Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.

Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.

Information and its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands explores the question of how information, broadly conceived, is acquired, stored, circulated, and utilized in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, or bands. Given the nature of this question, the volume brings together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines, including archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and evolutionary ecology. Each of these specialties deals with the question of information in different ways and with different sets of data given different primacy. The fundamental goal of the volume is to bridge disciplines and subdisciplines, open discussion, and see if some common ground-either theoretical perspectives, general principles, or methodologies-can be developed upon which to build future research on the role of information in hunter-gatherer bands. Volume 5 in the Ideas, Debates and Perspectives series.

Six papers from a session on Late Paleolithic Environments and Cultural Relations around the Adriatic held at the XV UISPP World Congress (Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006). Contents: 1) New data from the late Upper Palaeolithic site of Fondo Focone (Ugento, Southern Apulia, Italy): the lithic industry of the B trench (Amilcare Bietti and Emanuele Cancellieri); 2 Figuring out no-oneAes land. Why was the Karst deserted in the Late Glacial? (Giovanni Boschian and Fabio Fusco); 3) The Late Epigravettian in Istria. Late Paleolithic colonization and lithic technology in the northern Adriatic area (Darko Komso and Paolo Pellegatti); 4) The Late Glacial aeGreat Adriatic PlainAe: aeGarden of EdenAe or aeNo ManAes LandAe during the Epipalaeolithic? A view from Istria (Croatia) (Preston Miracle); 5 Social and Cultural Integration in the Late Upper Palaeolithic of the Western Balkans (Dusan Mihailovic); 6) Social territories around the Adriatic in the late Pleistocene by Robert Whallon.