Gender in African Prehistory provides methods and theories for delineating and discussing prehistoric gender relations and their change through time. Sites studied range from Egypt to South Africa and Ghana to Tanzania, while time periods span the Stone Age to the period just prior to colonialization.

The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as Peter Wells argues here, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Wells reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. He sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places--and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience.

"How Ancient Europeans Saw the World" offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. The book demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.

A series of papers by a wide range of authors from different countries and backgrounds focuses firmly on the question of the origin and development of social complexity, from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age, in Iberia writ large. A wide range of specific topics is covered with this specific focus, from results of field projects, laboratory analyses, and theoretical overviews.

Ground Stone Tools and Past Foodways brings together a selection of papers presented at the 3rd meeting of the Association of Ground Stone Tools Research, which was held at the University of Copenhagen in 2019. Ground stone artefacts are one of the most enduring classes of material culture: first used by Palaeolithic gatherer-hunters, they are still used regularly by people in many parts of the world to grind, mash and pulverize plants, meat and minerals. As such, ground stone artefacts provide a well preserved record at the nexus of interaction between humans, plants and animals. The papers in this volume focus especially on the relationship between ground stone artefacts and foodways and include archaeological and ethnographic case studies ranging from the Palaeolithic to the current era, and geographically from Africa to Europe and Asia. They reflect the current state of the art in ground stone tool research and highlight the many ways in which foodways can be studied through holistic examinations of ground stone artefacts.

Two decades of strontium isotope research on Neolithic European burials - reinforced by high-profile ancient DNA studies - has led to widespread interpretations that these were patrilocal societies, implying significant residential mobility for women. The Not Very Patrilocal European Neolithic questions that narrative from a social anthropological perspective on kinship. It introduces models for inferring residence and descent with isotope and genetic data and provides in-depth descriptions of archaeological kinship analysis. From social anthropological insights to reassessments of data, an alternative perspective on the social dynamics of Neolithic European societies emerges from this new guide for prehistorians working with biological and archaeological materials.

The book draws on the evidence of landscape archaeology, palaeoenvironmental studies, ethnohistory and animal tracking to address the neglected topic of how we identify and interpret past patterns of movement in the landscape. It challenges the pessimism of previous generations which regarded prehistoric routes such as hollow ways as generally undatable. The premise is that archaeologists tend to focus on 'sites' while neglecting the patterns of habitual movement that made them part of living landscapes. Evidence of past movement is considered in a multi-scalar way from the individual footprint to the long distance path including the traces created in vegetation by animal and human movement. It is argued that routes may be perpetuated over long timescales creating landscape structures which influence the activities of subsequent generations. In other instances radical changes of axes of communication and landscape structures provide evidence of upheaval and social change. Palaeoenvironmental and ethnohistorical evidence from the American North West coast sets the scene with evidence for the effects of burning, animal movement, faeces deposition and transplantation which can create readable routes along which are favoured resources. Evidence from European hunter-gatherer sites hints at similar practices of niche construction on a range of spatial scales. On a local scale, footprints help to establish axes of movement, the locations of lost settlements and activity areas. Wood trackways likewise provide evidence of favoured patterns of movement and past settlement location. Among early farming communities alignments of burial mounds, enclosure entrances and other monuments indicate axes of communication. From the middle Bronze Age in Europe there is more clearly defined evidence of trackways flanked by ditches and fields. Landscape scale survey and excavation enables the dating of trackways using spatial relationships with dated features and many examples indicate long-term continuity of routeways. Where fields flank routeways a range of methods, including scientific approaches, provide dates. Prehistorians have often assumed that Ridgeways provided the main axes of early movement but there is little evidence for their early origins and rather better evidence for early routes crossing topography and providing connections between different environmental zones. The book concludes with a case study of the Weald of South East England which demonstrates that some axes of cross topographic movement used as droveways, and generally considered as early medieval, can be shown to be of prehistoric origin. One reason that dryland routes have proved difficult to recognise is that insufficient attention has been paid to the parts played by riverine and maritime longer distance communication. It is argued that understanding the origins of the paths we use today contributes to appreciation of the distinctive qualities of landscapes. Appreciation will help to bring about effective strategies for conservation of mutual benefit to people and wildlife by maintaining and enhancing corridors of connectivity between different landscape zones including fragmented nature reserves and valued places. In these ways an understanding of past routeways can contribute to sustainable landscapes, communities and quality of life.

In the late spring some 13,000 years ago, the Laacher See volcano in present-day western Germany erupted. The area in the immediate vicinity of the volcano was completely destroyed, covering and preserving, Pompeii-like, a prehistoric landscape complete with traces of plant, animal and human activity. But what was the impact of this cataclysm on the Final Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities that occupied nothern Europe at that time? This book presents a new take on the cultural evolution of these forager groups, seen in light of the Laacher See eruption. Rooted in a framework of vulnerability and resilience, the author makes a powerful and multidisciplinary argument for how the ecological and sociological consequences of the eruption led to, in particular, the emergence of the hitherto ill-understood Bromme culture that comes into existence in southern Scandinavia just after the eruption. The primary aim of this book is to integrate archaeology and volcanology in a better understanding of this remarkable episode of culture change in Europe's deep past. At the same time the author makes and argument that archaeological and historical studies of extreme event such as volcanic eruptions can and should play a greater role in historically informed, evidence-based decision making procedures in contemporary risk reduction policies.

This volume presents the lithic assemblage from Howburn in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, which at present is the oldest prehistoric settlement in Scotland (12,700-12,000 BC), and the only Hamburgian settlement in Britain. The site also included a scatter from the Late Upper Palaeolithic Federmesser- Gruppen period (12,000-10,800 BC), as well as lithics from the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The book focuses on the Hamburgian finds, which are mainly based on the exploitation of flint from Doggerland, the then dry bed of the North Sea. The Hamburgian tools include tanged arrowheads, scrapers, piercers, burins, and other implement forms which show similarities with tools of the same age on the European continent. The shape of one scatter suggests that the Palaeolithic settlers lived in tent-like structures. The Palaeolithic finds from Howburn shed light on several important general trends, such as the ‘acclimatization’ of pioneer settlers, as well as the development of regional differences following the initial Late Glacial recolonization of Scotland. Palaeo-environmental work focused on whether there was a small lake (‘Loch Howburn’) in front of the terrace on which the camp was situated, and it was concluded that there was indeed a lake there, but it was neither contemporary with the Hamburgian, nor the Federmesser-Gruppen settlement. Most likely, ‘Loch Howburn’ dates to the Loch Lomond stadial.

In a career spanning more than forty years Prof. Thanasis I. Papadopoulos exhibited his intensive devotion to the Bronze Age of Greece, and especially to Mycenaean Achaea (his native land), through his excavations, publications and lessons to innumerable students in Greece and abroad. The origins, as well as the interconnections of the Mycenaeans with other civilizations, were always of great interest to Prof. Papadopoulos. This honorary volume expands to diverse eras, from Neolithic to Byzantine times, following Mycenaean paths that lead even to the distant East: to Egypt, whose culture Prof. Papadopoulos taught for many years at Ioannina University, and to Jordan, where he excavated for more than 10 years. In Achaios, thirty-five scholars from six different countries have contributed with thirty-one papers, as a small token of appreciation, gratitude and affection to a true scholar, who devoted his life studying and revealing the long journeys of the Mycenaeans and their culture, but also, to a passionate professor who, by transmitting his scientific knowledge, left an invaluable legacy for future generations.

Studies on the Palaeolithic of Western Eurasia presents the papers from Sessions XVII-4 and XVII-6 of the 18th UISPP World congress (Paris, June 2018). The geographic areas discussed in the Session 4, Central and Eastern Europe, are prehistorically strongly articulated, their cultural successions are highly similar, and they share several common archaeological issues for investigation. The papers disseminate a wealth of archaeological data from Bavaria to the Russian Plain, and discuss Aurignacian, Gravettian, Epigravettian, and Magdalenian perspectives on lithic tool kits and animal remains. The papers of Session 6 are concerned with lithic raw material procurement in the Caucasus and in three areas of the Iberian peninsula.

This is the first volume on the Late Minoan IIIC settlement at Chalasmenos, located near Ierapetra in eastern Crete. The site was excavated (1992-2014), initially as part of a Greek-American project under the direction of Metaxia Tsipopoulou and the late William Coulson. House A.2 is a two-room structure on the southwestern edge of the site. The excavation and stratigraphy, architecture, pottery, small finds, and faunal material from the building are presented. The house was used for domestic purposes, serving as the home of an elite (or prospective elite) family, but it also was a meeting and dining place on certain occasions.

Over the last 30 years, there has been extensive new research on Neolithic Long Barrows. David Field describes the origin of the monuments and their construction, including the pits, standing stones, and posts found beneath the later mounds, their location within the country side and what this might mean for contemporary society. He also discusses the nature of platforms, pavements, internal cairns, and earthen round mounds. Evidence of feasting and ceremony is assessed. Emphasis is placed on the new finds that have been made from the air and on the use that was made of earthen barrows by later civilizations.

In this book, Justin Jennings argues that globalization is not just a phenomenon limited to modern times. Instead he contends that the globalization of today is just the latest in a series of globalizing movements in human history. Using the Uruk, Mississippian, and Wari civilizations as case studies, Jennings examines how the growth of the world's first great cities radically transformed their respective areas. The cities required unprecedented exchange networks, creating long-distance flows of ideas, people, and goods. These flows created cascades of interregional interaction that eroded local behavioral norms and social structures. New, hybrid cultures emerged within these globalized regions. Although these networks did not span the whole globe, people in these areas developed globalized cultures as they interacted with one another. Jennings explores how understanding globalization as a recurring event can help in the understanding of both the past and the present.

At the Unai Bapot Site of the Mariana Islands, new excavation has clarified the oldest known instance of a residential habitation prior to 1500 B.C. in the Remote Pacific, previously difficult to document in deeply buried layers that originally had comprised near-tidal to shallow subtidal zones. The initial habitation at this site, as well as at others in the Mariana Islands, pre-dated the next Remote Oceanic archaeological evidence by about four centuries and in an entirely different part of the Pacific than previously had been claimed. The newest excavation at Unai Bapot in 2016 has revealed the precise location of an ancient seashore habitation, containing dense red-slipped pottery, other artefacts, food midden, and arrangements of hearths, pits, and post moulds in three distinguishable archaeological layers all pre-dating 1100 B.C. and extending just prior to 1500 B.C. The new discoveries are presented here in detail, as a substantive basis for learning about a rarely preserved event of the initial cultural inhabitation of a region, in this case in the Remote Oceanic environment of the world with its own set of unique challenges.

Human beings depend more on technology than any other animal--the use of tools and weapons is vital to the survival of our species. What processes of biocultural evolution led to this unique dependence? Steven Kuhn turns to the Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) and to artifacts associated with Neanderthals, the most recent human predecessors. His study examines the ecological, economic, and strategic factors that shaped the behavior of Mousterian tool makers, revealing how these hominids brought technological knowledge to bear on the basic problems of survival. Kuhn's main database consists of assemblages of stone artifacts from four caves and a series of open-air localities situated on the western coast of the Italian peninsula. Variations in the ways stone tools were produced, maintained, and discarded demonstrate how Mousterian hominids coped with the problems of keeping mobile groups supplied with the artifacts and raw materials they used on a daily basis. Changes through time in lithic technology were closely tied to shifting strategies for hunting and collecting food. Some of the most provocative findings of this study stem from observations about the behavioral flexibility of Mousterian populations and the role of planning in foraging and technology. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first survey of religious beliefs in the British Isles from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity, one of the least familiar periods in Britaina s history. Ronald Hutton draws upon a wealth of new data, much of it archaeological, that has transformed interpretation over the past decade. Giving more or less equal weight to all periods, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, he examines a fascinating range of evidence for Celtic and Romano--British paganism, from burial sites, cairns, megaliths and causeways, to carvings, figurines, jewellery, weapons, votive objects, literary texts and folklore.

The two volumes bring together the contributions of the members of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), to a project launched in 2017, with the support of the International Academic Union (UAI), under the title Human societies facing climate change in prehistory and protohistory: from the origins of Humanity to the beginning of historical times. The first volume concerns prehistory from the earliest humans to the end of the Pleistocene, twelve thousand years ago. For three million years human societies have experienced a great alternation of glacial and interglacial periods. Which climates have been most favorable to human settlement? Which the least favorable? And did they involve the abandonment of territories, the collapse of societies and extinction of some human populations? When and in what climates did human groups colonize each of the continents of the planet? Is a period of climatic improvement with a hot and humid climate more or less favorable to the development of human societies than a period of climate depreciation? Is climate change a factor of change for human societies, forcing them to adapt and find sustainable solutions?

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the origins of metallurgy. The project aimed to trace the invention and innovation of metallurgy in the Balkans. It combined targeted excavations and surveys with extensive scientific analyses at two Neolithic-Chalcolithic copper production and consumption sites, Belovode and Plocnik, in Serbia. At Belovode, the project revealed chronologically and contextually secure evidence for copper smelting in the 49th century BC. This confirms the earlier interpretation of c. 7000-year-old metallurgy at the site, making it the earliest record of fully developed metallurgical activity in the world. However, far from being a rare and elite practice, metallurgy at both Belovode and Plocnik is demonstrated to have been a common and communal craft activity. This monograph reviews the pre-existing scholarship on early metallurgy in the Balkans. It subsequently presents detailed results from the excavations, surveys and scientific analyses conducted at Belovode and Plocnik. These are followed by new and up-to-date regional syntheses by leading specialists on the Neolithic-Chalcolithic material culture, technologies, settlement and subsistence practices in the Central Balkans. Finally, the monograph places the project results in the context of major debates surrounding early metallurgy in Eurasia before proposing a new agenda for global early metallurgy studies.

Due to the regional division of this fieldwork, the book has two main categories. The first, Part I, deals with the Ice Age in southwestern Kashmir including Sind, Liddar, Pir Panjal, Jammu and Ladakh and the second, Part II, III, IV and V, studies the Pleistocene and archaeological studies in other parts of India, mainly Potwar and Indus regions and Central and Peninsular India. This arrangement will enable the reader to first get acquainted with the classical cycle in the Himalayas and then understand the Pleistocene stratigraphy of the adjoining plains. The work, originally published in 1939, has long been out-of-print and is being reissued in a limited edition. It is hoped that this book will facilitate an understanding of Pleistocene geology and prehistory in Asia and encourage the development of a border science, in which geologists and archaeologists jointly study human evolution.

For the ancient Romans, lamps were more than just a way to be able to see in the dark - they were mythical muses, witnesses to secrets, and instruments of the supernatural. Far more familiar to the average Roman than the high art of mosaics, statues, or frescos, lamps created the atmosphere of day-to-day life in the homes, workshops, and public houses of Roman provincial towns. This catalog brings together for the first time the 210 ancient lamps excavated since 1949 in Bratislava-Rusovce, a suburb of the capital of Slovakia and the site of the ancient Roman settlement of Gerulata. What may appear at first glance as a standard panoply of Roman lamps is comprehensively examined to uncover signs of wear and use, unique personal inscriptions, and exceptional forms. This book reveals the stunning wealth of knowledge that can be gained from the study of lighting devices in this liminal settlement on the tough northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

One spring morning two men cutting peat in a Danish bog uncovered a well-preserved body of a man with a noose around his neck. Thinking they had stumbled upon a murder victim, they reported their discovery to the police, who were baffled until they consulted the famous archaeologist P.V. Glob. Glob identified the body as that of a two-thousand-year-old man, ritually murdered and thrown in the bog as a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility.

Written in the guise of a scientific detective story, this classic of archaeological history--a best-seller when it was published in England but out of print for many years--is a thoroughly engrossing and still reliable account of the religion, culture, and daily life of the European Iron Age.

Includes 76 black-and-white photographs.

Although occupied only relatively briefly in the long span of world prehistory, Scandinavia is an extraordinary laboratory for investigating past human societies. The area was essentially unoccupied until the end of the last Ice Age when the melting of huge ice sheets left behind a fresh, barren land surface, which was eventually covered by flora and fauna. The first humans did not arrive until sometime after 13,500 BCE. The prehistoric remains of human activity in Scandinavia - much of it remarkably preserved in its bogs, lakes, and fjords - have given archaeologists a richly detailed portrait of the evolution of human society. In this book, Doug Price provides an archaeological history of Scandinavia-a land mass comprising the modern countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway-from the arrival of the first humans after the last Ice Age to the end of the Viking period, ca. AD 1050. Constructed similarly to the author's previous book, Europe before Rome, Ancient Scandinavia provides overviews of each prehistoric epoch followed by detailed, illustrative examples from the archaeological record. An engrossing and comprehensive picture emerges of change across the millennia, as human society evolves from small bands of hunter - gatherers to large farming communities to the complex warrior cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages, which culminated in the spectacular rise of the Vikings. The material evidence of these past societies - arrowheads from reindeer hunts, megalithic tombs, rock art, beautifully wrought weaponry, Viking warships - give vivid testimony to the ancient humans who once called home this often unforgiving edge of the inhabitable world.

Human beings depend more on technology than any other animal--the use of tools and weapons is vital to the survival of our species. What processes of biocultural evolution led to this unique dependence? Steven Kuhn turns to the Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) and to artifacts associated with Neanderthals, the most recent human predecessors. His study examines the ecological, economic, and strategic factors that shaped the behavior of Mousterian tool makers, revealing how these hominids brought technological knowledge to bear on the basic problems of survival.

Kuhn's main database consists of assemblages of stone artifacts from four caves and a series of open-air localities situated on the western coast of the Italian peninsula. Variations in the ways stone tools were produced, maintained, and discarded demonstrate how Mousterian hominids coped with the problems of keeping mobile groups supplied with the artifacts and raw materials they used on a daily basis. Changes through time in lithic technology were closely tied to shifting strategies for hunting and collecting food. Some of the most provocative findings of this study stem from observations about the behavioral flexibility of Mousterian populations and the role of planning in foraging and technology.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The reconstruction of the technical systems of ceramic production and of its 'chaine operatoire' is a means of exploring certain social structures in time and space. For many years, methodological procedures based on multidisciplinarity have made it possible to analyse both materials and methods of fabrication for this purpose. Session IV-3 organised at the 18th Congress of the UISPP in 2018 aimed to highlight the contribution of technological approaches to ceramics, both in archaeology and in ethnology, to the analysis of pre- and protohistoric societies. The case studies focus on the Neolithic and the European Bronze Age, but also on the megalithism of our era in Senegal.

Between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC: Exploring Cultural Diversity and Change in Late Prehistoric Communities is a collection of studies on the cultural reconfigurations that occurred in western Europe between the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. It brings together seven texts focusing on the evidence from the West of the Iberian Peninsula, and one on the South of England. The texts have their origin in a landmark meeting held at the University of Coimbra in November 2018, where scholars explored the grand narratives explaining the differences between what are traditionally considered Chalcolithic (or Late Neolithic) and Bronze Age communities. The contributions look at key aspects of these grand narratives through regional perspectives, asking the following questions: is there clear data to support the idea of an intensification of social complexity towards the emergence of the Bronze Age chiefdoms? What is the role of monumental architecture within this process? How do we best discuss the different levels of architectural visibility during this period? How can we interpret collective and individual burials in relation to the emergence of individual/territorial powers? In answering these questions, the papers explore regional diversity and argue that regional specificities resist a general interpretation of the historical process at stake. In light of this resistance, the book emphasizes that cultural singularities only become visible through contextual, medium, or low-scale approaches. The recognition of singularities challenges grand narratives, but also carries the potential to expand our understanding of the changes that occurred during this key moment of Late Prehistory. The book thus offers readers the opportunity to think about the diversity of archaeological evidence in combination with an exploration of the available range of approaches and narratives. The critical intertwining of multiple points of view is necessary, because it gets us closer to how elusive the cultural differences of prehistoric communities can be. This elusive dimension is precisely what can force us to constantly rethink what we see and what questions we ask.