In Breaking the Surface, Doug Bailey offers a radical alternative for understanding Neolithic houses, providing much-needed insight not just into prehistoric practice, but into another way of doing archaeology. Using his years of fieldwork experience excavating the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe, Bailey exposes and elucidates a previously under-theorized aspect of prehistoric pit construction: the actions and consequences of digging defined as breaking the surface of the ground. Breaking the Surface works through the consequences of this redefinition in order to redirect scholarship on the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, offering detailed critiques of current interpretations of these earliest European architectural constructions. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Magura in Romania), with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with cultural diversity in framing spatial reference and through an examination of pre-modern ungrounded ways of living. Breaking the Surface is as much a creative act on its own - in its mixture of work from disparate periods and regions, its use of radical text interruption, and its juxtaposition of text and imagery - as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture. Unflinching and exhilarating, it is a major development in the growing subdiscipline of art/archaeology.

Many undergraduates struggle to fully understand the size of the earth and the diverse environments to which human beings have successfully adapted. An Atlas of Human Prehistory gives students an appreciation for the sheer size of the earth and the diverse geographies through which humanity and our ancestors have migrated and settled over millions of years. The book's unique formatting allows students to read a stand-alone topical essay on the left-hand page, which refers to the accompanying detailed maps and diagrams on the right-hand page. The maps and diagrams provide additional details and enable students to "see" human adaptation across time and space. This fresh, engaging approach covers hominin evolution, important fossil sites, early dispersal around the world, biocultural and subsistence adaptations, and the establishment of ancient civilizations. An outstanding blend of words and visuals, An Atlas of Human Prehistory gives readers excellent graphical representations of the chief lessons of our shared past and a greater understanding of the pace of movement across time. It is an excellent supplement for courses in archaeology, ancient history, human geography, and physical anthropology.

This early work by Franz Boas was originally published in 1927 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Primitive Art' is an attempt to give an analytical description of the fundamental traits of primitive art. Franz Boas was born on July 9th 1958, in Minden, Germany. Boas enrolled at the University at Kiel as an undergraduate in Physics. He completed his degree with a dissertation on the optical properties of water, before continuing his studies and receiving his doctorate in 1881. He became a professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in 1899 and founded the first Ph.D program in anthropology in America. He was also a leading figure in the creation of the American Anthropological Association