The volume integrates multiple data sources, including ethnographic, archaeological or SIA (stable isotopic analysis) to provide new insights on a number of heavily understudied global locations.

Every generation has its own view of Stonehenge, but rarely do these interpretations relate to the physical, ecological, economic and social realities of the monument and its prehistoric past. In "The Making of Stonehenge" Rodney Castleden provides a far more comprehensive sense of Stonehenge--both in relation to the similar sites nearby and in terms of its uses. First describing those elements which made possible the assembly of this vast stone circle, Castleden also speculates about the society which undertook the enormous task of transporting and raising these giant vertical stones.
Castleden suggests that there is no one "meaning" or "purpose" for Stonehenge, but that from its very beginning it has filled a variety of needs. The Romans saw it as a center of resistance; the antiquaries who "rediscovered" it in the 17th century believed it gave them insight into the nation's past. Archaeologists see it as a subject for rational, scientific investigation; the National Trust and English Heritage view it as an unfailing tourist attraction; and UNESCO has declared it a World Heritage Site, the cultural property of the whole of humanity. Castleden examines how the ancient reality of Stonehenge has been lost amid these competing views, and considers the consequences of Stonehenge's continual mythologization and reappropriation.

Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. Recent archaeological research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer, two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving, present an exciting new look at prehistory. With science writer Jake Page, they argue that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.

Report of a key survey of archaeological sites in the southern toe of Italy to discover Neolithic sites and documenting prehistoric trade in obsidian.

Contents:
Note on the use of radiocarbon dates Acknowledgements 1. Megaliths and Society, an Introduction 2. Centres of Production and Spheres of Interaction: Stone Axe Exchange in the Armorican Neolithic 3. Long Mounds and Giant Menhirs: Ritual Landscapes of the First Farmers. 4. Monuments in a Coastal Landscape: Passage Graves of the Armorican Littoral. 5. Statements of Power and Symbols of Wealth: the Great Mounds and Alignments of the Carnac Region 6. Land for the Living, Tombs for the Dead: Burial Monuments of the Late Neolithic. 7. Sealing the Tombs: the abandonment of Megaliths. 8. Conclusion: Ritual Landscapes and Social Structure in the Armorican Neolithic

The Iron Age in Northern Britain examines the archaeological evidence for earlier Iron Age communities from the southern Pennines to the Northern and Western Isles and the impact of Roman expansion on local populations, through to the emergence of historically-recorded communities in the post-Roman period. The text has been comprehensively revised and expanded to include new discoveries and to take account of advanced techniques, with many new and updated illustrations. The volume presents a comprehensive picture of the 'long Iron Age', allowing readers to appreciate how perceptions of Iron Age societies have changed significantly in recent years. New material in this second edition also addresses the key issues of social reconstruction, gender, and identity, as well as assessing the impact of developer-funded archaeology on the discipline. Drawing on recent excavation and research and interpreting evidence from key studies across Scotland and northern England, The Iron Age in Northern Britain continues to be an accessible and authoritative study of later prehistory in the region.

Spatial variation and patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental significance in Balkan archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have classified spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete "cultures", which have been conventionally treated as bound entities and equated with past social or ethnic groups. This timely volume fulfils the need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory. Thirteen case studies covering the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age and written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, provide a robust foundation for exploring these issues. Bringing together the latest research, with a particular intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, this collection offers original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia. Balkan Dialogues challenges long-established interpretations in the field and provides a new, contextualised reading of the archaeological record of this region.

The Iron Age in Northern Britain examines the archaeological evidence for earlier Iron Age communities from the southern Pennines to the Northern and Western Isles and the impact of Roman expansion on local populations, through to the emergence of historically-recorded communities in the post-Roman period. The text has been comprehensively revised and expanded to include new discoveries and to take account of advanced techniques, with many new and updated illustrations. The volume presents a comprehensive picture of the 'long Iron Age', allowing readers to appreciate how perceptions of Iron Age societies have changed significantly in recent years. New material in this second edition also addresses the key issues of social reconstruction, gender, and identity, as well as assessing the impact of developer-funded archaeology on the discipline. Drawing on recent excavation and research and interpreting evidence from key studies across Scotland and northern England, The Iron Age in Northern Britain continues to be an accessible and authoritative study of later prehistory in the region.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203082486

First Published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is one of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986, attempting to bring together not only archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, as well as academics from contingent disciplines, but also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. This volume develops a new approach to plant exploitation and early agriculture in a worldwide comparative context. It modifies the conceptual dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "farmers", viewing human exploitation of plant resources as a global evolutionary process which incorporated the beginnings of cultivation and crop domestication. The studies throughout the book come from a worldwide range of geographical contexts, from the Andes to China and from Australia to the Upper Mid-West of North America. This work is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists and geographers. Originally published 1989.

Mediterranean Connections focuses on the origin and development of maritime transport containers from the Early Bronze through early Iron Age periods (ca. 3200-700 BC). Analysis of this category of objects broadens our understanding of ancient Mediterranean interregional connections, including the role that shipwrecks, seafaring, and coastal communities played in interaction and exchange. These containers have often been the subject of specific and detailed pottery studies, but have seldom been examined in the context of connectivity and trade in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This broad study: considers the likely origins of these types of vessels; traces their development and spread throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean as archetypal organic bulk cargo containers; discusses the wider impact on Mediterranean connections, transport and trade over a period of 2,500 years covering the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians, as well as maritime archaeologists, will find this extensively researched volume an important addition to their library.

How we dress our bodies—through clothing, footwear, headgear, jewelry, haircuts, and more—is key to the expression of status and identity. This idea was as true for ancient Maya civilization as it is today, yet few studies have centered on what ancient Maya peoples wore and why. In The Adorned Body, Nicholas Carter, Stephen Houston, and Franco Rossi bring together contributions from a wide range of scholars, leading to the first in-depth study of Maya dress in pre-Columbian times. Incorporating artistic, hieroglyphic, and archaeological sources, this book explores the clothing and ornaments of ancient Maya peoples, systematically examining who wore what, deducing the varied purposes and meanings of dress items and larger ensembles, and determining the methods and materials with which such items were created. Each essay investigates a category of dress—including headgear, pendants and necklaces, body painting, footwear, and facial ornaments—and considers the variations within each of these categories, as well as popular styles and trends through time. The final chapters reveal broader views and comparisons about costume ensembles and their social roles. Shedding new light on the art and archaeology of the ancient Americas, The Adorned Body offers a thorough map of Maya dress that will be of interest to scholars and fashion enthusiasts alike.

This ambitious study documents the underlying features which link the civilizations of the Mediterranean - Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan and Roman - and the Iron Age cultures of central Europe, traditionally associated with the Celts. It deals with the social, economic and cultural interaction in the first millennium BC which culminated in the Roman Empire.
The book has three principle themes: the spread of iron-working from its origins in Anatolia to its adoption over most of Europe; the development of a trading system throughout the Mediterrean world after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece and its spread into temperate Europe; and the rise of ever more complex societies, including states and cities, and eventually empires.
Dr Collis takes a new look at such key concepts as population movement, diffusion, trade, social structure and spatial organization, with some challenging new views on the Celts in particular.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203442113

This extensively illustrated volume provides the first complete visual documentation and a pioneering iconographic analysis of Picture Cave, an eastern Missouri cavern filled with Native American pictographs that is one of the most important prehistoric sites in North America. A millennia ago, Native Americans entered the dark recesses of a cave in eastern Missouri and painted an astonishing array of human, animal, and supernatural creatures on its walls. Known as Picture Cave, it was a hallowed site for sacred rituals and rites of passage, for explaining the multi-layered cosmos, for vision quests, for communing with spirits in the "other world," and for burying the dead. The number, variety, and complexity of images make Picture Cave one of the most significant prehistoric sites in North America, similar in importance to Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. Indeed, scholars will be able to use it to reconstruct much of the Native American symbolism of the early Western Mississippian world. The Picture Cave Interdisciplinary Project brought together specialists in American Indian art and iconography, two artists, Osage Indian elders, a museum curator, a folklorist, and an internationally renowned cave archaeologist to produce the first complete documentation of the pictographs on the cave walls and the first interpretations of their meanings and significance. This extensively illustrated volume presents the Project's findings, including an introduction to Picture Cave and prehistoric cave art and technical analyses of pigments, radiocarbon dating, spatial order, and archaeological remains. Interpretations of the cave's imagery, from individual motifs to complex panels; the responses of contemporary artists; and interviews with Osage elders (descendants of the people who made the art), describing what Picture Cave means to them today, are also included. A visual glossary of all the images in Picture Cave as well as panoramic views complete this pathfinding volume.

This synthesis of archaeological research in Denmark divides into four sections: the hunters and gatherers; the first farmers; towards a new era; and the chiefdoms of the Iron Age.
This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information.
Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

The life history of stone tools is intimately liked to tool production, use, and maintenance. These are important processes in the organization of lithic technology or the manner in which lithic technology is embedded within human organizational strategies of land use and subsistence practices. This volume brings together essays that measure the life history of stone tools relative to retouch values, raw material constraints, and evolutionary processes. Collectively, they explore the association of technological organization with facets of tool form such as reduction sequences, tool production effort, artifact curation processes, and retouch measurement. Data sets cover a broad geographic and temporal span, including examples from France during the Paleolithic, the Near East during the Neolithic, and other regions such as Mongolia, Australia, and Italy. North American examples are derived from Paleoindian times to historic period aboriginal populations throughout the United States and Canada.

The evolution and proliferation of plain and predominantly wheel-made pottery presents a characteristic feature of the societies of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean since the fourth millennium B.C. This plain pottery has received little detailed archaeological attention in comparison to aesthetically more pleasing and chronologically sensitive decorated traditions. Yet, their simplicity and standardization suggest they are products of craft specialists, the result of high-volume production, and therefore important in understanding the social systems in early complex societies. This volume-reevaluates the role and significance of plain pottery traditions from both historically specific perspectives and from a comparative point of view;-examines the uses and functions of this pottery in relation to social negotiation and group identity formation;-helps scholars understand cross-regional similarities in development and use.

This is the first book to present a comprehensive review of the archaeology of Syria from the end of the Paleolithic period to 300 BC. Syria has become a prime focus of field archaeology in the Middle East in the past thirty years, and Peter Akkermans and Glenn Schwartz discuss the results of this intensive fieldwork, integrating them with earlier research. Alongside the major material culture types of each period, they examine important contributions of Syrian archaeology to issues like the onset of agriculture, the emergence of private property and social inequality, the rise and collapse of urban life, and the archaeology of early empires. All competing interpretations are set out and considered, alongside the authors’ own perspectives and conclusions.

This book is primarily concerned with the craftsmanship of the Bronzesmiths of Britain and Ireland during the period from the beginning of the first century AD until the end of the seventh century. The period covered takes in a number of eras: the pre-Occupation era of the first century; the Romano-British period; and the so-called Dark Ages. What happened during these seven centuries is treated as a continuing story and only external events and political and religious thinking can have any effect on the forms which were fabricated. The Celts are known to have been expert metal workers and from the artistic point of view they are known to have been expert at designing bold eye-catching patterns. Yet the Celt had no art motifs which can be said to have been endemic to his world, but took over a number of classical patterns and by the exercise of his imagination produced motifs with a compelling personality which is at once seen to be thoroughly Celtic.

The book is divided into four parts, each having its own historical introduction. Irish material is included in each period, since there were close links between the bronzesmiths of Britain and Ireland, and the art of one affected the other. Methods of manufacture are examined, as are the range of styles and the origins of forms and motifs, including isolating some as from certain localised workshops. Originally published in 1980.

The essays collected together in this volume were written in honour of Professor Christopher Hawkes, in recognition of his stature as an international scholar and his generosity in encouraging the work of others. The collection consists of a closely-knit group of studies, and includes contributions from continental scholars. The topics covered range from links between the Mycenaean and Greek worlds, European body-armour, firedogs in Iron Age Britain to Bronzes in Hungary. Originally published in 1971.

This book provides an account of the development of European culture and society during the Bronze Age, the time span between c. 2000 and 700 BC. It was a period of remarkable innovation, seen for instance in the development and growth of metallurgy as a major industry, the spread of trading contacts, the origins of urbanism and the beginnings of social stratification.

The study is divided chronologically into two, the earlier and later Bronze Age, giving a clear picture of the nature of the radical changes which occurred in the period as a whole. The geographical area covered, from the Atlantic shores across Europe into the Soviet Union and from northern Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, is too vast to be taken as one unit, and has been broken down into five regions; each is discussed in terms of settlement form, burial practices, ritual and religious sites, material culture, economic and social background, and trading patterns. The book describes and develops common themes that link together the different areas and cultural groups, rather than taking the typographical approach often adopted by Bronze Age specialists, and uses the results of radiocarbon dating to establish an objective chronology for the period. The text is generously illustrated and fully documented with radiocarbon dating tables and extensive bibliography.

Our understanding of Bronze Age Europe is still increasing, but no other book of this scope had been written before this, in 1979. It is a major study of its time of interest to anyone looking beyond popular accounts of the day.

One of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986, which brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. This book considers prehistoric and more recent manifestations of human hunting behaviour, with a general emphasis on communal hunting. It demonstrates that the combination of archaeological, ethnographic and ethnohistorical approaches provides a researched basis for consideration of the topic on worldwide, regional, and local scales. It includes theoretical and methodological issues, within a context of enquiry, original data presentation, and discussion. It is of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists and ethnohistorians.

In 1937 the author, then aged 19, found the remains of an ancient boat at Ferriby on the Humber shore. This book is his own account of his discoveries, excavations and research over 50 years since the first boat find. The importance of this and the subsequent finds was only fully recognised after World War II, when the new technique of carbon-14 dating revealed that the Ferriby Boats were built before 1000 BC. This makes them the oldest plank-built boats found anywhere in the world apart from Ancient Egypt and the Aegean; they predate any similar craft in Northern Europe by half a millennium and present evidence for a style of boat building previously unknown. The excavation and preservation of the boats presented many problems, not least the constant battle with mud and the tide. Over the years the author pioneered methods of excavating and recording which have since become standard in the field of maritime archaeology. This book also presents a realistic reconstruction of the boats with estimates of its performance. They suggest a capacity for navigation at this time not previously imagined and add a new and fundamental dimension to the history of man's relationship with the sea.

This study, first published in 1978, explores the evidence for pre-Roman settlement in Britain. Four aspects of the prehistoric economy are described by the author colonisation and clearance; arable and pastoral farming; transhumance and nomadism; and hunting, gathering and fishing. These aspects have been brought together to formulate a structure which contains the evidence more naturally than chronological schemes that depend on assumed changes in population or technology.

The book draws upon environmental evidence and recent developments in archaeological fieldwork. It also provides an extensive exploration of the published literature on the subject and the scope of the evidence. Originally conceived as an ideas book rather than a final synthesis, the author s intention throughout is to stimulate argument and research, and not to replace one dogma with another."