Leading scholars in these 29 commissioned papers in honour of Richard Bradley discuss key themes in prehistoric archaeology that have defined his career, such as monumentality, memory, rock art, landscape, material worlds and field practice. The scope is broad, covering both Britain and Europe, and while the focus is very much on the archaeology of later prehistory, papers also address the interconnection between prehistory and historic and contemporary archaeology. The result is a rich and varied tribute to Richard's energy and intellectual inspiration.

The Neolithic village known as Skara Brae was continuously occupied for about 300 to 400 years, before being abandoned around 2500 BC. Despite severe coastal erosion, eight houses and a workshop have survived largely intact, with their stone furniture still in place. This is the best-preserved settlement of its period in northern Europe, and thousands of artefacts were discovered during excavations of the site. Who lived here? How did they live? And why did they ultimately abandon the village? In this lively account, Dr David Clarke, who led major excavations at Orkney's Skara Brae, describes the details of the site and explores some of the enigmas posed by this extraordinary survival.

How do you predict eclipses at Stonehenge? Why do the Carnac alignments follow geological fault lines? Was Avebury intentionally sited precisely one seventh of a circle down from the north pole? Why are so many stone circles egg-shaped or flattened? What is the meaning of the designs in ancient rock art? Do you really have to wait nineteen years to visit the remote site of Callanish? What were the ancients up to? These are our oldest buildings, our first messages, our earliest visual art. With eight authors, and packed with detailed information and exquisite rare illustrations, Megalith is a timeless and valuable sourcebook for anyone interested in prehistory.

The Dutch bestseller Nominated for Le Prix Nicolas Bouvier 'A masterclass in storytelling, exploring who we are and where we came from' Danielle Clode 'Gripping and brilliantly told, We Hominids deftly blends personal experience with a journalist's eye for a remarkable story' Mark McKenna WHO ARE WE? WHY ARE WE DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS? WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? In this charming, thought-provoking book, one of Holland's greatest non-fiction writers hunts down answers to humanity's most fundamental questions: Who are we? What makes us different from animals? With an ancient skull as his starting point, he travels the globe, tracing the search for the first human being: the missing link between humans and apes. Westerman introduces us to the world of skull hunters – leading experts in our fossil ancestry – whose lives are just as fascinating as those of their primeval discoveries. He astutely reconsiders the work of illustrious paleoanthropologists in the light of new DNA technology, postcolonialism, and the rise of women in this male-dominated field. Westerman discovers a plethora of origin hypotheses and shows how any theory of who we are and where we come from is coloured by the zeitgeist. We, Hominids is a compelling mixture of reportage, travelogue and essay – reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin or Ryszard Kapuscinski – written by a brilliant storyteller and thinker.

Our understanding of the human past is very limited. The mute evidence from excavation - the dusty pot shards, fragments of bone, slight variations in soil colour and texture - encourages abstraction and detachment. Reconstruction art offers a different way into the past, bringing archaeology to life and at times influencing and informing archaeologist's ideas. At its best it delivers something vivid, vital and memorable. Illustrating the Past explores the history of reconstruction art and archaeology. It looks at how attitudes have swung from the scientific and technical to a freer more imaginative way of seeing and back again. Through the exploration of seven artists' work, the reader is shown how the artist's way of seeing illustrates the past and sometimes how it has changed the way the past is seen. Illustrators working in archaeology are often anonymous and yet the picture that summarises an excavation can be the idea that endures. As well as drawing on her specialist knowledge, Judith Dobie uses conversation and correspondence to build a picture of how these artists' personalities, interests and backgrounds influences their art. Case studies featuring working sketches demonstrate how reconstruction artists deliver understanding and can change the interpretation of a site. This book celebrates and acknowledges reconstruction art within the field of archaeology.

This first of two volumes presents the archaeological evidence of a long sequence of settlement and funerary activity from the Beaker period (Early Bronze Age c. 2000 BC) to the Early Iron Age (c. 500 BC) at the unusually long-occupied site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. Particular highlights of its sequence are a cremation burial ground and pyre site of the 18th–16th centuries BC and a row of three Late Bronze Age sunken-floored roundhouses constructed in the 10th century BC. Beneath these roundhouses, four inhumation graves contained skeletons, two of which were remains of composite collections of body parts with evidence for post-mortem soft tissue preservation prior to burial. They have proved to be the first evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain. Cladh Hallan's remarkable stratigraphic sequence, preserved in the machair sand of South Uist, includes a unique 500-year sequence of roundhouse life in Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain. One of the most important results of the excavation has come from intensive environmental and micro-debris sampling of house floors and outdoor areas to recover patterns of discard and to interpret the spatial use of 15 domestic interiors from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. From Cladh Hallan’s roundhouse floors we gain intimate insights into how daily life was organized within the house - where people cooked, ate, worked and slept. Such evidence rarely survives from prehistoric houses in Britain or Europe, and the results make a profound contribution to long-running debates about the sunwise organisation of roundhouse activities. Activity at Cladh Hallan ended with the construction and abandonment of two unusual double-roundhouses in the Early Iron Age. One appears to have been a smokery and steam room, and the other was used for metalworking.

Based on lectures given at the Conference of the British Summer School of Archaeology at Edinburgh in 1954, this book, published in 1962, surveys the general field of pre-historic Scotland, five archaeologists each contributing chapters discussing the main aspects and problems that have presented themselves in specialised research areas. From the first peopling of the area by human communities with hunting and food-gathering economies, to field antiquities and the introduction of copper and bronze metallurgy and on to the first settlement by Celtic speakers and the links to the first historically documented Scotland. Contributors: R.J.C. Atkinson, G.E. Daniel, T.G.E. Powell and C.A.R. Radford.

Nearly 13,000 years ago millions of people and animals were wiped out, and the world plunged abruptly into a new ice-age. It was more than a thousand years before the climate, and mankind, recovered. The people of Gobekli Tepe in present-day southern Turkey, whose ancestors witnessed this catastrophe, built a megalithic monument formed of many hammer-shaped pillars decorated with symbols as a memorial to this terrible event. Before long, they also invented agriculture, and their new farming culture spread rapidly across the continent, signalling the arrival of civilisation. Before abandoning Gobekli Tepe thousands of years later, they covered it completely with rubble to preserve the greatest and most important story ever told for future generations. Archaeological excavations began at the site in 1994, and we are now able to read their story, more amazing than any Hollywood plot, again for the first time in over 10,000 years. It is a story of survival and resurgence that allows one of the world's greatest scientific puzzles - the meaning of ancient artworks, from the 40,000 year-old Lion-man figurine of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany to the Great Sphinx of Giza - to be solved. We now know what happened to these people. It probably had happened many times before and since, and it could happen again, to us. The conventional view of prehistory is a sham; we have been duped by centuries of misguided scholarship. The world is actually a much more dangerous place than we have been led to believe. The old myths and legends, of cataclysm and conflagration, are surprisingly accurate. We know this because, at last, we can read an extremely ancient code assumed by scholars to be nothing more than depictions of wild animals. A code hiding in plain sight that reveals we have hardly changed in 40,000 years. A code that changes everything.

Humans are unique in that they expend considerable effort and ingenuity in disposing of the dead. Some of the recognisable ways we do this are visible in the Palaeolithic archaeology of the Ice Age. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial takes a novel approach to the long-term development of human mortuary activity ? the various ways we deal with the dead and with dead bodies. It is the first comprehensive survey of Palaeolithic mortuary activity in the English language.

Observations in the modern world as to how chimpanzees behave towards their dead allow us to identify ?core? areas of behaviour towards the dead that probably have very deep evolutionary antiquity. From that point, the palaeontological and archaeological records of the Pliocene and Pleistocene are surveyed. The core chapters of the book survey the mortuary activities of early hominins, archaic members of the genus Homo, early Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, the Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic, and the Late Upper Palaeolithic world.

Burial is a striking component of Palaeolithic mortuary activity, although existing examples are odd and this probably does not reflect what modern societies believe burial to be, and modern ways of thinking of the dead probably arose only at the very end of the Pleistocene. When did symbolic aspects of mortuary ritual evolve? When did the dead themselves become symbols? In discussing such questions, The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial offers an engaging contribution to the debate on modern human origins. It is illustrated throughout, includes up-to-date examples from the Lower to Late Upper Palaeolithic, including information hitherto unpublished.

Archaeologists date the Bronze Age in Europe from about the 5th to the last millennium BC. That span of time saw dramatic changes in civilizations from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and from Scandinavia to the Aegean. The discovery of Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was a remarkable technological development, permitting the casting of much stronger tools and weapons. Across Europe, the people of the Bronze Age forged metal and traded its products, raised monolithic standing stones, practised similar funerary and religious rites, and decorated their products with the same motifs and symbols. From Cretan palaces to Swiss lakeside dwellings, a common culture arose. In this text the authors explore the story of the Bronze Age, tracing it back beyond the borders of history.

Mesopotamia was one of the earliest regions to produce writing, literature and the fine arts, as well as being one of the first areas to construct states. This comprehensive and detailed survey of the region's prehistory and protohistory shows how these fascinating developments were possible. Petr Charvat explores the economic, social and spiritual spheres in Mesopotamia from the Palaeolithic to the time of the early states, c. 100,000 BC to 2334 BC. The narrative is supplemented by numerous descriptions of the principal archaeological sites for each phase, and by conclusions outlining the most important developments and changes.

"Axe Age" is dedicated to the Acheulian, a unique cultural phenomenon with the longest duration and the widest distribution in the history of humanity. The Acheulian lasted over 1 million years and is well known over three continents (Africa, Europe and Asia). This stone tool tradition is characterized by its hallmark bifacial tools, which include handaxes and cleavers. Though this prehistoric culture has been investigated extensively for over a century, countless questions have remained unanswered. Many of them are addressed in this volume. The volume, of interest to both scholars and students, presents original contributions that expand the scope of our understanding of this intriguing cultural entity. The contributions cover a vast geographic terrain and a large array of issues expressing hominin cognitive abilities and behavioral modes, such as landscape exploitation, production of bifacial tools and their classification, regional diversity, transmission of knowledge, transportation and discard patterns. Of the many authors, some are eminent scholars of worldwide reputation in Acheulian research, while others are young scholars reporting on their original research data. All of them contribute to gaining an improved understanding of the Acheulians and their culture.

Alasdair Whittle's new work argues powerfully for the complexity and fluidity of life in the Neolithic, through a combination of archaeological and anthropological case studies and current theoretical debate.
The book ranges from the sixth to the fourth millennium BC, and from the Great Hungarian Plain, central and western Europe and the Alpine foreland to parts of southern Britain. Familiar terms such as individuals, agency, identity and structure are dealt with, but Professor Whittle emphasises that they are too abstract to be truly useful.
Instead, he highlights the multiple dimensions which constituted Neolithic existence: the web of daily routines, group and individual identities, relations with animals, and active but varied attitudes to the past.
The result is a vivid, original and perceptive understanding of the early Neolithic which will offer insights to readers at every level.

Mesopotamia was one of the earliest regions to produce writing, literature and the fine arts, as well as being one of the first areas to construct states. This comprehensive and detailed survey of the region's prehistory and protohistory shows how these fascinating developments were possible.
Petr Charvát explores the economic, social and spiritual spheres in Mesopotamia from the Palaeolithic to the time of the early states, c. 100,000 BC to 2334 BC. The narrative is supplemented by numerous descriptions of the principal archaeological sites for each phase, and by conclusions outlining the most important developments and changes.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203164814

The abolition of slavery is arguably the greatest humanitarian achievement of all time. It ended an institution that had existed throughout history and taken many different forms. It was all the more remarkable for the speed with which it occurred. In the case of Western chattel slavery it was accomplished in little more than a century - which is to say between the launching of the first British anti-slavery campaign in 1788 and the ending of Brazilian slavery in 1888. In Asia and Africa, where Western ideas of liberty were viewed with suspicion and slavery was deeply rooted in the culture, emancipation took longer and in some places is still not fully complete. But, wherever it happened, the transition from slavery to freedom met with strong resistance, not only from former owners but also from other groups that saw their interests threatened. This book describes the difficulties ex-slaves faced as they sought to build new lives for themselves as free men and women.

This volume surveys the archaeology of Native North Americans from their arrival on the continent 15,000 years ago up to contact with European colonizers. Offering rich descriptions of monumental structures, domestic architecture, vibrant objects, and spiritual forces, Timothy R. Pauketat and Kenneth E. Sassaman show how indigenous people shaped both their history and North America's many varied environments. They place the student in the past as they trace how Native Americans dealt with challenges such as climate change, the rise of social hierarchies and political power, and ethnic conflict. Written in a clear and engaging style with a compelling narrative, The Archaeology of Ancient North America presents the grand historical themes and intimate stories of ancient Americans in full, living color.

Lapis Lazuli from the Kiln examines the history of the first glass, from its early sporadic occurrence, through the height of its production in the late second millennium BCE, to its disappearance at the end of that millennium. The book draws on an exceptionally wide range of sources including ancient texts detailing recipes and trade in glass, iconographic depictions in tombs and temples, archaeological excavation of the most important sites including Amarna and Qantir, and the description of the glass objects themselves.

Graeme Snooks has set himself the ambitious and original task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The book outlines and explains the biological development of life, going on to develop a fully dynamic model, not just of genetic change, but of the broader process of life on earth. Snooks also provides a critical review of current interpretations about the course of history and the forces driving it. Finally, he develops an entirely new interpretation of the dynamics of human society, arguing that the rise and fall of societies is an outcome of the development and exhaustion of these strategies.
This dynamic strategy model is employed to discuss likely future outcomes for society. Controversially, Snooks argues that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth--including technological change--is both natural and necessary. "The Dynamic Society" demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

In this book Graeme Snooks has set himself the highly ambitious task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The author also employs his dynamic strategy model to discuss future outcomes for human society, controversially arguing that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth-inducing technological change is both necessary and liberating. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

TV presenter Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with a book filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light... The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometres of ice, destabilizing the Earth's crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the destruction and submergence of Atlantis. But there were survivors - known to later cultures by names such as 'the Sages', 'the Magicians', 'the Shining Ones', and 'the Mystery Teachers of Heaven'. They travelled the world in their great ships doing all in their power to keep the spark of civilization burning. They settled at key locations - Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, Baalbek in the Lebanon, Giza in Egypt, ancient Sumer, Mexico, Peru and across the Pacific where a huge pyramid has recently been discovered in Indonesia. Everywhere they went these 'Magicians of the Gods' brought with them the memory of a time when mankind had fallen out of harmony with the universe and paid a heavy price. A memory and a warning to the future... For the comet that wrought such destruction between 12,800 and 11,600 years may not be done with us yet. Astronomers believe that a 20-mile wide 'dark' fragment of the original giant comet remains hidden within its debris stream and threatens the Earth. An astronomical message encoded at Gobekli Tepe, and in the Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt,warns that the 'Great Return' will occur in our time...

This volume provides a descriptive overview of the cultural complexity on the northwest coast that stretches from northern California to Alaska. Topics covered range from the earliest settlements to the subsequent cultural diversities in Native American populations. Maps, charts, and illustrations further enhance the book's interest and appeal.