Despite an incredibly rich prehistory covering nearly ten thousand years, modern coverage of complex hunter-gatherer societies has tended to overlook the Jomon of Japan. This text presents an overview of the archaeology of the Jomon Period between 10,000 and 300 BC within the context of more recent complex hunter-gatherer societies. It bridges the gap between academic traditions in Japanese and Anglo-American archaeology and represents an invaluable source of reflection on the development of human complexity.

Despite an incredibly rich prehistory covering nearly ten thousand years, modern coverage of complex hunter-gatherer societies has tended to overlook the Jomon of Japan. This text presents an overview of the archaeology of the Jomon Period between 10,000 and 300 BC within the context of more recent complex hunter-gatherer societies. It bridges the gap between academic traditions in Japanese and Anglo-American archaeology and represents an invaluable source of reflection on the development of human complexity.

The ancient capital of Cahokia and a series of lesser population centers developed in the Mississippi valley in North America between the eighth and fifteenth centuries AD, leaving behind an extraordinarily rich archaeological record. Cahokia's gigantic pyramids, finely crafted artifacts, and dense population mark it as the founding city of the Mississippian civilization, formerly known as the 'mound' builders. As Cahokian ideas and objects were widely sought, a cultural and religious ripple effect spread across the mid-continent and into the South. In its wake, population migrations and social upheavals transformed social life along the ancient Mississippi River. In this important new survey, Timothy Pauketat outlines the development of Mississippian civilization, presenting a wealth of archaeological evidence and advancing our understanding of the American Indians whose influence extended into the founding moments of the United States and lives on today in American archaeology.

The ancient capital of Cahokia and a series of lesser population centers developed in the Mississippi valley in North America between the eighth and fifteenth centuries AD, leaving behind an extraordinarily rich archaeological record. Cahokia's gigantic pyramids, finely crafted artifacts, and dense population mark it as the founding city of the Mississippian civilization, formerly known as the 'mound' builders. As Cahokian ideas and objects were widely sought, a cultural and religious ripple effect spread across the mid-continent and into the South. In its wake, population migrations and social upheavals transformed social life along the ancient Mississippi River. In this important new survey, Timothy Pauketat outlines the development of Mississippian civilization, presenting a wealth of archaeological evidence and advancing our understanding of the American Indians whose influence extended into the founding moments of the United States and lives on today in American archaeology.

A companion to The Archaeology of Rock-Art (Cambridge, 1998), this new collection addresses the most important component of the rock-art panel: its landscape. The book draws together the work of many well-known scholars from key regions of the world known for rock-art and rock-art research. It provides insight into the location and structure of rock-art and its role within the landscapes of ancient worlds.

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.

Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.

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 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.

Archaeological research in Sweden and Denmark has uncovered a startling array of evidence over the last 150 years, but until now there has been no comprehensive synthesis and interpretation of the material. An Ethnography of the Neolithic bridges this gap, giving an accessible and up-to-date analysis of a wide range of evidence, from landscapes to monumental tombs to portable artifacts. Christopher Tilley also uses this material as a basis for a provocative and novel reconstruction of late Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic societies in southern Scandinavia, over a period of 3,000 years. His skilful integration of archaeological evidence with new anthropological approaches makes this book an original contribution to an important topic, whose significance stretches outside Scandinavia, and beyond the Neolithic.

Mochlos is a Minoan town set on a fine harbour at the eastern side of the Gulf of Mirabello, in northeast Crete. It was first inhabited during the Neolithic period, and it had an important Minoan settlement during most of the Bronze Age. Mochlos I , to be published in three volumes, presents the results of the excavations in the Neopalatial levels of the Artisans' Quarter, and at the farmhouse at Chalinomouri. The Artisans' Quarter consisted of a series of workshops with evidence for pottery manufacture, metalworking, and weaving. Chalinomouri, a semi-independent farmhouse with strong connections to the nearby island settlement at Mochlos, was engaged in craftwork and food processing as well as agriculture. This volume, Mochlos IB presents the pottery from the site. Contents: A Macroscopic Analysis of the Neopalatial Fabrics; A Petrographic Analysis of the Neopalatial Pottery; The Neopalatial Pottery: A Catalog; Conclusions: The Decoration, Character, and Relative Chronology of the Neopalatial Pottery.

This book narrates the story of human biological and cultural evolution, from the earliest beginnings of our zoological family Hominidae, through the emergence of Homo sapiens, to the Agricultural Revolution. It concludes with a brief overview of the subsequent diversification of cultural and technological traditions in all the areas our species inhabits. A particular focus is on the pattern of events/innovations in human biological and cultural evolution, which have tended not to proceed in lockstep. Prior to the emergence of Homo sapiens innovations of this kind were generally sporadic, and rare; since that event their frequency has been steadily increasing. Tattersall draws on his own research to demonstrate that the history of humankind has not been one of a singleminded struggle from primitiveness to perfection, but has rather been one of trial and error, of evolutionary experimentation that as often ended in failure as in success. In the process he thoroughly examines both the fossil and the archaeological records that document our human prehistory. All human beings have a thirst to know where they came from, whether as individuals or as a species. This book responds to this desire for knowledge, whether in the classroom where the subject has a place in history as well as in science curricula or in more informal contexts. There currently exist no high school texts or supplemental readings that treat this subject in an authoritative manner, written by a practicing scientist in the field. This volume will have the advantage of being written by one whose opinions are first hand, and conditioned by direct familiarity with the original evidence.

This book uses comparative island archaeology to reinterpret a vital phase in early Aegean history. Cyprian Broodbank presents the first modern analysis of Cycladic culture, tracing the development of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age societies in these islands from first colonisation through to incorporation, three millennia later, in the world system of the Minoan palaces and the wider Near East. The archaeology of this region is rich and well documented, and allows Dr Broodbank to reformulate early Cycladic history and to deploy detailed examples that challenge established approaches to island archaeology. He shows that islanders can actively define their cultural space and environments, and that their communities are linked by complex relations to the non-insular world. This book provides fresh perspectives and challenges for island archaeologists and Mediterranean specialists.Winner of the James R. Wiseman Book Award 2003 and the Runciman Award 2001.

One of the most haunting and enigmatic archaeological discoveries of recent times was the uncovering in 1998 at low tide of the so-called Seahenge off the north coast of Norfolk. This circle of wooden planks set vertically in the sand, with a large inverted tree-trunk in the middle, likened to a ghostly ‘hand reaching up from the underworld’, has now been dated back to around 2020 BC. The timbers are currently (and controversially) in the author’s safekeeping at Flag Fen.Francis Pryor and his wife (an expert in ancient wood-working and analysis) have been at the centre of Bronze Age fieldwork for nearly 30 years, piecing together the way of life of Bronze Age people, their settlement of the landscape, their religion and rituals. The famous wetland sites of the East Anglian Fens have preserved ten times the information of their dryland counterparts like Stonehenge and Avebury, in the form of pollen, leaves, wood, hair, skin and fibre found ‘pickled’ in mud and peat.Seahenge demonstrates how much Western civilisation owes to the prehistoric societies that existed in Europe in the last four millennia BC.

The story of two nineteenth-century scientists who revealed one of the most significant and exciting events in the natural history of this planet: the existence of dinosaurs. In 'The Dinosaur Hunters' Deborah Cadbury brilliantly recreates the remarkable story of the bitter rivalry between two men: Gideon Mantell uncovered giant bones in a Sussex quarry, became obsessed with the lost world of the reptiles and was driven to despair. Richard Owen, a brilliant anatomist, gave the extinct creatures their name and secured for himself unrivalled international acclaim.

The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory addresses one of the most debated and least understood revolutions in the history of our species, the change from hunting and gathering to farming. Graeme Barker takes a global view, and integrates a massive array of information from archaeology and many other disciplines, including anthropology, botany, climatology, genetics, linguistics, and zoology. Against current orthodoxy, Barker develops a strong case for the development of agricultural systems in many areas as transformations in the life-ways of the indigenous forager societies, and argues that these were as much changes in social norms and ideologies as in ways of obtaining food. With a large number of helpful line drawings and photographs as well as a comprehensive bibliography, this authoritative study will appeal to a wide general readership as well as to specialists in a variety of fields.

Plants and animals originally domesticated in the Near East arrived in Europe between 7000 and 4000 BC. Was the new technology introduced by migrants, or was it an "inside job"? How were the new species adapted to European conditions? What were the immediate and long-term consequences of the transition from hunting and gathering to farming? These central questions in the prehistory of Europe are discussed here by leading specialists, drawing on the latest scholarship in fields as diverse as genetics and IndoEuropean linguistics.

This innovative study analyzes the great cultural and economic changes occurring in the Near East between 10,000 and 7,000 BC as Palaeolithic societies of hunter-gatherers gave way to village communities of Neolithic food-producers. Challenging the orthodox, materialist interpretations, and drawing on French theories of mentalities, Jacques Cauvin argues that the Neolithic revolution must be understood as an intellectual transformation, revealing itself above all in symbolic activities. He describes the emergence of the first agricultural villages, pastoralism and nomadism, and the diffusion of Neolithic ideas and practice to the region's periphery.

The European Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 750 BC, was the last fully prehistoric period and crucial to the formation of the Europe emerging in the later first millennium BC. This book provides a detailed account of its material culture, comparing and contrasting evidence from different geographical zones, and drawing out the essential characteristics of the period. It looks at settlement, burial, economy, technology, trade and transport, warfare, and social and religious life. The result is a comprehensive study that will interest specialists and students, and be accessible to nonspecialists.

Palaeolithic societies have been a neglected topic in the discussion of human origins. But in the past forty years archaeologists have recovered a wealth of information from Palaeolithic sites throughout the European continent that reveal many illuminating facets of social life over this 500,000-year period. Clive Gamble, introducing a new approach to this material, interrogates the data for information on the scale of social interaction, and the forms of social existence. The result is a reconstruction of ancient human societies, and a fresh perspective on the unique experience of human beings.

George Frison's Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains has been the standard text on plains prehistory since its first publication in 1978, influencing generations of archaeologists. Now, a third edition of this classic work is available for scholars, students, and avocational archaeologists. Thorough and comprehensive, extensively illustrated, the book provides an introduction to the archaeology of the more than 13,000 year long history of the western Plains and the adjacent Rocky Mountains. Reflecting the boom in recent archaeological data, it reports on studies at a wide array of sites from deep prehistory to recent times examining the variability in the archeological record as well as in field, analytical, and interpretive methods. The 3rd edition brings the book up to date in a number of significant areas, as well as addressing several topics inadequately developed in previous editions.

The Iberians inhabited southern and eastern Spain between the Greek and Phoenician colonization beginning in the eight century BC and the Roman conquest. This was a period of urban growth, and the adoption of ideological symbols and technological innovations from the colonists created an important and unique Iron Age culture. The Archaeology of the Iberians is an up-to-date, theoretically informed synthesis of what is now known about the world of the Iberians and a fascinating case study of change within a specific complex society.

To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the contradictory world of dreams, marvels, devils, and wild forests.
"Le Goff is one of the most distinguished of the French medieval historians of his generation . . . he has exercised immense influence."--Maurice Keen, "New York Review of Books"
"The whole book turns on a fascinating blend of the brutally materialistic and the generously imaginative."--Tom Shippey, "London Review of Books"
"The richness, imaginativeness and sheer learning of Le Goff's work . . . demand to be experienced."--M. T. Clanchy, "Times Literary Supplement"

The exploration and colonisation of the Pacific is a remarkable episode of human prehistory. Early sea-going explorers had no prior knowledge of Pacific geography, no documents to record their route, no metal, no instruments for measuring time and none for exploration. Forty years of modern archaeology, experimental voyages in rafts, and computer simulations of voyages have produced an enormous range of literature on this controversial and mysterious subject. This book represents a major advance in knowledge of the settlement of the Pacific by suggesting that exploration was rapid and purposeful, undertaken systematically, and that navigation methods progressively improved. Using an innovative model to establish a detailed theory of navigation, Geoffrey Irwin claims that rather than sailing randomly downwind in search of the unknown, Pacific Islanders expanded settlement by the cautious strategy of exploring upwind, so as to ease their safe return. The author has tested this hypothesis against the chronological data from archaeological investigation, with a computer simulation of demographic and exploration patterns and by sailing throughout the region himself.

Huaca Prieta-one the world's best-known, yet least understood, early maritime mound sites-and other Preceramic sites on the north coast of Peru bear witness to the beginnings of civilization in the Americas. Across more than fourteen millennia of human occupation, the coalescence of maritime, agricultural, and pastoral economies in the north coast settlements set in motion long-term biological and cultural transformations that led to increased social complexity and food production, and later the emergence of preindustrial states and urbanism. These developments make Huaca Prieta a site of global importance in world archaeology. This landmark volume presents the findings of a major archaeological investigation carried out at Huaca Prieta, the nearby mound Paredones, and several Preceramic domestic sites in the lower Chicama Valley between 2006 and 2013 by an interdisciplinary team of more than fifty international specialists. The book's contributors report on and analyze the extensive material records from the sites, including data on the architecture and spatial patterns; floral, faunal, and lithic remains; textiles; basketry; and more. Using this rich data, they build new models of the social, economic, and ontological practices of these early peoples, who appear to have favored cooperation and living in harmony with the environment over the accumulation of power and the development of ruling elites. This discovery adds a crucial new dimension to our understanding of emergent social complexity, cosmology, and religion in the Neolithic period.