Growing out of two decades of teaching and practice, Finding God Again: Spirituality for Adults addresses, in an experiential and pastoral way, the need to re-envision God as we grow from an adolescent to adult spirituality. John Shea, a renowned pastoral counselor and teacher, shows how we can lose touch with religion, spirituality, and a belief in God because of times when our image of God is too narrow, unreal, or inadequate to make sense of our experience. Shea uses real life stories to illustrate and offer a life-changing challenge to leave behind the Superego God of childhood in favor of a Living God we can relate to as adults. By showing the reader how to revisit God as an adult, Shea provides the motivation and method to embrace a Living God and claim the independence and responsibility that accompany genuine adulthood.

In Stone Tools in Human Evolution, John J. Shea argues that over the last three million years hominins' technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, much like that seen among living non-human primates, to a uniquely human pattern of obligatory tool use. Examining how the lithic archaeological record changed over the course of human evolution, he compares tool use by living humans and non-human primates and predicts how the archaeological stone tool evidence should have changed as distinctively human behaviors evolved. Those behaviors include using cutting tools, logistical mobility (carrying things), language and symbolic artifacts, geographic dispersal and diaspora, and residential sedentism (living in the same place for prolonged periods). Shea then tests those predictions by analyzing the archaeological lithic record from 6,500 years ago to 3.5 million years ago.

Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide surveys the lithic record for the East Mediterranean Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and adjacent territories) from the earliest times to 6,500 years ago. It is intended both as an introduction to this lithic evidence for students and as a resource for researchers working with Paleolithic and Neolithic stone tool evidence. Written by a lithic analyst and professional flintknapper, this book systematically examines variation in technology, typology, and industries for the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic; the Epipaleolithic; and Neolithic periods in the Near East. It is extensively illustrated with drawings of stone tools. In addition to surveying the lithic evidence, the book also considers ways in which archaeological treatment of this evidence could be changed to make it more relevant to major issues in human origins research. A final chapter shows how change in stone tool designs points to increasing human dependence on stone tools across the long sweep of Stone Age prehistory.

For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?

In Stone Tools in Human Evolution, John J. Shea argues that over the last three million years hominins' technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, much like that seen among living non-human primates, to a uniquely human pattern of obligatory tool use. Examining how the lithic archaeological record changed over the course of human evolution, he compares tool use by living humans and non-human primates and predicts how the archaeological stone tool evidence should have changed as distinctively human behaviors evolved. Those behaviors include using cutting tools, logistical mobility (carrying things), language and symbolic artifacts, geographic dispersal and diaspora, and residential sedentism (living in the same place for prolonged periods). Shea then tests those predictions by analyzing the archaeological lithic record from 6,500 years ago to 3.5 million years ago.

Stone tools are the least familiar objects that archaeologists recover from their excavations, and predictably, they struggle to understand them. Eastern Africa alone boasts a 3.4 million-year-long archaeological record but its stone tool evidence still remains disorganized, unsynthesized, and all-but-impenetrable to non-experts, and especially so to students from Eastern African countries. In this book, John J. Shea offers a simple, straightforward, and richly illustrated introduction in how to read stone tools. An experienced stone tool analyst and an expert stoneworker, he synthesizes the Eastern African stone tool evidence for the first time. Shea presents the EAST Typology, a new framework for describing stone tools specifically designed to allow archaeologists to do what they currently cannot: compare stone tool evidence across the full sweep of Eastern African prehistory. He also includes a series of short, fictional, and humorous vignettes set on an Eastern African archaeological excavation, which illustrate the major issues and controversies in research about stone tools.

Ar Rasfa is a Middle Paleolithic open-air site located in the Rift Valley of Northwest Jordan excavated between 1997-1999. This book presents a detailed technological, typological, and paleoanthropological analysis of the stone tool assemblage from Ar Rasfa. Artifacts reflecting the initial preparation and exploitation of local flint sources dominate the Ar Rasfa assemblage. Typologically, the assemblage is most similar to Levantine Mousterian assemblages such as those from Naame, Skhul and Qafzeh. Patterns of lithic variability and contextual evidence suggest Ar Rasfa was visited intermittently by human populations circulating between lake/river-edge resources in the Rift Valley bottom and woodland habitats along the ridge of the Transjordan Plateau."

In Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human, John J. Shea describes an adult, moral, and fully human self in terms of integrity and mutuality. Those who are fully human are caring and just. Violence is the absence of care and justice. Peace-the pinnacle of human development-is their embodiment. Integrity and mutuality together beget care and justice and care and justice together beget peace. Shea shows the practical importance of the fully human self for education, psychotherapy, and spirituality. This book is especially recommended for scholars and those in helping professions.

Growing out of two decades of teaching and practice, Finding God Again: Spirituality for Adults addresses, in an experiential and pastoral way, the need to re-envision God as we grow from an adolescent to adult spirituality. John Shea, a renowned pastoral counselor and teacher, shows how we can lose touch with religion, spirituality, and a belief in God because of times when our image of God is too narrow, unreal, or inadequate to make sense of our experience. Shea uses real life stories to illustrate and offer a life-changing challenge to leave behind the Superego God of childhood in favor of a Living God we can relate to as adults. By showing the reader how to revisit God as an adult, Shea provides the motivation and method to embrace a Living God and claim the independence and responsibility that accompany genuine adulthood.