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In the Footsteps of the Etruscans describes the archaeology of the countryside within a ten km radius of the small town of Tuscania near Rome, throwing light on the unrecorded lives of the generations of farmers and shepherds who have lived there. What was the character of prehistoric settlement prior to Etruscan urbanization? How did urbanization shape the lives of the 'ordinary Etruscans' working the land, hardly ever addressed in Etruscan archaeology? What was the impact on these people of being absorbed into the expanding Roman empire and its globalised economic structures? How did the empire's collapse and the subsequent emergence of the nucleated medieval village affect Tuscania's rural population? The project's 7500-year 'archaeological history', from the first farmers to those grappling with globalisation today, contributes eloquently to our understanding of how Mediterranean peoples have constantly shaped their landscape, and been shaped by it.

Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. This book discusses successes and failures of past land use and settlement in drylands, and contributes to wider debates about desertification and the sustainability of dryland settlement.

Series Information:
One World Archaeology

The development of agriculture has often been described as the most important change in all of human history. Volume 2 of the Cambridge World History series explores the origins and impact of agriculture and agricultural communities, and also discusses issues associated with pastoralism and hunter-fisher-gatherer economies. To capture the patterns of this key change across the globe, the volume uses an expanded timeframe from 12,000 BCE-500 CE, beginning with the Neolithic and continuing into later periods. Scholars from a range of disciplines, including archaeology, historical linguistics, biology, anthropology, and history, trace common developments in the more complex social structures and cultural forms that agriculture enabled, such as sedentary villages and more elaborate foodways, and then present a series of regional overviews accompanied by detailed case studies from many different parts of the world, including Southwest Asia, South Asia, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

Drawing upon his own extensive knowledge of European archaeology, Graeme Barker has impressively integrated the full range of archaeological data to produce in this book a masterly account of prehistoric farming in Europe on a unique scale. He makes use of modern archaeological techniques to reconstruct the lives of prehistoric farmers in remarkable detail. Not only do we now have a vivid picture of the prehistoric farmyard, but we know what animals were kept, how they were fed and why they were bred. Evidence for crops grown and techniques of cultivation and husbandry helps recreate the prehistoric landscape. Even the social organisation that determined the use of resources, and provided the crucial stimulus for agricultural change, can be relived. Graeme Barker develops his argument through analogies with the agricultural history of classical and medieval Europe and concludes that today's industrial farmers can learn much from the successes and failures of early European farming.

Does it make sense to understand the prehistory, history and present-day patterns of life in Southeast Asia in terms of a distinction between two ways of life: "farming" and "foraging"? This is the central question addressed by the anthropologists and archaeologists contributing to this volume. Inherent within the question "Why Cultivate?" are people's relationships with the physical world: are they primarily to do with subsistence and economics or with social and/or cultural forces? The answers given by the contributors are complex. On a practical level they argue that there is a continuum rather than a sharp break between different levels of management of the environment, but rice-growing usually represents a profound break in people's relations to their cultural and symbolic landscapes. An associated point made by the archaeologists is that the "deep histories" of foraging-farming lifeways that are emerging in this region sit uncomfortably with the theory that foraging was replaced by farming in the mid Holocene as a result of a migration of Austronesian-speaking Neolithic farmers from southern China and Taiwan.

The development of agriculture has often been described as the most important change in all of human history. Volume 2 of the Cambridge World History series explores the origins and impact of agriculture and agricultural communities, and also discusses issues associated with pastoralism and hunter-fisher-gatherer economies. To capture the patterns of this key change across the globe, the volume uses an expanded timeframe from 12,000 BCE-500 CE, beginning with the Neolithic and continuing into later periods. Scholars from a range of disciplines, including archaeology, historical linguistics, biology, anthropology, and history, trace common developments in the more complex social structures and cultural forms that agriculture enabled, such as sedentary villages and more elaborate foodways, and then present a series of regional overviews accompanied by detailed case studies from many different parts of the world, including Southwest Asia, South Asia, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

This book is the companion volume to Rainforest Foraging and Farming in Island Southeast Asia: the Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak. Together they present the results of new fieldwork in the caves and new studies of finds from earlier excavations, a project that has involved a team of over 70 archaeologists and geographers. Rainforest Foraging and Farming told the story of human activity in the caves over the past 50,000 years and how that story throws light on the history of our species in Island Southeast Asia from the time when modern humans first arrived to recent centuries. Archaeological Investigations in the Niah Caves describes the very wide range of methodologies used by the project to collect its evidence, and the key information from those studies about the changing nature of the rainforest over the past 50,000 years and how it sustained the lives of the people who used the caves for shelter or burying their dead. Together, these volumes affirm the unique importance of the Niah Caves for world heritage.

Integrating the techniques of archaeology, history and geography, this book traces the history of human settlement in the Biferno Valley from early prehistory to the present century. It also covers the parallel story of landscape development, showing that the two have to be understood together. It argues for the importance of human settlement, rather than climate (as is often argued) in shaping the Mediterranean landscape. This book provides an interdisciplinary study of a restricted region, but about an important theme: the relationship between people and landscape in the past, and what we can learn from it for the future. A second volume containing the specialist supporting data collected by the archaeological project is also available, entitled "The Biferno Valley: An Archaeological History of a Mediterranean Landscape - the Archaeological and Geomorphical Record". This volume, edited by Graeme Barker, is published in the Leicester Archaeology Monograph series and is available from the School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester.

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.

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.