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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > General
Calculating the diversity of biological or cultural classes is a
fundamental way of describing, analyzing, and understanding the
world around us. Understanding archaeological diversity is key to
understanding human culture in the past. Archaeologists have long
experienced a tenuous relationship with statistics; however, the
regular integration of diversity measures and concepts into
archaeological practice is becoming increasingly important. This
volume includes chapters that cover a wide range of archaeological
applications of diversity measures. Featuring studies of
archaeological diversity ranging from the data-driven to the
theoretical, from the Paleolithic to the Historic periods, authors
illustrate the range of data sets to which diversity measures can
be applied, as well as offer new methods to examine archaeological
diversity.
George Frison's Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains has been the
standard text on plains prehistory since its first publication in
1978, influencing generations of archaeologists. Now, a third
edition of this classic work is available for scholars, students,
and avocational archaeologists. Thorough and comprehensive,
extensively illustrated, the book provides an introduction to the
archaeology of the more than 13,000 year long history of the
western Plains and the adjacent Rocky Mountains. Reflecting the
boom in recent archaeological data, it reports on studies at a wide
array of sites from deep prehistory to recent times examining the
variability in the archeological record as well as in field,
analytical, and interpretive methods. The 3rd edition brings the
book up to date in a number of significant areas, as well as
addressing several topics inadequately developed in previous
editions.
This volume brings together work by authors who draw upon
sociological and criminological methods, theory, and frameworks, to
produce research that pushes boundaries, considers new questions,
and reshape the existing understanding of "art crimes", with a
strong emphasis on methodological innovation and novel theory
application. Criminologists and sociologists are poorly represented
in academic discourse on art and culture related crimes. However,
to understand topics like theft, security, trafficking, forgery,
vandalism, offender motivation, the efficacy of and results of
policy interventions, and the effects art crimes have on
communities, we must develop the theoretical and methodological
models we use for analyses. The readership of this book is expected
to include academics, researchers, and practitioners in the fields
of criminology, sociology, law, and heritage studies who have an
interest in art and heritage crime.
This book examines treasure law and practice from the rise of the
new science of archaeology in the early Victorian period to the
present day. Drawing on largely-unexamined state records and other
archives, the book covers several legal jurisdictions: England and
Wales, Scotland, Ireland pre- and post-independence, and
post-partition Northern Ireland. From the Mold gold cape (1833) to
the Broighter hoard (1896), from Sutton Hoo (1939) to the Galloway
hoard (2014), the law of treasure trove, and the Treasure Act 1996,
are considered through the prism of notable archaeological
discoveries, and from the perspectives of finders, landowners,
archaeologists, museum professionals, collectors, the state, and
the public. Literally and metaphorically, treasure law is revealed
as a ground-breaking chapter in the history of the legal protection
of cultural property and cultural heritage in Britain and Ireland.
This book is an introduction to a new branch of archaeology that
scrutinises landscapes to find evidence of past human activity.
Such evidence can be hard to detect at ground-level, but may be
visible in remote sensing (RS) imagery from aerial platforms and
satellites. Drawing on examples from around the world as well as
from her own research work on archaeological sites in India
(including Nalanda, Agra, Srirangapatna, Talakadu, and
Mahabalipuram), the author presents a systematic process for
integrating this information with historical spatial records such
as old maps, paintings, and field surveys using Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) to gain new insights into our past.
Further, the book highlights several instances where these insights
are actionable -- they have been used to identify, understand,
conserve, and protect the fragile remnants of our past. This book
will be of particular interest not only to researchers in
archaeology, history, art history, and allied fields, but to
governmental and non-governmental professionals working in cultural
heritage protection and conservation.
Reindeer have been an integral part of the lives of people in
Northern Fennoscandia in prehistoric and historic times. Today,
reindeer herding practices are changing fast due to climate change,
land use pressures and new technologies. This book outlines recent
advances in the archaeology of reindeer domestication and
development of reindeer herding among the Sami of Northern
Fennoscandia, focusing especially on the identification and
understanding of various reindeer herding tasks and practices
through archaeological evidence and traditional knowledge of
reindeer herders. Covering more than a thousand years of history of
reindeer herding, the book explores how reindeer herding practices
have always been dynamic and adapted to the changing social,
economic and environmental pressures. While reindeer herding
practices have changed, they have also retained memory and
tradition. The continuity and adaptation of reindeer herding
testifies of the resilience of reindeer herders and their animals,
and the importance of their relationship in the changing Arctic.
This book will be of interest to scholars interested in
archaeology, anthropology, and history of the Arctic, as well as
local communities and reindeer herders.
The extent to which Anglo-Saxon society was capable of large-scale
transformations of the landscape is hotly disputed. This
interdisciplinary book - embracing archaeological and historical
sources - explores this important period in our landscape history
and the extent to which buildings, settlements and field systems
were laid out using sophisticated surveying techniques. In
particular, recent research has found new and unexpected evidence
for the construction of building complexes and settlements on
geometrically precise grids, suggesting a revival of the techniques
of the Roman land-surveyors (Agrimensores). Two units of
measurement appear to have been used: the 'short perch' of 15 feet
in central and eastern England, where most cases occur, and the
'long perch' of 18 feet at the small number of examples identified
in Wessex. This technically advanced planning is evident during two
periods: c.600-800, when it may have been a mostly monastic
practice, and c.940-1020, when it appears to have been revived in a
monastic context but then spread to a wider range of lay
settlements. Planning in the Early Medieval Landscape is a
completely new perspective on how villages and other settlement
were formed. It combines map and field evidence with manuscript
treatises on land-surveying to show that the methods described in
the treatises were not just theoretical, but were put into
practice. In doing so it reveals a major aspect of previously
unrecognised early medieval technology.
This book presents general problems in geoarchaeology, and
discusses geophysical solutions, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry
applications, X-ray and isotope analyses and GIS technologies. It
also examines practical reconstructions of technological processes
used in ancient time, and investigates the use of minerals and
rocks by ancient societies in the territories of modern Russia,
Ukraine, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, as well as the
characteristics of ores, metallurgical slags and data on the
composition and impurities of archaeological metals. Intended for
archaeologists, historians, museum workers and geologists studying
noble metals and copper, the book is also a useful resource for
students, graduate students, experts and anyone interested in the
use of various minerals at different stages of humanity's
development.
In the past two decades, conflict archaeology has become firmly
established as a promising field of research, as reflected in
publications, symposia, conference sessions and fieldwork projects.
It has its origins in the study of battlefields and other
conflict-related phenomena in the modern Era, but numerous studies
show that this theme, and at least some of its methods, techniques
and theories, are also relevant for older historical and even
prehistoric periods. This book presents a series of case-studies on
conflict archaeology in ancient Europe, based on the results of
both recent fieldwork and a reassessment of older excavations. The
chronological framework spans from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity,
and the geographical scope from Iberia to Scandinavia. Along key
battlefields such as the Tollense Valley, Baecula, Alesia,
Kalkriese and Harzhorn, the volume also incorporates many other
sources of evidence that can be directly related to past conflict
scenarios, including defensive works, military camps,
battle-related ritual deposits, and symbolic representations of
violence in iconography and grave goods. The aim is to explore the
material evidence for the study of warfare, and to provide new
theoretical and methodological insights into the archaeology of
mass violence in ancient Europe and beyond.
Going beyond strictly legal and property-oriented aspects of the
restitution debate, restitution is considered as part of a larger
set of processes of return that affect museums and collections, as
well as notions of heritage and object status. Covering a range of
case studies and a global geography, the authors aim to historicize
and bring depth to contemporary debates in relation to both the
return of material culture and human remains. Defined as contested
holdings, differing museum collections ranging from fine arts to
physical anthropology provide connections between the treatment and
conceptualization of collections that generally occupy separate
realms in the museum world.
This volume explores various themes at the intersection of
archaeology and philosophy: inference and theory; interdisciplinary
connections; cognition, language and normativity; and ethical
issues. Showcasing this heterogeneity, its scope ranges from the
method of analogical inference to the evolution of the human mind;
from conceptual issues in assessing the health of past populations
to the ethics of cultural heritage tourism. It probes the
archaeological record for evidence of numeracy, curiosity and
creativity, and social complexity. Its contributors comprise an
interdisciplinary cluster of philosophers, archaeologists,
anthropologists, and psychologists, from a variety of career
stages, of whom many are leading experts in their fields. Chapter 3
is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License via link.springer.com.
This book highlights new and innovative approaches to
archaeological research using computational modeling while focusing
on the Neolithic transition around the world. The transformative
effect of the spread and adoption of agriculture in prehistory
cannot be overstated. Consequently, archaeologists have often
focused their research on this transition, hoping to understand
both the ecological causes and impacts of this shift, as well as
the social motivations and constraints involved. Given the complex
interplay of socio-ecological factors, the answers to these types
of questions cannot be found using traditional archaeological
methods alone. Computational modeling techniques have emerged as an
effective approach for better understanding prehistoric data sets
and the linkages between social and ecological factors at play
during periods of subsistence change. Such techniques include
agent-based modeling, Bayesian modeling, GIS modeling of the
prehistoric environment, and the modeling of small-scale
agriculture. As more archaeological data sets aggregate regarding
the transition to agriculture, researchers are often left with few
ways to relate these sets to one another. Computational modeling
techniques such as those described above represent a critical next
step in providing archaeological analyses that are important for
understanding human prehistory around the world. Given its scope,
this book will appeal to the many interdisciplinary scientists and
researchers whose work involves archaeology and computational
social science. Chapter "The Spread of Agriculture: Quantitative
Laws in Prehistory?" is available open access under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via springer.com.
Bioarchaeology of Marginalized People amplifies the voices of
marginalized or powerless individuals. Following previous work done
by physical anthropologists on the biology of poverty, this volume
focuses on the voices of past actors who would normally be subsumed
within a cohort or whose stories represent those of the minority.
The physical effects of marginalization - manifest as skeletal
markers of stress and disease - are read in their historical
contexts to better understand vulnerability and the social
determinants of health in the past. Bioarchaeological,
archaeological, and historical datasets are integrated to explore
the varied ways in which individuals may be marginalized both
during and after their lifespan. By focusing on previously excluded
voices this volume enriches our understanding of the lived
experience of individuals in the past. This volume queries the
diverse meanings of marginalization, from physical or social
peripheralization, to identity loss within a majority population,
to a collective forgetting that excludes specific groups.
Contributors to the volume highlight the histories of individuals
who did not record their own stories, including two disparate
Ancient Egyptian women and individuals from a high-status
Indigenous cemetery in British Columbia. Additional chapters
examine the marginalized individuals whose bodies comprise the
Robert J. Terry anatomical collection and investigate inequalities
in health status in individuals from Canada, the United States, and
the United Kingdom. Modern clinical population health research is
examined through a historical lens, bringing a new perspective to
the critical public health interventions occurring today. Together,
these papers highlight the role that biological anthropologists
play both in contributing to and challenging the marginalization of
past populations.
Life in an Indigenous town during an understudied era of Haitian
history This book details the Indigenous Taino occupation at En Bas
Saline in Hispaniola between AD 1250 and 1520, showing how the
community coped with the dramatic changes imposed by Spanish
contact. En Bas Saline is the largest late precontact Taino town
recorded in what is now Haiti; the only one that has been
extensively excavated and analyzed; and one of few with
archaeologically documented occupation both before and after the
arrival of Columbus in 1492. It is thought to be the site of La
Navidad, Columbus's first settlement, where the cacique Guacanagari
offered refuge and shelter after the sinking of the Santa Maria.
Kathleen Deagan provides an intrasite and spatial analysis of En
Bas Saline by focusing on households, foodways, ceramics, and
crafts and offers insights into social organization and chiefly
power in this political center through domestic and ornamental
material culture. Postcontact changes are seen in patterns of
gendered behavior, as well as in the power base of the caciques,
challenging the traditional assumption that Taino society was
devastatingly disrupted almost immediately after contact. En Bas
Saline is the only archaeological account of the consequences of
contact from the perspective of the Taino peoples' lived
experience. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History:
Ripley P. Bullen Series
Through an unprecedented multidisciplinary and global approach,
this book documents the dramatic several-thousand-year history of
leprosy using bioarchaeological, clinical, and historical
information from a wide variety of contexts, dispelling many
long-standing myths about the disease. Drawing on her 30 years of
research on the infection, Charlotte Roberts begins by outlining
its bacterial causes, how it spreads, and how it affects the body.
She then considers its diagnosis and treatment, both historically
and in the present. She also looks at the methods and tools used by
paleopathologists to identify signs of leprosy in skeletons.
Examining evidence in human remains from many countries,
particularly in Europe and including Britain, Hungary, and Sweden,
Roberts demonstrates that those affected were usually buried in the
same cemeteries as their communities, contrary to the popular
belief that they were all ostracized or isolated from society into
leprosy hospitals. Other myths addressed by Roberts include the
assumptions that leprosy can't be cured, that leprosy is no longer
a problem today, and that what is called "leprosy" in the Bible is
the same illness as the disease with that name now. Roberts
concludes by projecting the future of leprosy, arguing that
researchers need to study the disease through an ethically grounded
evolutionary perspective. Importantly, she advises against use of
the word "leper" to avoid perpetuating stigma today surrounding
people with the infection and resulting disabilities. Leprosy will
stand as the authoritative source on the subject for years to come.
A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the
Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by
Clark Spencer Larsen.
The Colonial Caribbean is an archaeological analysis of the
Jamaican plantation system at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Focused specifically on coffee plantation landscapes and framed by
Marxist theory, the analysis considers plantation landscapes using
a multiscalar approach to landscape archaeology. James A. Delle
considers spatial phenomena ranging from the diachronic settlement
pattern of the island as a whole to the organization of individual
house and yard areas located within the villages of enslaved
workers. Delle argues that a Marxist approach to landscape
archaeology provides a powerful theoretical framework to understand
how the built environment played a direct role in the negotiation
of social relations in the colonial Caribbean.
We are both immensely pleased to have played supporting roles in
the archaeological research that led to this volume. As a faculty
member at the Universidad del Centro (Huancayo) in the 1960s and
later at the Universidad Nacional de San Marcos (Lima), Matos
Mendieta developed a special interest in the Upper Mantaro and
adjacent Tarma drainages, and during the 1960s and 1970s, he
carried out general reconnaissance and several excavations in the
area between Lake Junin and Huancayo. Matos Mendieta began his
field research in the Sierra Central as part of the "Proyecto
Andino de Estudios Arqueologicos" sponsored by the Smithsonian
Institution. As a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in the
mid-1960s, Matos Mendieta began to interact more closely with North
American scholars; during this period, he began to encourage and
facilitate the interests of several US. -based archaeologists in
the Peruvian Sierra Central, including Craig Morris, John Murra,
and Donald Thompson, who were beginning fieldwork at and around the
Inka provincial center of Huanuco Pampa north of Lake Junin, and
David Browman, who in 1969 carried out one of the very first
systematic archaeological surveys in highland Peru over parts of
the main Mantaro Valley between Huancayo and Jauja."
In Kao Gong Ji: The World's Oldest Encyclopaedia of Technologies,
Guan Zengjian and Konrad Herrmann offer an English translation and
commentary of the first technological encyclopaedia in China. This
work came into being around the 5th century C.E. and contains
descriptions of thirty technologies used at the time. Most
prominent are bronze casting, the manufacture of carriages and
weapons, a metrological standard, the making of musical
instruments, and the planning of cities. The technologies,
including the manufacturing process and quality assurance, are
based on standardization and modularization. In several
commentaries, the editors show to which degree the descriptions of
Kao Gong Ji correspond to archaeological findings. Revised and
updated translation from the Chinese edition: : (ISBN:
978-7-313-12133-2) by Guan Zengjian, (c) Shanghai Jiao Tong
University Press 2014. Published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Press.
'Adolf Island' offers new forensic, archaeological and spatial
perspectives on the Nazi forced and slave labour programme that was
initiated on the Channel Island of Alderney during its occupation
in the Second World War. Drawing on extensive archival research and
the results of the first in-field investigations of the 'crime
scenes' since 1945, the book identifies and characterises the
network of concentration and labour camps, fortifications, burial
sites and other material traces connected to the occupation,
providing new insights into the identities and experiences of the
men and women who lived, worked and died within this landscape.
Moving beyond previous studies focused on military aspects of
occupation, the book argues that Alderney was intrinsically linked
to wider systems of Nazi forced and slave labour. -- .
This book documents analyses of the Late Cretaceous dinosaur
nesting sites of the Lameta Formation at Jabalpur, Districts Dhar
and Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh; Districts Kheda and Panchmahal
(Gujarat); and the Pisdura, Dongargaon and Pavna sectors in the
Chandrapur Districts of Maharashtra, which are exposed in India
along an east-west and central axis. In this work, special emphasis
has been given to the dinosaur nesting sites of the east-central
Narbada River region, including its regional geology. The work was
undertaken to provide detailed information concerning dinosaur
eggs, eggshell fragments, nests and clutches found in the Lameta
Formation of peninsular India. Prior to the present work there had
been no detailed review of systematic work on the taxonomy, and of
micro- and ultrastructural studies of dinosaur eggs and eggshells
from the Lameta Formation. The study documents the field and
laboratory investigations that facilitated the reconstruction of
the morphotaxonomy, models for the burial pattern of eggs and
eggshells, taphonomic implications,and the palaeoenvironmental
context and palaeoecological conditions during the Late Cretaceous
at the time of the extrusion of the Deccan traps, which may have
been partly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. The
need to follow a parataxonomic classification for Indian dinosaur
eggs and eggshell types is very apparent, and this book addresses
this aspect in some detail. The emphasis on the application of
parataxonomic schemes is based on the description of new oospecies
and their comparison with previously known forms. The present work
has led to the recovery of numerous nests, many collapsed eggs and
hundreds of dinosaur eggshell fragments from the localities
situated near the east, west and central Narbada River regions. It
will be of interest to academics and professional palaeontologists,
and all students of dinosaurs.
Mallorca - the island of Robert Graves, Joan Miro, and Archduke
Ludwig Salvador - has become the most popular holiday destination
in the Mediterranean, with nearly 10 million visitors a year. Few,
however, are aware of the 5,000 year history of Mallorca and its
resulting landscape featuring late Bronze Age navetes and talayots,
Roman cities, and a major medieval trading port with one of
Europe's largest cathedrals. Mallorca's landscape has been formed
with a pattern of country houses and enclosed fields, and the
relics of major 19th-century industries, including textiles and
shoe-making workshops. 120 years of tourism, latterly on a massive
scale, endangers much of what has gone before. This pioneering
work, based on more than 10 years of local research, describes and
analyzes all these elements that together form the contemporary
landscape. Written in an accessible style and well-illustrated with
maps and photographs, this book will appeal to student and
concerned reader alike and should be read by all who are
inquisitive about what they see around them when they visit the
island. *** ..".a must for anyone curious about this lesser sung
story of history, making 'Mallorca' a fine and quite recommended
read, not to be missed." - The Midwest Book Review, Library
Bookwatch, April 2013, The World History Shelf *** "Buswell's
latest book has no peer in English....he draws on various
epistemological perspectives to portray the landscape as a cultural
artifact that is unique due to changing human settlement and
exploitation, but also is a palimpsest bearing telltale signs of
sequent occupancy never completely erased." - The AAG Review of
Books, Fall 2013
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