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.

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.

It has been said that for 99 per cent of their cultural history human societies have made their living through the collection of wild resources. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the study of hunters and gatherers has become an increasingly popular and central topic of research. Within archaeology it has created an international focus for people working in many different areas of the world. At the same time it has provided a meeting ground for a range of disciplines, all concerned in one way or another with aspects of human behaviour. However, analysis of the prehistoric record has inevitably lagged behind the development of fresh theoretical perspectives. Hunter-gatherer economy in prehistory seeks to bridge this gap by combining the discussion of recent developments in ecological and social theory with the analysis of prehistoric data from many of the classic areas of palaeolithic studies in Europe.

The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines offers a conspectus of recent work on coastal archaeology examining the various ways in which hunter-gatherers and farmers across the world exploited marine resources such as fish, shellfish and waterfowl in prehistory. Changes in sea levels and the balance of marine ecosystems have altered coastal environments significantly over the last ten thousand years and the contributors assess the impact of these changes on the nature of human settlement and subsistence. An overview of coastal archaeology as a developing discipline is followed by ten case studies from a wide variety of places including Scandinavia, Japan, Tasmania and New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and the United States.