highlighted in recent iconoclasm scholarship and this has resulted in new theoretical frameworks for its study. This book presents the first analysis of iconoclasm for prehistoric periods. Through an examination of the themes of objects, the human body, monuments and landscapes, the book demonstrates how the application of the approaches developed within iconoclasm studies can enrich our understanding of earlier periods in addition to identifying specific events that may be categorised as iconoclastic. Iconoclasm and Later Prehistory combines approaches from two distinct disciplinary perspectives. It presents a new interpretative framework for prehistorians and archaeologists, whilst also providing new case studies and significantly extending the period of interest for readers interested in iconoclasm.

When was the human threshold crossed? What is the evidence for evolving humans and their emerging humanity? This volume explores in a global overview the archaeology of the Middle Pleistocene, 800,000 to 130,000 years ago when evidence for innovative cultural behaviour appeared. The evidence shows that the threshold was crossed slowly, by a variety of human ancestors, and was not confined to one part of the Old World. Crossing the Human Threshold examines the changing evidence during this period for the use of place, landscape and technology. It focuses on the emergence of persistent places, and associated developments in tool use, hunting strategies and the control of fire, represented across the Old World by deeply stratified cave sites. These include the most important sites for the archaeology of human origins in the Levant, South Africa, Asia and Europe, presented here as evidence for innovation in landscape-thinking during the Middle Pleistocene. The volume also examines persistence at open locales through a cutting-edge review of the archaeology of Northern France and England. Crossing the Human Threshold is for the worldwide community of students and researchers studying early hominins and human evolution. It presents new archaeological data. It frames the evidence within current debates to understand the differences and similarities between ourselves and our ancient ancestors.

This book provides an up to date introduction to the exciting, but complex, new scientific methodologies that are increasingly used in archaeological study. Written by an international team of specialists, it provides clear and engaging overviews of a wide array of approaches, including DNA and proteomics, dating methods, materials analysis, stable isotope analysis, and the scientific study of human, plant, and animal remains, among other topics. Each technique is explored through the use of actual archaeological examples, which both explain the methods and highlight their potential applications. The work is carefully illustrated with useful charts, graphs and other images, which complement the detail in the text, and help to articulate the case studies explored as well as the underlying principles of the techniques involved. Feature tables in many of the chapters highlight selected research on each topic, providing useful summaries of the current state and scope of the field for the reader. This volume will serve as a handy reference tool for scholars, as well as a key textbook for courses on archaeological science.

Making Time grapples with a range of issues that have crystallized in the wake of 15 years of discussion on time in archaeology, since the author's seminal volume The Archaeology of Time, synthesizing them for a new generation of scholars. The general understanding of time held by both archaeologists and non-archaeologists is often very simple: a linear notion where time flows along a single path from the past into the future. This book sets out to complicate this image, to draw out the key problems and issues with time that impact archaeological interpretation. Using concrete examples drawn from different periods and places, the book challenges the reader to think again. Ultimately, the book will suggest that if we want to understand what archaeological time is, then we need to accept that things do not exist in time, they make time. The crucial question then becomes: what kinds of time do archaeological materialities produce? Written for upper level undergraduates and researchers in archaeology, the book is also accessible to non-academics with an interest in the topic. The book is relevant for cognate disciplines, especially history, heritage studies and philosophy.

Archaeology and its Discontents examines the state of archaeology today and its development throughout the twentieth century, making a powerful case for new approaches. Surveying the themes of twentieth-century archaeological theory, Barrett looks at their successes, limitations, and failures. Seeing more failures and limitations than successes, he argues that archaeology has over-focused on explaining the human construction of material variability and should instead be more concerned with understanding how human diversity has been constructed. Archaeology matters, he argues, precisely because of the insights it can offer into the development of human diversity. The analysis and argument are illustrated throughout by reference to the development of the European Neolithic. Arguing both for new approaches and for the importance of archaeology as a discipline, Archaeology and its Discontents is for archaeologists at all levels, from student to professor and trainee to experienced practitioner.

Network theory and methodologies have become central to exploring and explaining social, economic and political relationships and connections in past societies. However, in archaeology, the deployment of networks has sometimes been more descriptive than analytical. Methodologies have often depended upon underlying assumptions which inevitably simplify relationships that were complex and multi-faceted. However, the fragmentary, heterogenous and usually proxy data we possess are not always amenable to reconstructing that complexity. In ancient societies, we must infer the movement of knowledge about 'how to make things' largely from objects themselves. This is because we usually lack direct evidence of the human relationships that entwined people with objects and their makers, and hence have only imperfect understanding of the full range of diverse factors that shaped the relationships that constituted these networks. The chapters in this volume aim to interrogate the interpretative potential of network concepts for understanding the movement over time and space of ideas about making, using and moving things through a range of archaeological case studies, which reveal both functional and dysfunctional relationships. The purpose is to consider how more broadly contextualised and multi-faceted studies can both enhance, and be enhanced by, network and related approaches. The volume contributes to the search for greater understanding of the movement and transmission of knowledge (or in some cases their absence), and to debates about how best to expand the utility of network concepts and approaches.