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The Times of their Lives - Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe (Hardcover)
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The Times of their Lives - Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe (Hardcover)
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The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the
remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through
Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more
precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of
lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better
timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo
of change. Rather than the conventional default perspective of
generally slow change and much continuity, in blocks of time a
couple of centuries long or more, we can now examine sequences that
are often much more dynamic, quicker-changing, and from time to
time more interrupted and punctuated than we had previously
imagined. We can now write much more precise and ambitious
narratives about the actions, decisions and choices of past people;
the pre- can and should come out of prehistory. Despite the absence
of written records, such narratives can be aligned much more
closely with those of history and its concerns with the specific
and the particular, and can serve to rid archaeology of its
addictions to generalisation and fuzzy chronology. Coming out of a
recent major project funded by the European Research Council, and
with the experience of Gathering Time (Oxbow Books 2011) also
behind it, The Times of their Lives sets out this case. It
considers the varying timescales of archaeology, history and
anthropology, and the construction of precise chronologies. It
examines the reach of precision in a series of case studies across
Neolithic Europe to do with big themes of settlement, monumentality
and materiality through the sixth to third millennia cal BC. It
goes on to consider the implications of much more precise
chronologies for narratives of social differentiation and change
through the Neolithic sequence, and reflects on how to combine the
varying timescales presented by turning points in the long term, by
the slow time of daily life, subsistence practices and population
growth, and by lifetime and generational developments. It ends by
looking ahead to a future archaeology, exploiting the best of
archaeological science, which can write precise and detailed
narratives for the people of early history. Though focused on the
European Neolithic, The Times of their Lives sets a challenge for
archaeology as a whole.
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