Originally published in 1987 Rates of Evolution is an edited collection drawn from a symposium convened to bring together palaeontologists, geneticists, molecular biologists and developmental biologists to examine some aspects of the problem of evolutionary rates. The book asks questions surrounding the study of evolution, such as did large morphological changes really occur rapidly at various times in the geological past, or is the fossil record too imperfect to be of value in assessing rates of morphological change? What is the measure of 'rapid' change? Is stasis at any taxonomic level established? Is it possible to relate genomic and morphological change? What is the role of regulatory and executive genes in controlling evolutionary change? Does the transfer of genetic material between different taxa provide the possibility of increasing evolutionary rates? Featuring contributions from leading researchers, this book will interest anthropologists, palaeontology and scientists of evolution and genetics.

This is a scientific expoe that will shatter our knowledge of ancient human history. Scholars have told us that the first civilisation on Earth emerged in a land called Sumer some 6000 years ago. New archaeological and scientific discoveries made by Michael Tellinger, Johan Heine and a team of leading scientists, show that the Sumerians and even the Egyptians inherited all their knowledge from an earlier civilisation that lived at the southern tip of Africa more than 200,000 years ago...mining gold.

These were also the people who carved the first Horus bird, the first Sphinx, built the first pyramids and built an accurate stone calendar right in the heart of it all. "Adam's Calendar" is the flagship among millions of circular stone ruins, ancient roads, agricultural terraces and thousands of ancient mines, left behind by a vanished civilisation which we now call the First People. They carved detailed images into the hardest rock, worshipped the sun, and are the first to carve an image of the Egyptian Ankh - key of life and universal knowledge, 200,000 years before the Egyptians came to light.

This book graphically exposes these discoveries and will be the catalyst for rewriting our ancient human history. The book is a continuation of Tellinger's previous books Slave Species of God and Adam's Calendar which have become favourites with readers in over 20 countries.

From gods, heroes, and monsters to Druids, sorcerers, and talking animals, Celtic Myths explores every aspect of Irish and Welsh myths in this appealing and authoritative guide. Besides vividly retelling the tales, Miranda Aldhouse-Green brings her expertise in the archaeology of the Iron Age and particularly shamanism to bear on the mythical world she describes, with evidence as diverse as the Gundestrup Cauldron and the famous bog bodies. Starting with a discussion of how myths are transmitted and by whom, Aldhouse-Green continues with an account of Irish and Welsh myths, their key actors and motifs, and themes such as heroes, animals, women, environment, and the Otherworld. The book concludes with a look at the influence of monastic chroniclers on the tales, which they preserved and adapted. Boxed features, quotes from primary texts and contemporary sources, two-color illustrations, photographs, and drawings all come together to create a comprehensive guide for anyone interested in Celtic history or the history of myth as well as anyone who simply loves a good story.

This book addresses the complex question of the significance of regions in the creation of Romanesque, particularly in relation to transregional and pan-European artistic styles and approaches. Individual chapters explore the generation and reception of forms, the conditions that give rise to the development of transregional styles and the agencies that cut across territorial boundaries. There are studies of regional styles in Aquitaine, Castile, Sicily, Hungary and Scandinavia, workshops in Worms and the Welsh Marches, the transregional nature of liturgical furnishings, the cultural geography of the new monastic orders, metalworking in Hildesheim and the valley of the Meuse, and the links which connect Piemonte with Conques.

The Scandinavian Early Modern World explores the early modern colonialism, globalization, and modernity in Scandinavia, along with its colonies, and its role in the shaping of the modern world. Scandinavians played an active role in early modern globalization and were present as traders, as colonialists, and as consumers in competition and collaboration with indigenous agents and other colonial actors in America, Africa, and India. This story is rarely told. The joint study of history, historical landscape, and material culture, from a Scandinavian vantage point, provides for a comprehensive and original interpretation of the birth of globalization and modernity. New perspectives and data are presented, deepening and challenging our knowledge of the long seventeenth century. In-depth analysis of case studies, encompassing four continents and their material entanglement, makes this book a unique contribution to historical archaeology. The Scandinavian Early Modern World aims at students and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and history, alike, taking interest in the global connections of the long seventeenth century and the role of Scandinavia in that process.

This is the first study for more than seventy years to consider the early monasteries of Cornwall through a combination of evidence --written sources (the first hagiography of Brittany and Cornwall, ecclesiastical documents, Anglo-Saxon charters, Domesday Book), place-names and material remains. The main emphasis is on identifying the sites of these monasteries, and tracing their survival to later periods; Dr Olson also considers the origin and progress of monasticism in south-west Britain, and looks at the monasteries' characteristics and, in a broader context, their place in Church and society.

This new synthesis draws on advances in scientific dating to understand the Mesolithic inhabitation of Britain as a historical process. The book describes the lives of the first pioneers in the early Mesolithic; the emergence of new modes of inhabitation in the Middle Mesolithic; the regionally diverse settlement of the late Mesolithic; and the radical changes of the final millennium of the period.

The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology.
The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.

Drawing on the latest archaeological fieldwork, Caddo Connections looks at the highly dynamic cultural landscape of the Caddo Area and its complex interconnections and exchanges with surrounding regions. The authors employ a multiscalar approach to examine cultural diversity through time and across space within the Caddo Area. They explore how and why this diversity developed, consider what allowed it to stabilize during the Mississippian period, and analyze changes following contact between historic Caddo peoples and Europeans. Looking beyond individual river valleys to the broader macroregion, they also address the linkages connecting the Caddo Area with the Southeast, southern Plains, and Southwest.

Ancient cities were complex social, political, and economic entities, but they also suffered from inequality, poor sanitation, and disease-often more than rural areas. In The Ancient Urban Maya, Scott Hutson examines ancient Maya cities and argues that, despite the hazards of urban life, these places continued to lure people for many centuries. With built forms that welcomed crowds, neighborhoods that offered domestic comforts, marketplaces that facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas, and the opportunities to expand social networks and capital, the Maya used their cities in familiar ways.

Coastal Landscapes of the Mesolithic: Human Engagement with the Coast from the Atlantic to the Baltic Sea explores the character and significance of coastal landscapes in the Mesolithic - on different scales and with various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Mesolithic people were strongly connected to the sea, with coastal areas vital for subsistence and communication across the water. This anthology includes case studies from Scandinavia, western Europe and the Baltic area, presented by key international researchers. Topics addressed include large-scale analyses of the archaeological and geological development of coastal areas, the exploration of coastal environments with interdisciplinary methods, the discussion of the character of coastal settlements and of their possible networks, social and economic practices along the coast, as well as perceptions and cosmological aspects of coastal areas. Together, these topics and approaches contribute in an innovative way to the understanding of the complexity of topographically changing coastal areas as both border zones between land and sea and as connecting landscapes. Providing novel insights into the study of the Mesolithic as well as coastal areas and landscapes in general, the book is an important resource for researchers of the Mesolithic and coastal archaeology.

This book examines migration and colonialism in the ancient Near East in the late second millennium BCE, with a focus on the Levant. It explores how the area was shaped by these movements of people, especially in forming the new Iron Age societies. The book utilises recent sociological studies on group identity, violence, migration, colonialism and settler colonialism in its reconstruction of related social and political changes. Prime examples of migrations that are addressed include those involving the Sea Peoples and Philistines, ancient Israelites and ancient Arameans. The final chapter sets the developments in the ancient Near East in the context of recent world history from a typological perspective and in terms of the legacy of the ancient world for Judaism and Christianity. Altogether, the book contributes towards an enhanced understanding of migration, colonialism and violence in human history. In addition to academics, this book will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well anyone working on migration and colonialism in the ancient world. The book is also suitable to the general public interested in world history.

Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad compares the evolution of several cities in the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great until the beginning of the Islamic 'Abbasid Dynasty. This volume examines both archaeological remains and literary sources to explain the diversity of imperial, cultural, and religious influences on urban life. It offers several case studies chosen from different regions of the Roman Near East, demonstrating that Greco-Roman and Islamic culture spread unevenly through these various cities, and that it is impossible to make broad generalizations. It argues instead that there were different patterns of urbanism that demonstrate a continued vitality of civic life up to the 'Abbasid revolution. Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well as those studying ancient cities and everyday life.

For Russian modernists in search of a past, there were many antiquities of different provenances and varying degrees of prestige from which to choose: Greece or Rome; Byzantium or Egypt. The modernists central to ""Our Native Antiquity"" located their antiquity in the Eurasian steppes, where they found objects and sites long denigrated as archaeological curiosities. The book follows the exemplary careers of two objects-the so-called "Stone Women" and the kurgan, or burial mound-and the attention paid to them by Russian and Soviet archaeologists, writers, artists, and filmmakers, for whom these artifacts served as resources for modernist art and letters and as arenas for a contest between vying conceptions of Russian art, culture, and history.

The Eastern Archaic, Historicized offers an alternative perspective on the genesis and transformation of cultural diversity over eight millennia of hunter-gatherer dwelling in eastern North America. For many decades, archaeological understanding of Archaic diversity has been dominated by perspectives that emphasize localized relationships between humans and environment. The evidence, shows, however that Archaic people routinely associated with other groups throughout eastern North America and expressed themselves materially in ways that reveal historical links to other places and times. Starting with the colonization of eastern North America by two distinct ancestral lines, the Eastern Archaic was an era of migrations, ethnogenesis, and coalescence-an 8,200-year era of making histories through interactions and expressing them culturally in ritual and performance.

A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine discusses prospects and methods for a comprehensive, evidence-based history of Palestine with a critical use of recent historical, archaeological and anthropological methods. This history is not an exclusive history but one that is ethnically and culturally inclusive, a history of and for all peoples who have lived in Palestine. After an introductory essay offering a strategy for creating coherence and continuity from the earliest beginnings to the present, the volume presents twenty articles from twenty-two contributors, fifteen of whom are of Middle Eastern origin or relation. Split thematically into four parts, the volume discusses ideology, national identity and chronology in various historiographies of Palestine, and the legacy of memory and oral history; the transient character of ethnicity in Palestine and questions regarding the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists and historians to protect the multi-ethnic cultural heritage of Palestine; landscape and memory, and the values of community archaeology and bio-archaeology; and an exploration of the "ideology of the land" and its influence on Palestine's history and heritage. The first in a series of books under the auspices of the Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH), the volume offers a challenging new departure for writing the history of Palestine and Israel throughout the ages. A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine explores the diverse history of the region against the backdrop of twentieth-century scholarly construction of the history of Palestine as a history of a Jewish homeland with roots in an ancient, biblical Israel and examines the implications of this ancient and recent history for archaeology and cultural heritage. The book offers a fascinating new perspective for students and academics in the fields of anthropological, political, cultural and biblical history.

The relationship of hunter-gatherer societies to the built environment is often overlooked or characterized as strictly utilitarian in archaeological research. Taking on deeper questions of cultural significance and social inheritance, this volume offers a more robust examination of houses as not only places of shelter but also of memory, history, and social cohesion within these communities. Bringing together case studies from Europe, Asia, and North and South America, More Than Shelter from the Storm utilizes a diverse array of methodologies including radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeology, refitting studies, and material culture studies to reframe the conversation around hunter-gatherer houses. Discussing examples of built structures from the Pleistocene through Late Holocene periods, contributors investigate how these societies created a sense of home through symbolic decoration, ritual, and transformative interaction with the landscape. Demonstrating that meaningful relationships with architecture are not limited to sedentary societies that construct permanent houses, the essays in this volume highlight the complexity of mobile cultures and demonstrate the role of place-making and the built environment in structuring their worldviews.

Les dedicaces cultuelles sont un des principaux genres epigraphiques dans la plupart des langues de l'ouest du bassin mediterraneen antique, y compris dans les langues d'attestation fragmentaire. Le present volume, issu d'un colloque tenu a l'Academia Belgica a Rome les 18 et 19 mai 2017, est consacre a la visee pragmatique de ces textes, qui commemorent un acte de communication avec la divinite, tout en s'adressant a des etres humains, en general membres de la meme collectivite que l'auteur de l'acte cultuel commemore. Nous souhaitons montrer la diversite des situations attestees dans l'ouest de l'aire mediterraneenne, a la fois ouverte aux echanges et extremement riche en cultures epigraphiques distinctes avant la generalisation des modeles latins.

This title looks at the excavations of a prehistoric to early medieval site that took place at Killelan Farm on Islay by Colin Burgess and others between 1954 and 1976.

An examination of the frequently elaborate rituals of food and feasting in Anglo-Saxon funeral rites. Anglo-Saxons were frequently buried with material artefacts, ranging from pots to clothing to jewellery, and also with items of food, while the funeral ritual itself was frequently marked by feasting, sometimes at the graveside. The book examines the place of food and feasting in funerary rituals from the earliest period to the eleventh century, considering the changes and transformations that occurred during this time, drawing on a wide range of sources,from archaeological evidence to the existing texts. It looks in particular at representations of funerary feasting, how it functions as a tool for memory, and sheds light on the relationship between the living and the dead. CHRISTINA LEE is a lecturer in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham.

Incorporating Nonbinary Gender into Inuit Archaeology: Oral Testimony and Material Inroads explores gender diversity in precontact Inuit history. By combining evidence from interviews with re-examinations of previously excavated archaeological collections, the book challenges binary narratives and creates an allowance for diverse narratives around gender to emerge. This work approaches a wide range of ethnographic and archaeological sources with a critical eye, opening up a dialogue between queer Indigenous studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Two Spirit, Plus (LGBTQ2S+) Inuit; and archaeology in order to question normative colonial narratives about Indigenous pasts while providing concrete examples of how researchers can begin to let go of rigid assumptions. In this way, the reader is encouraged to explore novel perspectives and think beyond boxes to understand gender complexity in precontact Inuit culture. This book has been written for a wide academic audience, particularly those interested in queer archaeologies, archaeologies of gender, decolonial archaeologies, and indigenous archaeologies and oral history.

The Liangzhu Culture (3,300-2,300 BC) represented the peak of prehistoric cultural and social development in the Yangtze Delta. With a wide sphere of influence centred near present-day Hangzhou City, Liangzhu City is considered one of the earliest urban centres in prehistoric China. Although it remains a mystery for many in the West, Liangzhu is well known in China for its fine jade-crafting industry; its enormous, well-structured earthen palatial compound and recently discovered hydraulic system; and its far-flung impact on contemporary and succeeding cultures. The archaeological ruins of Liangzhu City were added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in July 2019. Liangzhu Culture contextualises Liangzhu in broad socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and provides new, first-hand data to help explain the development and structure of this early urban centre. Among its many insights, the volume reveals how elites used jade as a means of acquiring social power, and how Liangzhu and its centre stand in comparison to other prehistoric urban centres in the world. This book, the first of its kind published in the English language, will be a useful guide to students at all levels interested in the material culture and social structures of prehistoric China and beyond.

Why did the ancient artists create paintings and engravings? What did the images mean? This careful study of rock art motifs in the Trans-Pecos area of Texas and a small area in South Africa demonstrates that there are archaeological and anthropological ways of accessing the past in order to investigate and explain the significance of rock art motifs. Using two disparate regions shows the possibility of comparative rock art studies and highlights the importance of regional studies and regional variations. This is an ideal resource for students and researchers.