Offering a fresh archaeological interpretation, this work reconceptualizes the Bronze Age prehistory of the vast Eurasian steppe during one of the most formative and innovative periods of human history. Michael D. Frachetti combines an analysis of newly documented archaeological sites in the Koksu River valley of eastern Kazakhstan with detailed paleoecological and ethnohistorical data to illustrate patterns in land use, settlement, burial, and rock art. His investigation illuminates the practical effect of nomadic strategies on the broader geography of social interaction and suggests a new model of local and regional interconnection in the third and second millennia B.C.E. Frachetti further argues that these early nomadic communities played a pivotal role in shaping enduring networks of exchange across Eurasia.

A session held at the TAG conference in Cardiff in 1999 sought to steer Mesolithic debates away from traditional lithic approaches and instead considered social aspects of Mesolithic life. The seventeen papers given here, many of which are from that conference, discuss a wide range of subjects: the people behind the lithics', interaction with the landscape, with animals, food and subsistence, body ornament and burial practices, settlement, violence and death, revisiting Star Carr. Contributors are: Marek Zvelebil, Peter Jordan, Lynne Bevan, Biddy Simpson, Jenny Moore, Malcolm Lillie, Richard Chatterton, C Richards, R J Schulting, Christophe Cupillard, George Nash, I J N Thorpe, Rebekah Judeh .

Based on the author's thesis, this study presents a series of period-based reconstructions of the occupation and exploitation of the Wolds in East Yorkshire from the late Bronze Age to the early medieval period. Tracing the transformation and re-orientation of the landscape during this long time-frame, Fenton-Thomas reveals a cyclical pattern of change primarily concerned with an increase in land division and an expansion of settlement from the Wold edge to the interior alongside or due to shifts in land-use practices and social change.

In Home Francis Pryor, author of The Making of the British Landscape, archaeologist and broadcaster, takes us on his lifetime's quest: to discover the origins of family life in prehistoric Britain Francis Pryor's search for the origins of our island story has been the quest of a lifetime. In Home, the Time Team expert explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans' departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis Pryor's own story: of his passion for unearthing our past, from Yorkshire to the west country, Lincolnshire to Wales, digging in freezing winters, arid summers, mud and hurricanes, through frustrated journeys and euphoric discoveries. Evocative and intimate, Home shows how, in going about their daily existence, our prehistoric ancestors created the institution that remains at the heart of the way we live now: the family. 'Under his gaze, the land starts to fill with tribes and clans wandering this way and that, leaving traces that can still be seen today . . . Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' - Guardian

This book, a guide and companion to the prehistoric archaeology of Greece, is designed for students, travelers, and all general readers interested in archaeology. Greece has perhaps the longest and richest archaeological record in Europe, and this book reviews what is known of Greece from the earliest inhabitants in the Stone Age to the end of the Bronze Age and the collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.
The book describes the prehistoric cultures of Greece in chronological order, and illustrates with 98 detailed drawings each culture's typical artifacts, architecture, burial customs, and art. Written in an informal and accessible style free of scientific jargon, the book can be used in the classroom or as a guide for the traveler, or read simply for pleasure by anyone with a curiosity about the earliest ages of this fascinating region.
Although intended for a wide audience, the book has a solid scientific foundation. The authors are professional archaeologists with more than 25 years of experience in the field and with a first-hand knowledge of the methods and results of contemporary research. There is no other book today that covers the same range of periods and subjects, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the early civilizations that shaped the Greek landscape, laid the foundations for Classical Greek civilization, and contributed in many ways to the formation of the modern Greek world.
The authors have been careful to address the many questions concerning prehistoric Greece that have been asked them by students and visitors to Greece through the years. The illustrations were created especially for this book, showing familiar artifacts and sites from a new perspective, and selecting others for illustration that rarely, if ever, appear in popular publications.

This book, a guide and companion to the prehistoric archaeology of Greece, is designed for students, travelers, and all general readers interested in archaeology. Greece has perhaps the longest and richest archaeological record in Europe, and this book reviews what is known of Greece from the earliest inhabitants in the Stone Age to the end of the Bronze Age and the collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations.
The book describes the prehistoric cultures of Greece in chronological order, and illustrates with 98 detailed drawings each culture's typical artifacts, architecture, burial customs, and art. Written in an informal and accessible style free of scientific jargon, the book can be used in the classroom or as a guide for the traveler, or read simply for pleasure by anyone with a curiosity about the earliest ages of this fascinating region.
Although intended for a wide audience, the book has a solid scientific foundation. The authors are professional archaeologists with more than 25 years of experience in the field and with a first-hand knowledge of the methods and results of contemporary research. There is no other book today that covers the same range of periods and subjects, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the early civilizations that shaped the Greek landscape, laid the foundations for Classical Greek civilization, and contributed in many ways to the formation of the modern Greek world.
The authors have been careful to address the many questions concerning prehistoric Greece that have been asked them by students and visitors to Greece through the years. The illustrations were created especially for this book, showing familiar artifacts and sites from a new perspective, and selecting others for illustration that rarely, if ever, appear in popular publications.

Toward the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, during a time known as the Late Cretaceous, a new type of giant predator appeared along the southern coasts of North America. It was a huge species of crocodylian and is called Deinosuchus. Neither a crocodile nor an alligator, it was an ancestor of both modern groups, but it reached weights of many tons and it had some features unique to the species. Average-sized individuals were bigger than the carnivorous dinosaurs with which they cohabited; the largest specimens were the size of a T-rex.;This is the biography of these giant beasts, including the long history of their discovery, research about their makeup, and the first published evidence about their prey. Generations of people have stared at the 6-foot reconstructed skull at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, not realising that the only real bones in the specimen were bits of snout and lower jaw. New fossils and research show that the actual animal was quite different from the reconstruction, and now we can reliably assemble the skull and the remainder of the animal.;The book also deals with the ancient life and geology of the coastal areas where Deinosuchus thrived, in

Using new genetic research and the material from excavations, Anubis to Cerberus first examines the archaeological evidence for the origins of the dog and the process of domestication in prehistory. In historic times numerous tomb-paintings and artifacts from Egypt and the Middle East depict dogs hunting, herding, guarding and simply as pets. Dogs represented gods in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, and their archaeological remains have been recovered in cult centers. These records show the development of specialized breeds during the first great civilizations. In the Graeco-Roman period a new dimension to the story is added: technical literature about rearing, training and special uses of the dog.

Lavishly illustrated, this book combines the latest scientific material with a cultural history to tell the developing story of the inter-relationship between man and dog from its origin in remote antiquity to that which we know today. It will be invaluable for archaeologists wishing to identify dogs and canid remains, for zoologists tracing the history of the species and fascinating for anyone who has a serious interest in the history of the dog and the origins of modern breeds.

Jon Gibson confronts the intriguing mystery of Poverty Point, the ruins of a large prehistoric Indian settlement that was home to one of the most fascinating ancient cultures in eastern North America. The 3,500-year-old site in northeastern Louisiana is known for its large, elaborate earthworks - a series of concentric, crescent-shaped dirt rings and bird-shaped mounds. With its imposing 25-mile core, it is one of the largest archaic constructions on American soil. It's also one of the most puzzling - perplexing questions haunt Poverty Point, and archaeologists still speculate about life and culture at the site, its age, how it was created, and if it was at the forefront of an emerging complex society. Gibson's engaging, well-illustrated account of Poverty Point brings to life one of the oldest earthworks of its size in the Western Hemisphere, the hub of a massive exchange network among native American peoples reaching a third of the way across the present-day United States.

The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, the first of its kind, provides a current overview of recent research on the Aztec empire, the best documented prehispanic society in the Americas. Chapters span from the establishment of Aztec city-states to the encounter with the Spanish empire and the Colonial period that shaped the modern world. Articles in the Handbook take up new research trends and methodologies and current debates. The Handbook articles are divided into seven parts. Part I, Archaeology of the Aztecs, introduces the Aztecs, as well as Aztec studies today, including the recent practice of archaeology, ethnohistory, museum studies, and conservation. The articles in Part II, Historical Change, provide a long-term view of the Aztecs starting with important predecessors, the development of Aztec city-states and imperialism, and ending with a discussion of the encounter of the Aztec and Spanish empires. Articles also discuss Aztec notions of history, writing, and time. Part III, Landscapes and Places, describes the Aztec world in terms of its geography, ecology, and demography at varying scales from households to cities. Part IV, Economic and Social Relations in the Aztec Empire, discusses the ethnic complexity of the Aztec world and social and economic relations that have been a major focus of archaeology. Articles in Part V, Aztec Provinces, Friends, and Foes, focuses on the Aztec's dynamic relations with distant provinces, and empires and groups that resisted conquest, and even allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztec king. This is followed by Part VI, Ritual, Belief, and Religion, which examines the different beliefs and rituals that formed Aztec religion and their worldview, as well as the material culture of religious practice. The final section of the volume, Aztecs after the Conquest, carries the Aztecs through the post-conquest period, an increasingly important area of archaeological work, and considers the place of the Aztecs in the modern world.

Collection of quirky papers from the second Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Catastrophists' Convention held in Cambridge in 1997. The papers bring together thoughts from a wide range of disciplines - physics, astronomy, archaeology, geology, and anthropology - and from around the world. Amos Nur (Stanford University) explains how the collapse of Bronze Age civilisation can be related to a 50-year-long earthquake storm; Gunnar Heinsohn (Universitat Bremen) argues that Bronze Age ritual and blood sacrifice was a response to living in catastrophic times; and Mark E. Bailey (Armagh Observatory) presents a review of recent findings and historical implications in the study of Near-Earth Objects.

Subtitled, 'decision-making and gender roles in subsistence and settlement strategies', this study questions the central place of big game-hunting in the interpretation of Paleoindian archaeology. It tries to redress the balance by examining subsistence and settlement strategies from the perspective of gender.

Students and travelers to Sicily will welcome this inviting introduction to the archaeology of the Mediterranean's largest island. In the first English-language book on prehistoric Sicily in over forty years, Robert Leighton explores the region's rich archaeological record. He charts the development of Sicily's early cultures from the Palaeolithic onward, concluding with an account of the indigenous society at the time of Greek and Phoenician settlement in the 8th century B.C.

Each chapter in this generously illustrated volume highlights the principal developments of a major chronological period and then addresses social and economic themes. Among the topics discussed are settlement patterns and structures; local autonomy; external influences; cultural expression; and contacts with Italy, nearby satellite islands, and the Mycenaean world. Informed by recent fieldwork and scholarship, this book is a necessary guide to the current state of knowledge on prehistoric Sicily.

Study addressing the idea of gradual population increase focussing on northern England, and also examining issues such as resource exploitation and settlement patterns. The author models the changing environment of northern England using GIS and discusses possible human adaptations to these changes and the implications for the concept of gradual population increase.

This fascicle completes the presentation of the ceramic remains from the Franchthi Cave excavations.

Students and travelers to Sicily will welcome this inviting introduction to the archaeology of the Mediterranean's largest island. In the first English-language book on prehistoric Sicily in over forty years, Robert Leighton explores the region's rich archaeological record. He charts the development of Sicily's early cultures from the Palaeolithic onward, concluding with an account of the indigenous society at the time of Greek and Phoenician settlement in the 8th century B.C.

Each chapter in this generously illustrated volume highlights the principal developments of a major chronological period and then addresses social and economic themes. Among the topics discussed are settlement patterns and structures; local autonomy; external influences; cultural expression; and contacts with Italy, nearby satellite islands, and the Mycenaean world. Informed by recent fieldwork and scholarship, this book is a necessary guide to the current state of knowledge on prehistoric Sicily.

Only rarely in Europe do the surface remains of Neolithic flint mines remain so dramatically for all to see as those located along the South Downs and in the Breckland of England. Even within England they represent a diminishing resource and only ten sites have been recorded with any certainty. As examples of our earliest industrial heritage they represent archaeological sites of the first importance and have a special part to play in the history of technology. However, despite a lengthy history of archaeological investigation, they have rarely been considered nationally as a class of monument. Although some sites such as Grime's Graves are well known through excavation campaigns, others are known only through obscure articles and unpublished archival material. Many of those that survive as earthworks or cropmarks have never been surveyed previously or accurately planned. Consequently, English Heritage has compiled detailed plans of the surface areas of all of the known flint mines and investigated the sites of other potential examples. Using a combination of field survey, aerial photography and archival research, this volume looks at each site in its own right as a major and important complex and - for the first time - offers a synthesis of the evidence to date.

Twenty-eight essays by a very distinguished collection of contributors who were invited to speak at a conference in Newcastle in 1993 on a number of themes in terms of evidence for cave and rockshelter use in their areas of the world. The contributors include: Lawrence Straus ( Some human uses of caves and rockshelters ); Pavel Dolukhanov ( Cave vs open-air settlement in the European Upper Palaeolithic ); Marcel Otte ( The Belgian Palaeolithic ); Ann Sieveking ( Cave as context in Palaeolithic art ); Paul Bahn ( Pleistocene cave art ); Erwin Cziesla ( The Weidental cave ); Manuel Gonzalez Morales ( Cantabrian Spain ); Keith Branigan ( Caves as workshops ); Vassily Lubin ( The Caucasus ); Andrea Stone ( Pre-Columbian cave utilization in the Maya area ); Josephine Flood ( Aboriginal use of caves ); Penny Dransart ( Northern Chile ).

This study's main aim is to summarise the available site and ceramic evidence upon which understanding of the Manx Neolithic currently rests, augmented with discussion of the location and topography of the island and the history of Manx research studies.

The Great New Wilderness Debate is an expansive, wide-ranging collection that addresses the pivotal environmental issues of the modern era. This eclectic volume on the varied constructions of "wilderness" reveals the recent controversies that surround those conceptions, and the gulf between those who argue for wilderness "preservation" and those who argue for "wise use." J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson have selected thirty-nine essays that provide historical context, range broadly across the issues, and set forth the positions of the debate. Beginning with such well-known authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, the collection moves forward to the contemporary debate and presents seminal works by a number of the most distinguished scholars in environmental history and environmental philosophy. The Great New Wilderness Debate also includes essays by conservation biologists, cultural geographers, environmental activists, and contemporary writers on the environment.

Pictorial reconstructions of ancient human ancestors have twin purposes: to make sense of shared ancestry and to bring prehistory to life. Stephanie Moser analyzes the close relationship between representations of the past and theories about human evolution, showing how this relationship existed even before a scientific understanding of human origins developed. How did mythological, religious, and historically inspired visions of the past, in existence for centuries, shape this understanding? Moser treats images as primary documents, and her book is lavishly illustrated with engravings, paintings, photographs, and reconstructions. In surveying the iconography of prehistory, Moser explores visions of human creation from their origins in classical, early Christian, and medieval periods through traditions of representation initiated in the Renaissance. She looks closely at the first scientific reconstructions of the nineteenth century, which dramatized and made comprehensible the Darwinian theory of human descent from apes. She considers, as well, the impact of reconstructions on popular literature in Europe and North America, showing that early visualizations of prehistory retained a firm hold on the imagination—a hold that archaeologists and anthropologists have found difficult to shake.

True to its initial aims, the latest volume of the Journal of Greek Archaeology runs the whole chronological range of Greek Archaeology, while including every kind of material culture. Papers include an overview of a major project investigating Palaeolithic environments, human settlement and other activities in the Ionian Islands. Neolithic industries in large stone artefacts link two papers on the human palaeobiology of populations in the Mycenaean and then Iron Age eras. Two papers on Greeks abroad enlighten us on the nature of Greek presence and impact on indigenous society (and vice versa) in Archaic and Classical Egypt and Southern France. In a totally contrasted fashion, a long article on the fate of Southern Greek cities under Rome offers a very negative but definitively researched analysis on their radical decline. Architecture makes two appearances for the periods that follow, firstly for the towns of Crete under Venetian then Ottoman rule, secondly in the form of Landscape Architecture - the physical infrastructure of rural land use in the unusual landscape of the Mani. Finally, to show that Greek Archaeology knows no boundaries when it comes to material culture, there is a piece on a 21st century fashion designer who has used ancient art to enrich his designs. Alongside these papers, there are articles challenging the accepted view of the Late Bronze 'Sea Peoples', shedding welcome light on the neglected later prehistory and protohistory of Epiros, on Greek terracotta figurines and their links to sacrificial offerings, and finally providing a long-term study of the walls of Athens over almost two-and-a-half millennia. The full complement of reviews for almost every period of the Greek Past are also full of fascinating insights and updates.

The simple question "How did the Maya come up with a calendar that had only 260 days?" led Vincent Malmstrom to discover an unexpected "hearth" of Mesoamerican culture. In this boldly revisionist book, he sets forth his challenging, new view of the origin and diffusion of Mesoamerican calendrical systems--the intellectual achievement that gave rise to Mesoamerican civilization and culture.

Malmstrom posits that the 260-day calendar marked the interval between passages of the sun at its zenith over Izapa, an ancient ceremonial center in the Soconusco region of Mexico's Pacific coastal plain. He goes on to show how the calendar developed by the Zoque people of the region in the fourteenth century B.C. gradually diffused through Mesoamerica into the so-called "Olmec metropolitan area" of the Gulf coast and beyond to the Maya in the east and to the plateau of Mexico in the west.

These findings challenge our previous understanding of the origin and diffusion of Mesoamerican civilization. Sure to provoke lively debate in many quarters, this book will be important reading for all students of ancient Mesoamerica--anthropologists, archaeologists, archaeoastronomers, geographers, and the growing public fascinated by all things Maya.

Subtitled the reconstruction of the social organization of a mesolithic culture in Northern Europe', this book is based on a structural analysis of the Ulkestrup Huts in Central Zealand. The distribution patterns of microliths and arrangement of hearths, bark floors and other patterned evidence are compared with all the available evidence from northern Europe to suggest some general patterns and possible future directions for research.

Subtitled a critical review of some archaeological and craniological concepts', this is an innovative and controversial study of the Beaker Culture problem; diffusion or migration into Britain. The first part of the book critically reviews previous work on the problem and suggests that the processualist revolt against migrational explanations might have been an error in this case. The second part presents an original study of English Neolithic and Bronze Age crania which, although inconclusive, moves a step nearer to a migrationist explanatory framework.