This Reader in Gender Archaeology presents nineteen current, controversial and highly influential articles which confront and illuminate issues of gender in prehistory. The question of gender difference and whether it is natural or culturally constructed is a compelling one. The articles here, which draw on evidence from a wide range of geographic areas, demonstrate how all archaeological investigation can benefit from an awareness of issues of gender. They also show how the long-term nature of archaeological research can inform the gender debate across the disciplines. The volume:
* organizes this complex area into seven sections on key themes in gender archaeology: archaeological method and theory, human origins, division of labour, the social construction of gender, iconography and ideology, power and social hierarchies and new forms of archaeological narrative
* includes section introductions which outline the history of research on each topic and present the key points of each article
* presents a balance of material which rewrites women into prehistory, and articles which show how the concept of gender informs our understanding and interpretation of the past.

Peripheral Concerns examines the influence of one "core" region of the ancient Near Eastern world-Egypt-on urban development in the southern Levant in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, with emphasis on the relative stability and sustainability of this development in each era. The study utilizes a very broad scale "macro" approach to examine urban development using core-periphery theories, specifically in regard to southern Levantine-Egyptian interactions.While many studies examine urban development in both the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age, few compare this phenomenon in the two periods. Likewise, there are few studies of urban development in the southern Levant that compare contemporary Egyptian policies in that region to those in Nubia, despite the fact that Egyptian activities linked the eastern Mediterranean, the Nile Valley, and Nubia into one interactive system. The broad chronological and geographic framework utilized in this study therefore allows for a new approach to urban development in the southern Levant.

During the 1960s, in such works as Man the Hunter, scholars constructed a model of cultural evolution in which men were characterized as "cooperative hunters of big game." Women fit neatly into this model, such books as Woman the Gatherer explained, as gatherers of plant food. In spite of evidence of hunting by women, this model-which incorporated the unexamined assumption that women in prehistory were "immobilized" by pregnancy, lactation, and child care and therefore needed to be left at a home base-came to dominate archaeological interpretation of the economic roles of men and women. Women in Prehistory challenges this model and undertakes an examination of the archaeological record informed by insights into the cultural construction of gender that have emerged from scholarship in history, anthropology, biology, and related disciplines. Along with analysis of burial assemblages and of representations of gendered individuals, contributors study bone chemistry, assessment of skeletal pathologies, micro- and macro-scale distributional evidence, as well as analogical arguments from ethnoarchaeology and ethnohistory to discuss pottery, shell matrix sites, skeletal material, the domestic setting, and spinning.

***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER*** 'Hancock's books provide a fascinating, alternative version of prehistory. America Before, detailed and wide-ranging, turns what was myth and legend into a new story of the past.' Daily Mail Was an advanced civilization lost to history in the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age? Graham Hancock, the internationally bestselling author and television presenter, has made it his life's work to find out -- and in America Before, he draws on the latest archaeological and DNA evidence to bring his quest to a stunning conclusion. We've been taught that North and South America were empty of humans until around 13,000 years ago - amongst the last great landmasses on earth to have been settled by our ancestors. But new discoveries have radically reshaped this long-established picture and we know now that the Americas were first peopled more than 130,000 years ago - many tens of thousands of years before human settlements became established elsewhere. Hancock's research takes us on a series of journeys and encounters with the scientists responsible for the recent extraordinary breakthroughs. In the process, from the Mississippi Valley to the Amazon rainforest, he reveals that ancient 'New World' cultures share a legacy of advanced scientific knowledge and sophisticated spiritual beliefs with supposedly unconnected 'Old World' cultures. Have archaeologists focussed for too long only on the 'Old World' in their search for the origins of civilization while failing to consider the revolutionary possibility that those origins might in fact be found in the 'New World'? America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilisation is the culmination of everything that millions of readers have loved in Hancock's body of work over the past decades, namely a mind-dilating exploration of the mysteries of the past, amazing archaeological discoveries and profound implications for how we lead our lives today.

A Companion to South Asia in the Past provides the definitive overview of research and knowledge about South Asia s past, from the Pleistocene to the historic era in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, provided by a truly global team of experts. * The most comprehensive and detailed scholarly treatment of South Asian archaeology and biological anthropology, providing ground-breaking new ideas and future challenges * Provides an in-depth and broad view of the current state of knowledge about South Asia s past, from the Pleistocene to the historic era in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal * A comprehensive treatment of research in a crucial region for human evolution and biocultural adaptation * A global team of scholars together present a varied set of perspectives on South Asian pre- and proto-history

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

The overarching aim of The Sheep People is to examine what happens to the understanding of past societies when animals are perceived as sentient beings, agents with the ability to impact human lives. Not only are the agentive powers and potential of animals recognised, but also how this shaped prehistoric societies. Throughout, animals are considered as themselves, not as props, tools or consumables for human societies. A thorough review of recent research that supports the agential potential of animals from Human-Animal Studies and the social sciences, as well as ethology, biology and neurology is given, and discussed in light of the archaeological case study. In the Early Bronze Age in northern Europe, a transition from building two-aisled to three-aisled longhouses as the primary farm dwelling took place. In Rogaland, southwestern Norway, this architectural change happened as the result of intensified human-sheep relationships, born from greater engagement and proximity needed to utilise wool. Evidence from landscape changes, settlements, mortuary practices and rock art give an in-depth understanding of the life-world of Bronze Age human and non-human agents and the nature of the choices they made. A rock art panel portraying sheep, man and dog demonstrates the entangled choreography of sheep herding.

Place, Memory, and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments investigates the complex and deep histories of places, how they served as sites of memory and belonging for local communities over the centuries, and how they were appropriated and monumentalized in the hands of the political elites. Focusing on Anatolian rock monuments carved into the living rock at watery landscapes during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, this book develops an archaeology of place as a theory of cultural landscapes and as an engaged methodology of fieldwork in order to excavate the genealogies of places. Advocating that archaeology can contribute substantively to the study of places in many fields of research and engagement within the humanities and the social sciences, this book seeks to move beyond the oft-conceived notion of places as fixed and unchanging, and argues that places are always unfinished, emergent, and hybrid. Rock cut monuments of Anatolian antiquity are discussed in the historical and micro-regional context of their making at the time of the Hittite Empire and its aftermath, while the book also investigates how such rock-cut places, springs, and caves are associated with new forms of storytelling, holy figures, miracles, and healing in their post-antique life. Anybody wishing to understand places of cultural significance both archaeologically as well as through current theoretical lenses such as heritage studies, ethnography of landscapes, social memory, embodied and sensory experience of the world, post-colonialism, political ecology, cultural geography, sustainability, and globalization will find the case studies and research within this book a doorway to exploring places in new and rewarding ways.

Please note: This product is a map. The Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site is internationally important for its outstanding prehistoric monuments. Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest. Around them lie numerous other monuments and sites, which demonstrate over 2,000 years of continuous use. Together they form a unique prehistoric landscape. There is no better way to learn about and experience the monuments than to go out and explore the World Heritage Site on foot. This map is ideal for walkers and others wishing to explore the fascinating landscape of the two areas of the World Heritage Site. The map uses an Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 base and draws upon information from the English Heritage Archive and recent archaeological investigations. With Stonehenge on one side and Avebury on the other, the map shows and describes both visible and hidden remains, with information about where you can find out more. The map is divided into two parts on a durable double sided waterproof sheet.

Britain has been inhabited by humans for over half a million years, during which time there were a great many changes in lifestyles and in the surrounding landscape. This book, now in its second edition, examines the development of human societies in Britain from earliest times to the Roman conquest of AD 43, as revealed by archaeological evidence. Special attention is given to six themes which are traced through prehistory: subsistence, technology, ritual, trade, society, and population.

Prehistoric Britain begins by introducing the background to prehistoric studies in Britain, presenting it in terms of the development of interest in the subject and the changes wrought by new techniques such as radiocarbon dating, and new theories, such as the emphasis on social archaeology. The central sections trace the development of society from the hunter-gatherer groups of the last Ice Age, through the adoption of farming, the introduction of metalworking, and on to the rise of highly organized societies living on the fringes of the mighty Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. Throughout, emphasis is given to documenting and explaining changes within these prehistoric communities, and to exploring the regional variations found in Britain. In this way the wealth of evidence that can be seen in the countryside and in our museums is placed firmly in its proper context. It concludes with a review of the effects of prehistoric communities on life today.

With over 120 illustrations, this is a unique review of Britain's ancient past as revealed by modern archaeology. The revisions and updates to Prehistoric Britain ensure that this will continue to be the most comprehensive and authoritative account of British prehistory for those students and interested readers studying the subject.

Grotta Scaloria, a cave in Apulia, was first discovered and explored in 1931, excavated briefly in 1967, and then excavated extensively from 1978 to 1980 by a joint UCLA-University of Genoa team, but it was never fully published. The Save Scaloria Project was organized to locate this legacy data and to enhance that information by application of the newest methods of archaeological and scientific analysis. This significant site is finally published in one comprehensive volume (and in an online archive of additional data and photographs) that gathers together the archaeological data from the upper and lower chambers of the cave. These data indicate intense ritual and quotidian use during the Neolithic period (circa 5600-5300 BCE). The Grotta Scaloria project is also important as historiography, since it illustrates a changing trajectory of research spanning three generations of European and American archaeology.

'A warp-speed tour of dinosaurs, with an expert guide' PROF. STEVE BRUSATTE, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs 'A fun, speedy read for grown-ups who love dinosaurs - a great way to get into the subject' PROF. MICHAEL BENTON, author of The Dinosaurs Rediscovered --------- Travel back to the prehistoric world and discover the most fascinating parts of the lives of Earth's most awe-inspiring creatures - the dinosaurs. Dr Dean Lomax brings these prehistoric creatures to life in ten bite-sized essays, written for people short on time but not curiosity. Making big ideas simple, Dean takes readers on a journey to uncover what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur, what dinosaurs ate, how they evolved, what caused them to go extinct, and more! Perfect for anyone fascinated by the dinosaur exhibits at museums, palaeontology and fans of Jurassic Park. --------- 'An eminently accessible read...a perfect primer (or refresher) for dino fans and newbies, yet doesn't skimp on the fascinating details that make 21st-century palaeontology so vibrant' DR REBECCA WRAGG SYKES, author of Kindred

This book provides a basic introduction to key debates in the study of hunter-gatherers, specifically from an anthropological perspective, but designed for an archaeological audience. Hunter-gatherers have been the focus of intense anthropological research and discussion over the last hundred years, and as such there is an enormous literature on communities all over the world. Yet, among the diverse range of peoples studied, there are a number of recurrent themes, including not only the way in which people make a living (hunting, gathering and fishing) but also striking similarities in other areas of life such as belief systems and social organisation. These themes are described and then explored through archaeological case-studies. The overarching theme throughout the volume is the use of ethnographic analogy, and how archaeologists should be critical in its use.

Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory provides new approaches and integrates a broad range of data to address a neglected topic, organic material in the prehistoric record. Providing news ideas and connections and suggesting revisionist ways of thinking about broad themes in the past, this book demonstrates the efficacy of an holistic approach by using examples and cases studies.

No other book covers such a broad range of organic materials from a social and object biography perspective, or concentrates so fully on approaches to the missing components of prehistoric material culture. This book will be an essential addition for those people wishing to understand better the nature and importance of organic materials as the missing majority of prehistoric material culture."

From its first adoption of writing at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, ancient Cyprus was home to distinctive scripts and writing habits, often setting it apart from other areas of the Mediterranean and Near East. This well-illustrated volume is the first to explore the development and importance of Cypriot writing over a period of more than 1,500 years in the second and first millennia BC. Five themed chapters deal with issues ranging from the acquisition of literacy and the adaptation of new writing systems to the visibility of writing and its role in the marking of identities. The agency of Cypriots in shaping the island's literate landscape is given prominence, and an extended consideration of the social context of writing leads to new insights on Cypriot scripts and their users. Cyprus provides a stimulating case to demonstrate the importance of contextualised approaches to the development of writing systems.

'There are huge gaps in our understanding of the lives of the Silures ... Despite what is in many instances a glaring lack of evidence, I've increasingly become convinced that trying to tease out what we can about the social structure of these people offers one of our best avenues to understanding them better.' Silures explores exciting new discoveries and changing interpretations to give an up-to-date analysis of the Iron Age peoples of south-east Wales. From 'the study of stuff', new evidence of trade and commerce and archaeological discoveries, to the suggestion of a new research agenda and a consideration of Silurian resonances in modern Wales, Ray Howell's insights are based on personal observations and his own research activities, including excavations in the Silurian region.

This book presents the results of the study of the wall paintings from the Northeast Bastion at Ayia Irini, situating them within the wider social context of the island of Kea and the Aegean world. Like the spectacularly well-preserved town of Akrotiri on Thera, with which these paintings are contemporary, Ayia Irini thrived 3,500 years ago. But unlike Akrotiri, Ayia Irini was not protected by a layer of volcanic ash. When the site was excavated in the 1960s-1970s by the University of Cincinnati under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the paintings had long since collapsed, fracturing into thousands of small pieces and becoming mixed with stones, broken pottery, and accumulated debris. This study attempts to bring the wall paintings back to life through the best-preserved fragments. Within the Northeast Bastion was a miniature frieze and, in the adjacent room, large-scale panels of plants. Human action set within townscapes, landscapes, and the sea presents a vivid account of the social life and environment of the people for whom this harbor town was vital within the trading network of the time. In this book the social implications of the fascinating and often unique iconography is explored, and the setting within a fortification wall is quite extraordinary. The volume contains many catalog entries, which contain color images of the fragments, and it is also abundantly illustrated with color drawings, visualizations, and photographs.

One afternoon in late April 1859 two geologically minded businessmen, John Evans and Joseph Prestwich, found and photographed the proof for great human antiquity. Their evidence - small, hand-held stone tools found in the gravel quarries of the Somme among the bones of ancient animals - shattered the timescale of Genesis and kicked open the door for a time revolution in human history. In the space of a calendar year, and at a furious pace, the relationship between humans and time was forever changed. This interpretation of deep human history was shaped by the optimistic decade of the 1850s, the Victorian Heyday in the age of equipoise. Proving great human antiquity depended on matching the principles of geology with the personal values of scientific zeal and perseverance; qualities which time-revolutionaries such as Evans and Prestwich had in abundance. Their revolution was driven by a small group of weekend scientists rather than some great purpose, and it proved effective because of its bonds of friendship stiffened by scientific curiosity and business acumen. Clive Gamble explores the personalities of these time revolutionaries and their scientific co-collaborators and adjudicators - Darwin, Falconer, Lyell, Huxley, and the French antiquary Boucher de Perthes - as well as their sisters, wives, and nieces Grace McCall, Civil Prestwich, and Fanny Evans. As with all scientific discoveries getting there was often circuitous and messy; the revolutionaries changed their minds and disagreed with those who should have been allies. Gamble's chronological narrative reveals each step from discovery to presentation, reception, consolidation, and widespread acceptance, and considers the impact of their work on the scientific advances of the next 160 years and on our fascination with the shaping power of time.

Deeply stratified settlements are a distinctive site type featuring prominently in diverse later prehistoric landscapes of the Old World. Their massive materiality has attracted the curiosity of lay people and archaeologists alike. Nowadays a wide variety of archaeological projects are tracking the lifestyles and social practices that led to the building-up of such superimposed artificial hills. However, prehistoric tell-dwelling communities are too often approached from narrow local perspectives or discussed within strict time- and culture-specific debates. There is a great potential to learn from such ubiquitous archaeological manifestations as the physical outcome of cross-cutting dynamics and comparable underlying forces irrespective of time and space. This volume tackles tells and tell-like sites as a transversal phenomenon whose commonalities and divergences are poorly understood yet may benefit from cross-cultural comparison. Thus, the book intends to assemble a representative range of ongoing theory - and science -based fieldwork projects targeting this kind of sites. With the aim of encompassing a variety of social and material dynamics, the volume's scope is diachronic - from the Earliest Neolithic up to the Iron Age-, and covers a very large region, from Iberia in Western Europe to Syria in the Middle East. The core of the volume comprises a selection of the most remarkable contributions to the session with a similar title celebrated in the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting held at Barcelona in 2018. In addition, the book includes invited chapters to round out underrepresented areas and periods in the EAA session with relevant research programmes in the Old World. To accomplish such a cross-cultural course, the book takes a case-based approach, with contributions disparate both in their theoretical foundations - from household archaeology, social agency and formation theory - and their research strategies - including geophysical survey, microarchaeology and high-resolution excavation and dating.

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.

Joseph and Maria Shaw received the Archaeological Institute of America's Gold Medal for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in January of 2006. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the Gold Medal Colloquium held in their honour during the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Montreal, Quebec. Additional articles have also been written for this volume. Many of the articles pertain to different aspects of Aegean Bronze Age architecture, harbors, frescoes, and trade, which are all keen interests of the Shaws.

The destruction and deposition of metalwork is a widely recognised phenomenon across Bronze Age Europe. Weapons were decommissioned and thrown into rivers; axes were fragmented and piled in hoards; and ornaments were crushed, contorted and placed in certain landscapes. Interpretation of this material is often considered in terms of whether such acts should be considered ritual offerings, or functional acts for storing, scrapping and recycling the metal. This book approaches this debate from a fresh perspective, by focusing on how the metalwork was destroyed and deposited as a means to understand the reasons behind the process. To achieve this, this study draws on experimental archaeology, as well as developing a framework for assessing what can be considered deliberate destruction. Understanding these processes not only helps us to recognise how destruction happened, but also gives us insights into the individuals involved in these practices. Through an examination of metalwork from south-west Britain, it is possible to observe the complexities involved at a localised level in the acts of destruction and deposition, as well as how they were linked to people and places. This case study is used to consider the social role of destruction and deposition more broadly in the Bronze Age, highlighting how it transformed over time and space.

The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

This is the first of five planned volumes to present the primary archaeological report about the excavation of the cave of Hagios Charalambos in eastern Crete. The Minoans used this small cavern as an ossuary for the secondary burial of human remains and grave goods, primarily during the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The geography and geology surrounding the cave is discussed along with the methodology of the excavation. A portion of the pottery and all of the small finds are presented with many illustrations.

When was the human threshold crossed? What is the evidence for evolving humans and their emerging humanity? This volume explores in a global overview the archaeology of the Middle Pleistocene, 800,000 to 130,000 years ago when evidence for innovative cultural behaviour appeared. The evidence shows that the threshold was crossed slowly, by a variety of human ancestors, and was not confined to one part of the Old World. Crossing the Human Threshold examines the changing evidence during this period for the use of place, landscape and technology. It focuses on the emergence of persistent places, and associated developments in tool use, hunting strategies and the control of fire, represented across the Old World by deeply stratified cave sites. These include the most important sites for the archaeology of human origins in the Levant, South Africa, Asia and Europe, presented here as evidence for innovation in landscape-thinking during the Middle Pleistocene. The volume also examines persistence at open locales through a cutting-edge review of the archaeology of Northern France and England. Crossing the Human Threshold is for the worldwide community of students and researchers studying early hominins and human evolution. It presents new archaeological data. It frames the evidence within current debates to understand the differences and similarities between ourselves and our ancient ancestors.