In this book, Lee A. Newsom offers an overview of wood in archaeology --how and where it is preserved and analyzed, its relevance to paleoecological and paleoenvironmental questions, as well as its role as an important source of information in modern archaeological science and related historical disciplines. Her book addresses a range of questions about wood reliance practices, sustainability, and the overall relevance of forest ecosystems to past cultures and cultural evolution. Newsom provides a step-by-step treatment of archaeological analysis with clear explanations and examples from various corners of the world. She also shows how the study of archaeological wood is relevant to modern restoration ecology and conservation biology that tracks long-term ancient ecosystems, including questions of global change. Demonstrating the vital role of wood and timber resources to past human societies, her book will interest scholars and students of archaeology, historical ecology, paleoecology, and wood science.

Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.

Light has a fundamental role to play in our perception of the world. Natural or artificial lightscapes orchestrate uses and experiences of space and, in turn, influence how people construct and negotiate their identities, form social relationships, and attribute meaning to (im)material practices. Archaeological practice seeks to analyse the material culture of past societies by examining the interaction between people, things, and spaces. As light is a crucial factor that mediates these relationships, understanding its principles and addressing illumination's impact on sensory experience and perception should be a fundamental pursuit in archaeology. However, in archaeological reasoning, studies of lightscapes have remained largely neglected and understudied. This volume provides a comprehensive and accessible consideration of light in archaeology and beyond by including dedicated and fully illustrated chapters covering diverse aspects of illumination in different spatial and temporal contexts, from prehistory to the present. Written by leading international scholars, it interrogates the qualities and affordances of light in different contexts and (im)material environments, explores its manipulation, and problematises its elusive properties. The result is a synthesis of invaluable insights into sensory experience and perception, demonstrating illumination's vital impact on social, cultural, and artistic contexts.

Are money and technology the core illusions of our time? In this book, Alf Hornborg offers a fresh assessment of the inequalities and environmental degradation of the world. He shows how both mainstream and radical economists are limited by a particular worldview and, as a result, do not grasp that conventional money is at the root of many of the problems that are threatening societies, not to mention planet Earth itself. Hornborg demonstrates how market prices obscure asymmetric exchanges of resources - human labor, land, energy, materials - under a veil of fictive reciprocity. Such unequal exchange, he claims, underpins the phenomenon of technological development, which is, fundamentally, a redistribution of time and space - human labor and land - in world society. Hornborg deftly illustrates how money and technology have shaped our thinking and our social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. He also offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability.

Much archaeological work is concerned with identifying gaps in our knowledge and developing strategies for addressing them; we perhaps spend less time thinking about how research should proceed when we already know, relatively speaking, quite a lot. ­The programme of dating causewayed enclosures in southern Britain that was published in 2011 as Gathering Time (Oxbow Books) gave us a new, more precise chronology for many individual sites as well as for enclosures as a whole, and as a consequence a far better sense of their significance and place in the story of the British Early Neolithic. Arguably, causewayed enclosures are now the best understood type of Neolithic monument. Yet work continues, and in the last few years new discoveries have been made, older excavations published and further work undertaken on well-known sites. Viewing this research within the new framework for these monuments allows us to assess where our understanding of enclosures has got to and where the focus of future research should lie. This volume originates from a Neolithic Studies Group meeting held in November 2019, which aimed firstly to showcase and explore the wide range of current work on causewayed enclosures and related sites, and secondly to assess what we still want to know about these sites in light of the monumental achievement of Gathering Time. ­The papers collected here comprise reports on recent development-led fieldwork, academic research and community projects, and the volume concludes with a reflection by the authors of Gathering Time.

In the face of debates about the Anthropocene - a geological epoch of our own making - and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes examines the transformation of rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires in the Near East and Mediterranean. Through a comparative approach to archaeological data, it analyses the patterns of transformation in widely differing imperial contexts in the ancient world. Bringing together a range of studies by an international team of scholars, the volume shows that empires were dynamic, diverse, and experimental polities, and that their success or failure was determined by a combination of forceful interventions, as well as the new possibilities for those dominated by empires to collaborate and profit from doing so. By highlighting the processes that occur in rural and peripheral landscapes, the volume demonstrates that the archaeology of these non-urban and literally eccentric spheres can provide an important contribution to our understanding of ancient empires. The 'bottom up' approach to the study of ancient empires is crucial to understanding how these remarkable socio-political organisms could exist and persist.

Petroglyphic rock art in three valleys of Mongolia's Altai Mountains reveals the anatomy of deep time at the boundary between Central and North Asia. Inscribed over a period of twelve millennia, its subject matter, styles, and manner of execution reflect the constraints of changing geology, climate, and vegetation. These valleys were created and shaped by ancient glaciers. Analysis of their physical environment, projected from the deep past to the present, begins to explain the rhythm of cultural manifestations: where rock art appears, when it disappears, and why. The material and this remote arena offer an ideal laboratory to study the intersection of prehistoric culture and paleoenvironment.

Discerning Palates of the Past analyzes the agricultural and pastoral infrastructure of the Mature (ca. 2500 2000 B.C.) and Late Harappan (ca. 2000 1700 B.C.) cultures of Gujarat, Northwest India, the southernmost extension of the South Asian Harappan Civilization. The economic role of drought-resistant millet crops was reconstructed at Harappan sites using a three-pronged behavioral ecological approach which integrated ethnographic studies of crop processing, paleobotany, and carbon isotope analysis. The results reveal that simply recovering crop seeds from archaeological contexts does not prove local crop cultivation. Instead, this study establishes the interpretive strength of developing ethnographic models that distinguish signatures of local cultivation versus the consumption of grain from crops grown elsewhere. The implications of these results are further explored with respect to how agricultural production of millets for human food and for animal fodder may have been economically interwoven during the Harappan Civilization. The interpretive strength of developing ethnographic models to distinguish local cultivation from the consumption of grain grown elsewhere is demonstrated in this study, and new directions are provided for discerning archaeologically how pastoralism and agriculture may be integrated in complex economic systems."

This book analyzes the agricultural and pastoral infrastructure of the Mature and Late Harappan cultures (ca. 2500-1700 BC) of northwest India. The economic role of drought-resistant millet crops is reconstructed using ethnographic studies of crop processing, palaeoethnobotany, and carbon isotope analysis. Reddy reveals that simply recovering crop seeds from archaeological contexts does not confirm local crop cultivation, and she suggests that agricultural production of millet crops for human food and for animal fodder may have been economically interwoven in the Harappan civilization. New directions are provided for discerning archaeologically how pastoralism and agriculture may be integrated in complex economic systems.

This book offers a new interpretation of the spatial-political-environmental dynamics of water and irrigation in long-term histories of arid regions. It compares ancient Southwest Arabia (3500 BC-AD 600) with the American West (2000 BC-AD 1950) in global context to illustrate similarities and differences among environmental, cultural, political, and religious dynamics of water. It combines archaeological exploration and field studies of farming in Yemen with social theory and spatial technologies, including satellite imagery, Global Positioning System (GPS), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping. In both ancient Yemen and the American West, agricultural production focused not where rain-fed agriculture was possible, but in hyper-arid areas where massive state-constructed irrigation schemes politically and ideologically validated state sovereignty. While shaped by profound differences and contingencies, ancient Yemen and the American West are mutually informative in clarifying human geographies of water that are important to understandings of America, Arabia, and contemporary conflicts between civilizations deemed East and West.

The Nile Basin contains a record of human activities spanning the last million years. However, the interactions between prehistoric humans and environmental changes in this area are complex and often poorly understood. This comprehensive book explains in clear, non-technical terms how prehistoric environments can be reconstructed, with examples drawn from every part of the Nile Basin. Adopting a source-to-sink approach, the book integrates events in the Nile headwaters with the record from marine sediment cores in the Nile Delta and offshore. It provides a detailed record of past environmental changes throughout the Nile Basin and concludes with a review of the causes and consequences of plant and animal domestication in this region and of the various prehistoric migrations out of Africa into Eurasia and beyond. A comprehensive overview, this book is ideal for researchers in geomorphology, climatology and archaeology.

This book explores the development of territorial identity in the late prehistoric, Roman, and early medieval periods. Over the course of the Iron Age, a series of marked regional variations in material culture and landscape character emerged across eastern England that reflect the development of discrete zones of social and economic interaction. The boundaries between these zones appear to have run through sparsely settled areas of the landscape on high ground, and corresponded to a series of kingdoms that emerged during the Late Iron Age. In eastern England at least, these pre-Roman socio-economic territories appear to have survived throughout the Roman period despite a trend towards cultural homogenization brought about by Romanization. Although there is no direct evidence for the relationship between these socio-economic zones and the Roman administrative territories known as civitates, they probably corresponded very closely. The fifth century saw some Anglo-Saxon immigration but whereas in East Anglia these communities spread out across much of the landscape, in the Northern Thames Basin they appear to have been restricted to certain coastal and estuarine districts. The remaining areas continued to be occupied by a substantial native British population, including much of the East Saxon kingdom (very little of which appears to have been 'Saxon'). By the sixth century a series of regionally distinct identities - that can be regarded as separate ethnic groups - had developed which corresponded very closely to those that had emerged during the late prehistoric and Roman periods. These ancient regional identities survived through to the Viking incursions, whereafter they were swept away following the English re-conquest and replaced with the counties with which we are familiar today.

Historical ecology is a research framework which draws upon diverse evidence to trace complex, long-term relationships between humanity and Earth. With roots in anthropology, archaeology, ecology and paleoecology, geography, and landscape and heritage management, historical ecology applies a practical and holistic perspective to the study of change. Furthermore, it plays an important role in both fundamental research and in developing future strategies for integrated, equitable landscape management. The framework presented in this volume covers critical issues, including: practicing transdisciplinarity, the need for understanding interactions between human societies and ecosystem processes, the future of regions and the role of history and memory in a changing world. Including many examples of co-developed research, Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology provides a platform for collaboration across disciplines and aims to equip researchers, policy-makers, funders, and communities to make decisions that can help to construct an inclusive and resilient future for humanity.

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold, new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organisms and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, biological, social, and cultural. Timothy J. LeCain combines cutting-edge theory and detailed empirical analysis to explain the extraordinary late-nineteenth century convergence between the United States and Japan at the pivotal moment when both were emerging as global superpowers. Illustrating the power of a deeply material social and cultural history, The Matter of History argues that three powerful things - cattle, silkworms, and copper - helped to drive these previously diverse nations towards a global 'Great Convergence'.

In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell assesses the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late medieval commercial economy.

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.

In the face of debates about the Anthropocene - a geological epoch of our own making - and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.

This volume explores 15,000 years of indigenous human history on the North American continent, drawing on the latest archaeological theories, time-honored methodologies, and rich datasets. From the Arctic south to the Mexican border and east to the Atlantic Ocean, all of the major cultural developments are covered in 53 chapters, with certain periods, places, and historical problems receiving special focus by the volume's authors. Questions like who first peopled the continent, what did it mean to have been a hunter-gatherer in the Great Basin versus the California coast, how significant were cultural exchanges between Native North Americans and Mesoamericans, and why do major historical changes seem to correspond to shifts in religion, politics, demography, and economy are brought into focus. The practice of archaeology itself is discussed as contributors wrestle with modern-day concerns with the implications of doing archaeology and its relevance for understanding ourselves today. In the end, the chapters in this book show us that the principal questions answered about human history through the archaeology of North America are central to any larger understanding of the relationships between people, cultural identities, landscapes, and the living of everyday life.

This book offers a new interpretation of the spatial-political-environmental dynamics of water and irrigation in long-term histories of arid regions. It compares ancient Southwest Arabia (3500 BC-AD 600) with the American West (2000 BC-AD 1950) in global context to illustrate similarities and differences among environmental, cultural, political, and religious dynamics of water. It combines archaeological exploration and field studies of farming in Yemen with social theory and spatial technologies, including satellite imagery, Global Positioning System (GPS), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping. In both ancient Yemen and the American West, agricultural production focused not where rain-fed agriculture was possible, but in hyper-arid areas where massive state-constructed irrigation schemes politically and ideologically validated state sovereignty. While shaped by profound differences and contingencies, ancient Yemen and the American West are mutually informative in clarifying human geographies of water that are important to understandings of America, Arabia, and contemporary conflicts between civilizations deemed East and West.

The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology is the most comprehensive survey of global wetland archaeology ever published. Well known for the spectacular quality of its surviving evidence, from both an archaeological and environmental perspective, wetland archaeology enables scholars to investigate and reconstruct past people's dwellings, landscapes, material culture, and daily lives in great detail. Through concise essays written by some of the world's leading scholars in the field, this Handbook describes the key principles, methodologies, and revealing results of past and present archaeological investigations of wetland environments. The volume provides unique insights into past human interactions with lakes, bogs, rivers, and coastal marshlands across the world from prehistory to modern times. Opening with a detailed introduction by the editors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts and contains 54 essays and over 230 photographs, figures, maps, and graphs.

This book was first published in 2004. There is emerging interest amongst researchers from various subject areas in understanding the interplay of earthquake and volcanic occurrences, archaeology and history. This discipline has become known as archeoseismology. Ancient earthquakes often leave their mark in the myths, legends, and literary accounts of ancient peoples, the stratigraphy of their historical sites, and the structural integrity of their constructions. Such information leads to a better understanding of the irregularities in the time-space patterns of earthquake and volcanic occurrences and whether they could have been a factor contributing to some of the enigmatic catastrophes in ancient times. This book focuses on the historical earthquakes of North and South America, and describes the effects those earthquakes have had with illustrated examples of recent structural damage at archaeological sites. It is written at a level that will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of earth science, archaeology, and history.

Despite being one of the most successful branches of mainstream archaeology, wetland archaeology, as an academic discipline, is still relatively unknown. We might have all heard of the wonderfully preserved organic artefacts and ecofacts found in waterlogged conditions, but do we really know how they were preserved, found, retrieved, and conserved for us to admire and study? Wetland Archaeology and Beyond takes the reader through the fascinating biography of wetland archaeology, from the dawn of the discipline to its remarkable achievements. Through a discussion of a large variety of worldwide wetland archaeological sites and their material culture, Menotti offers an appreciative study of the people who occupied these sites and who created the archaeological artefacts. The volume also includes a comprehensive explanation of the procedures and research processes involved in archaeological practice and theory. Focusing on the relationship between archaeological experts and the general public, Menotti highlights the importance of this relationship for the future of the discipline as wetland ecosystems continue to disappear at an inexorable rate - and with them our invaluable cultural heritage.

Sir Harry Godwin has written a companion volume to his widely acclaimed Fenland: its ancient past and uncertain future. He follows the same historical approach that made Fenland so interesting. Vast rain-fed peat bogs still cover the landscape of northern and western Britain, their ecology, vegetation and flora unfamiliar to most of our population. Yet, through the millennia since last Ice Age, they have accumulated ever-deepening acidic peat, whose plant remains are a precious archive of the events of the past. Upon investigation, the reconstructed bog vegetation gave clues to former climatic history, pollen analysis provided a chronological scale dependent upon changes in upland forest composition and archaeological objects from the Mesolithic to the Roman period were recovered by peat-diggers from observed horizons in the bogs. The Archives of Peat Bogs will be of great interest to a wide readership comprising both amateur and professional biologists, geologists, geographers, archaeologists, naturalists and antiquarians.