In this book, Krish Seetah uses butchery as a point of departure for exploring the changing historical relationships between animal utility, symbolism, and meat consumption. Seetah brings together several bodies of literature - on meat, cut marks, craftspeople, and the role of craft in production - that have heretofore been considered in isolation from one another. Focusing on the activity inherent in butcher, he describes the history of knowledge that typifies the craft. He also provides anthropological and archaeological case studies which showcase examples of butchery practices in varied contexts that are seldom identified with zooarchaeological research. Situating the relationship between practice, practitioner, material and commodity, this imaginative study offers new insights into food production, consumption, and the craft of cuisine.

In this book, Brian Hayden provides the first comprehensive, theoretical work on the history of feasting in pre-industrial societies. As an important barometer of cultural change, feasting is at the forefront of theoretical developments in archaeology. The Power of Feasts chronicles the evolution of the practice from its first perceptible prehistoric presence to modern industrial times. This study explores recurring patterns in the dynamics of feasts as well as linkages to other aspects of culture such as food, personhood, cognition, power, politics, and economics. Analyzing detailed ethnographic and archaeological observations from a wide variety of cultures, including Oceania and Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Eurasia, Hayden illuminates the role of feasts as an invaluable insight into the social and political structures of past societies.

The Neolithic period is noted primarily for the change from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture, domestication and sedentism. This change has been studied in the past by archaeologists observing the movements of plants, animals and people. But has not been examined by looking at the domestic architecture of the time. Along with tracking the movement of sedentism, Neolithic houses are also able to show researchers the beginnings of cultural identity, group representation through the construction and decoration of these structures. Additionally as agriculture moved west and north in this era, the architecture and material culture shows this change and its significance. Chapters are arranged chronologically so that authors can address differences and similarities of their region to neighboring ones. To ensure continuity, authors have framed the chapters around the following considerations: construction materials and architectural characteristics; how houses facilitated or perpetua

Although current environmental debates lay the focus on the Industrial Revolution as a sociopolitical development that has led to the current environmental crisis, many ecocritical projects have avoided historicizing their concepts or have been characterized by approaches that were either pre-historic or post-historic: while the environmental movement has harbored the dream of restoring nature to a state untouched by human hands, there is also the pessimistic vision of a post-apocalyptic world, exhausted by humanity's consumption of natural resources. Against this background, the decline of nature has become a narrative template quite common among the public environmental discourse and environmental scientists alike. The volume revisits Antiquity as an epoch which witnessed similar environmental problems and came up with its own interpretations and solutions in dealing with them. This decidedly historical perspective is not only supposed to fill in a blank in ecocritical discourse, but also to question, problematize, and inform our contemporary debates with a completely different take on "nature" and humanity's place in the world. Thereby, a productive dialogue between contemporary ecocritical theories and the classical tradition is established that highlights similarities as well as differences. This volume is the first book to bring ecocriticism and the classical tradition into a comprehensive dialogue. It assembles recognized experts in the field and advanced scholars as well as young and aspiring ecocritics. In order to ensure a dialogic exchange between the contributions, the volume includes four response essays by established ecocritics which embed the sections within a larger theoretical and practical ecocritical framework and discuss the potential of including the pre-modern world into our environmental debates.

The Neolithic period is one of the great transformations in human history - when agriculture first began and dramatic changes occurred in human society. These changes occurred in environments that were radically different to those that exist today, and in northern Europe many landscapes would have been dominated by woodland. Yet wood and woodland rarely figures in the minds of many archaeologists, and it plays no part in the traditional Three Age system that has defined the frameworks of European prehistory. This book explores how human-environment relations altered with the beginnings of farming, and how the Neolithic in northern Europe was made possible through new ways of living in and understanding the environment. Drawing on a broad range of evidence, from pollen data and stone axes to the remains of timber monuments and settlements, the book analyzes the relationship between people, their material culture, and their woodland environment.

This book provides a concise overview of human prehistory. It shows how an understanding of the distant past offers new perspectives on present-day challenges facing our species - and how we can build a sustainable future for all life on planet Earth. Deborah Barsky tells a fascinating story of the long-term evolution of human culture and provides up-to-date examples from the archaeological record to illustrate the different phases of human history. Barsky also presents a refreshing and original analysis about issues plaguing modern globalized society, such as racism, institutionalized religion, the digital revolution, human migrations, terrorism, and war. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Human Prehistory is aimed at an introductory-level audience. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary, scientific study of human prehistory, as well as the theoretical interpretations of human evolutionary processes that are used in contemporary archaeological practice. Definitions, tables, and illustrations accompany the text.

Regional identities and practices are often debated in American archaeology, but Middle Atlantic prehistorians have largely refrained from such discussions, focusing instead on creating chronologies and studying socio-political evolution from the perspective of sub-regions. What is Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology? What are the questions and methods that identify our practice in this region or connect research in our region to larger anthropological themes? Middle Atlantic Prehistory: Foundations and Practice provides a basic survey of Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology and serves as an important reference for situating the development of Middle Atlantic prehistoric archaeology within the present context of culture area studies. This edited volume is a regional, historic overview of important themes, topics, and approaches in Middle Atlantic prehistory; covering major practical and theoretical debates and controversies in the region and in the discipline. Each chapter is holistic in its review of the historical development of a particular theme, in evaluating its contributions to current scholarship, and in proposing future directions for productive scholarly work. Contributing authors represent the full range of professional practice in archaeology and include university professors, cultural resources professionals, government regulatory/review archaeologists and museums curators with many years of practical and theoretical immersion in his/her chapter topic, and is highly regarded in the discipline and in the region for their expertise. Middle Atlantic Prehistory provides a much-needed synthesis and historical overview for academic and cultural resource archaeologists and independent scholars working in the Middle Atlantic region in particular.

An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is the first concise introduction that lays out the epistemological foundations of evolutionary cognitive archaeology in a way that is accessible to students. The volume is divided into three sections. The first section situates cognitive archaeology in the pantheon of archaeological approaches and distinguishes between ideational cognitive archaeology and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. This is followed by a close look at the nature of cognitive archaeological inferences and concludes with brief summaries of the major methods of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The second section of the book introduces the reader to a variety of cognitive phenomena that are accessible using the methods of cognitive archaeology: memory, technical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, art and aesthetics, and symbolism and language. The third section presents a brief outline of hominin cognitive evolution from the perspective of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The authors divide the archaeological record into three major phases: The Bipedal Apes-3.3 million-1.7 million years ago; The Axe Age-1.7 million-300,000 years ago; and The Emergence of Modern Thinking-300,000-12,000 years ago. An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is an essential text for undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars across the behavioral and social sciences interested in learning about cognitive archaeology, including psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists.

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.

This book focuses on the archaeology of the hunter-gatherer societies that inhabited Europe in the millennia between the last Ice Age and the spread of agriculture, between ten thousand and five thousand years ago. Traditionally viewed as a period of cultural stagnation, new data now demonstrate that this was a period of radical change and innovation. This was the period that witnessed the colonisation of extensive new territory at high latitudes and high altitudes following postglacial climatic change, the development of seafaring, and the synthesis of the technological, economic, and social capabilities that underpinned the later development of agricultural and urban societies. Providing a pan-European overview, Mesolithic Europe includes regional syntheses written by experts in each region as well as a diversity of theoretical perspectives.

How did religion emerge-and why? What are the links between behavior, environment, and religiosity? Diving millions of years into the past, to a time when human ancestors began grappling with issues of safety, worth, identity, loss, power, and meaning in complex and difficult environments, Gregory J. Wightman explores the significance of goal-directed action and the rise of material culture for the advent of religiosity and ritual. The book opens by tackling questions of cognitive evolution and group psychology, and how these ideas can integrate with archaeological evidence such as stone tools, shell beads, and graves. In turn, it focuses on how human ancestors engaged with their environments, how those engagements became routine, and how, eventually, certain routines took on a recognizably ritualistic flavor. Wightman also critically examines the very real constraints on drawing inferences about prehistoric belief systems solely from limited material residues. Nevertheless, Wightman argues that symbolic objects are not merely illustrative of religion, but also constitutive of it; in the continual dance between brain and behavior, between internal and external environments, lie the seeds of ritual and religion. Weaving together insights from archaeology; anthropology; cognitive and cultural neuroscience; history and philosophy of religions; and evolutionary, social, and developmental psychology, Wightman provides an intricate, evidence-based understanding of religion's earliest origins.

In Search of the Labyrinth explores the enduring cultural legacy of Minoan Crete by offering an overview of Minoan archaeology and modern responses to it in literature, the visual and performing arts, and other cultural practices. The focus is on the twentieth century, and on responses that involve a clear engagement with the material culture of Minoan Crete, not just with mythological narratives in Classical sources, as illustrated by the works of novelists, poets, avant-garde artists, couturiers, musicians, philosophers, architects, film directors, and even psychoanalysts - from Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust to D.H. Lawrence, Cecil Day-Lewis, Oswald Spengler, Nikos Kazantzakis, Robert Graves, Andre Gide, Mary Renault, Christa Wolf, Don DeLillo, Rhea Galanaki, Leon Bakst, Marc Chagall, Mariano Fortuny, Robert Wise, Martin Heidegger, Karl Lagerfeld, and Harrison Birtwistle, among many others. The volume also explores the fascination with things Minoan in antiquity and in the present millennium: from Minoan-inspired motifs decorating pottery of the Greek Early Iron Age, to uses of the Minoans in twenty-first-century music, poetry, fashion, and other media.

'The text speaks for itself. It is a vivid, scholarly and sensitive view.' - The Archaeologist

'As a specialist, I found Ancestral Geographies unusually enjoyable as well as stimulating, and I think it will work well for other kinds of readers at different stages and with different interests. For a sense of how life might have been both in daily spheres and at unusual monuments in the Early Neolithic, this is a brilliant introduction.' - Landscape History

'This is a wonderful book, beautifully written, and elegant summary of Edmonds' own views and of the conclusions of an exciting new generation of British prehistorians.' - Ian Hodder, Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today s world.

The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies."

In this book, Robert L. Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines-from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics-The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.

Part of a resurgence in the comparative study of ancient societies, this book presents a variety of methods and approaches to comparative analysis through the examination of wide-ranging case studies. Each chapter is a comparative study, and the diverse topics and regions covered in the book contribute to the growing understanding of variation and change in ancient complex societies. The authors explore themes ranging from urbanization and settlement patterns, to the political strategies of kings and chiefs, to the economic choices of individuals and households. The case studies cover an array of geographical settings, from the Andes to Southeast Asia. The authors are leading archaeologists whose research on early empires, states, and chiefdoms is at the cutting edge of scientific archaeology.

Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.

Everyday Life in the Ice Age is the first attempt to present a truly complete, balanced and realistic picture of life during the last Ice Age, with its many problems and challenges, while dispelling many of the myths and inaccuracies about our early ancestors. One of the most common questions asked by visitors to Europe's decorated caves is 'What was life like for these people?' No previous book has ever managed to answer this question, and most studies of the period are aimed entirely at academics, tending to focus on tool-types rather than what the tools were used for. Women and children are almost invisible in these studies. The book examines all aspects of the lives of biologically modern humans in Europe from about 40,000 to 12,000 years ago, the period known as the Last Ice Age, a time of radical change in climate and environment. It explores how people were able to cope with and adapt to the often rapid alterations in their circumstances. Elle Clifford's background in Social Psychology brings important insights into aspects of the past which are never normally discussed - domestic and family life, pregnancy and child-rearing, and care of the sick and elderly. The book is aimed not only at students and specialists, but also and especially the interested public, for whom the most interesting questions are: How were they like us? and what behaviours do we share?

Figurines dating from prehistory have been found across the world but have never before been considered globally. The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines is the first book to offer a comparative survey of this kind, bringing together approaches from across the landscape of contemporary research into a definitive resource in the field. The volume is comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible, with dedicated and fully illustrated chapters covering figurines from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia and the Pacific laid out by geographical location and written by the foremost scholars in figurine studies; wherever prehistoric figurines are found they have been expertly described and examined in relation to their subject matter, form, function, context, chronology, meaning, and interpretation. Specific themes that are discussed by contributors include, for example, theories of figurine interpretation, meaning in processes and contexts of figurine production, use, destruction and disposal, and the cognitive and social implications of representation. Chronologically, the coverage ranges from the Middle Palaeolithic through to areas and periods where an absence of historical sources renders figurines 'prehistoric' even though they might have been produced in the mid-2nd millennium AD, as in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The result is a synthesis of invaluable insights into past thinking on the human body, gender, identity, and how the figurines might have been used, either practically, ritually, or even playfully.

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.

Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is one of the largest pre-Columbian mound sites in North America. Comprising twenty-nine earthen mounds that were once platforms for chiefly residences and temples, Moundville was a major political and religious center for the people living in its region and for the wider Mississippian world. A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations. Using models deeply rooted in local ethnohistory, it ties Moundville and its people more closely than before to the ethnography of native southerners and emphasizes the role of social memory and ritual practices both at the mound center and in the hinterland, providing an up-to-date and refreshingly nuanced interpretation of Mississippian culture.

Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized during the Bronze Age, and a new class of warriors made their appearance. Evidence for this development is reflected in the ostentatious display of weapons in burials and hoards, and in iconography, from rock art to palace frescoes. These new manifestations of martial culture constructed the warrior as a 'Hero' and warfare as 'Heroic'. The case studies, written by an international team of scholars, discuss these and other new aspects of Bronze Age warfare. Moreover, the essays show that warriors also facilitated mobility and innovation as new weapons would have quickly spread from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.

Prehistoric rock art is the markings paintings, engravings, or pecked images left on rocks or cave walls by ancient peoples. In this book, Paul G. Bahn provides a richly illustrated overview of prehistoric rock art and cave art from around the world. Summarizing the recent advances in our understanding of this extraordinary visual record, he discusses new discoveries, new approaches to recording and interpretation, and current problems in conservation. Bahn focuses in particular on current issues in the interpretation of rock art, notably the shamanic interpretation that has been influential in recent years and that he refutes. This book is based on the Rhind Lectures that the author delivered for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2006."

Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous monuments. Who built it, how and why are questions that have endured for at least 900 years, but modern methods of investigation are now able to offer up a completely new understanding of this iconic stone circle. Stonehenge’s history straddles the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, though its story began long before it was built. Serving initially as a burial ground, it evolved over time into a sacred place for gathering, feasting and building, and was remodelled several times as different peoples arrived in the area along with new technologies and customs. In more recent centuries it has found itself the centre of excavations, political protests and even conspiracy theories, embedding itself in the consciousness of the modern world. In this book Mike Parker Pearson draws on two decades of research, the results of recent excavations and cutting-edge scientific analyses to uncover many of the secrets that this prehistoric stone circle has kept for 5,000 years. In doing so, he paints the most comprehensive picture yet of the history of Stonehenge, from its origins up to the 21st century, and reveals how in some ways trying to explain its power of attraction in the present is harder than explaining its purpose in the ancient past.