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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.
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.
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.
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