Download or read book A Study of Prehistoric Social Change written by Ross H. Cordy and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gender Transformations in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies written by Julia Katharina Koch and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is dedicated to examining the role and impact of gender relations during socio-environmental transformation processes as well as matters of gender equality in archaeological academia across the globe.

Download or read book Prehistory written by Chris Gosden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.

Download or read book Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology written by Dries Daems and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.

Download or read book Social Change in Aegean Prehistory written by Corien Wiersma and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together papers that discuss social change. The main focus is on the Early Helladic III to Late Helladic I period in southern Greece, but also touches upon the surrounding islands. This specific timeframe enables us to consider how mainland societies recovered from a ‘crisis’ and how they eventually developed into the differentiated, culturally receptive and competitive social formations of the early Mycenaean period. Material changes are highlighted in the various papers, ranging from pottery and burials to domestic architecture and settlement structures, followed by discussions of how these changes relate to social change. A variety of factors is thereby considered including demographic changes, reciprocal relations and sumptuary behavior, household organization and kin structure, age and gender divisions, internal tensions, connectivity and mobility. As such, this volume is of interest to both Aegean prehistorians as to scholars interested in social and material change. The volume consists of eight papers, preceded by an introduction and concluded by a response. The introduction gives an overview of the development of the debate on the explanation of social change in Aegean prehistory. The response places the volume in a broader context of the EH III-LH I period and the broader discussion on social change.

Download or read book Habitus written by Slawomir Kadrow and published by Scales of Transformation. This book was released on 2019-06-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of the social dimension of technology and transformation, seen from the perspective of 'Habitus', has repeatedly been discussed in the scientific discourse exploring prehistoric and archaic communities. However, the complexity of related phenomena constantly provokes new approaches in different archaeological contexts, which leads to interesting findings.By presenting the latest studies on the social dimension of technology and transformation, this book contributes to a better understanding of a system of embodied dispositions hidden within Bourdieu's concept of 'Habitus'. These studies mainly cover European areas; from Scandinavia to Italy, the Balkans to the British Isles, and Ukraine to the Northern Caucasus. In addition, ethnoarchaeological field studies from distant Indonesia are used to interpret the Hallstatt Culture in Europe. The papers span a chronological dimension from the Neolithic to the beginning of the Iron Age and in summary include a diachronic perspective. Rock art, Trypillian megasites, stone axes and adzes, metallurgy, wagons, archery items, ceramics produced on potter's wheels, mechanisms of cultural genesis and dualistic social systems are examples of the topics discussed. This book also provides comments on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, including the concept of 'Habitus'.This book is addressed to international academia, presenting an important set of information and interpretations for archaeologists and readers interested in European prehistory. It comprises contributions to the CRC 1266 International Workshop 'Habitus? The Social Dimension of Technology and Transformation', held in 2018 at Kiel University.

Download or read book Detecting and Explaining Technological Innovation in Prehistory written by Michela Spataro and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology refers to any set of standardised procedures for transforming raw materials into finished products. Innovation consists of any change in technology which has tangible and lasting effect on human practices, whether or not it provides utilitarian advantages. Prehistoric societies were never static, but the tempo of innovation occasionally increased to the point that we can refer to transformation taking place. Prehistorians must therefore identify factors promoting or hindering innovation.This volume stems from an international workshop, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 'Scales of Transformation' at Kiel University in November 2017. The meeting challenged its participants to detect and explain technological change in the past and its role in transformation processes, using archaeological and ethnographic case studies. The papers draw mainly on examples from prehistoric Europe, but case-studies from Iran, the Indus Valley, and contemporary central America are also included. The authors adopt several perspectives, including cultural-historical, economic, environmental, demographic, functional, and agent-based approaches.These case studies often rely on interdisciplinary research, whereby field archaeology, archaeometric analysis, experimental archaeology and ethnographic research are used together to observe and explain innovations and changes in the artisan's repertoire. The results demonstrate that interdisciplinary research is becoming essential to understanding transformation phenomena in prehistoric archaeology, superseding typo-chronological description and comparison.This book is a scholarly publication aimed at academic researchers, particularly archaeologists and archaeological scientists working on ceramics, osseous and metal artifacts.

Download or read book Coba written by William J. Folan and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coba

Download or read book Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia written by Bryan K. Hanks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-31 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges current interpretations of social and cultural change in prehistoric Eurasia, through a thematic investigation of archaeological patterns.

Download or read book Political Structure and Change in the Prehistoric Southeastern United States written by John F. Scarry and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We now realize that to understand the origin of the state, we must first understand the development of the chiefdom. And nowhere in the world is the study of chiefdoms being pursued as vigorously as in the Southeast. Combining tantalizing bits of ethnohistory with painstaking archaeology, the scholars of this region are adding greatly to our understanding of the chiefdom as a political form. The present volume, which is the work of outstanding specialists in the region, is a striking example of the rich fruit being yielded by this research."--Robert L. Carneiro, Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History "A major step forward in the history of work on Mississippian culture. . . . This book is a must for those interested in the period--and highly recommended for archaeologists who are not southeasterners."--James A. Brown, Northwestern University "will do blurb after seeing page proofs"--Robert Carneiro, American Museum of Natural History The great societies that flourished during the late Precolumbian period--called Mississippian chiefdoms--disappeared shortly after European contact, leaving a legacy across the southeastern United States. This book presents up-to-date information about their political structures, offering new perspectives on "cycling"--the growth, collapse, and reappearance of chiefdoms. Using archaeological discoveries and historical documents, the book documents the dynamic and varied nature of chiefdoms and explains why they evolved the way they did. It illustrates the value of studies of the Mississippian societies for addressing general anthropological questions. Contents Part I. Introduction 1. Looking for and at Mississippian Political Change, by John F. Scarry 2. The Nature of Mississippian Societies, by John F. Scarry Part II. Structure and Change in Mississippian Societies 3. Development and Dissolution of a Mississippian Society in the American Bottom, Illinois, by George R. Milner 4. Markers of Social Integration: The Development of Centralized Authority in the Spiro Region, by J. Daniel Rogers 5. Control over Goods and the Political Stability of the Moundville Chiefdom, by Paul D. Welch 6. Platform-Mound Construction and the Instability of Mississippian Chiefdoms, by David J. Hally 7. Mississippian Political Dynamics in the Oconee Valley, Georgia, by Mark Williams and Gary Shapiro 8. Chiefly Cycling and Large-Scale Abandonments as Viewed from the Savannah River Basin, by David G. Anderson 9. Stability and Change in the Apalachee Chiefdom, by John F. Scarry Part III. Chiefly Politics and the Mississippian Societies 10. Fluctuations Between Simple and Complex Chiefdoms: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeast, by David G. Anderson John F. Scarry is research associate and research assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the coauthor of San Pedro y San Pablo de Patale: A Seventeenth-Century Spanish Mission in Leon County, Florida, and has written numerous book chapters and articles for publications such as The Florida Anthropologist, Southeastern Archaeology, and Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin.

Download or read book The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean written by A. Bernard Knapp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 1677 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Download or read book Archaeology of Households Kinship and Social Change written by Lacey B. Carpenter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change offers new perspectives on the processes of social change from the standpoint of household archaeology. This volume develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to the archaeology of households pursuing three critical themes: household diversity in human residential communities with and without archaeologically identifiable houses, interactions within and between households that explicitly considers impacts of kin and non-kin relationships, and lastly change as a process that involves the choices made by members of households in the context of larger societal constraints. Encompassing these themes, authors explore the role of social ties and their material manifestations (within the house, dwelling, or other constructed space), how the household relates to other social units, how households consolidate power and control over resources, and how these changes manifest at multiple scales. The case studies presented in this volume have broader implications for understanding the drivers of change, the ways households create the contexts for change, and how households serve as spaces for invention, reaction, and/or resistance. Understanding the nature of relationships within households is necessary for a more complete understanding of communities and regions as these ties are vital to explaining how and why societies change. Taking a comparative outlook, with case studies from around the world, this volume will inform students and professionals researching household archaeology and be of interest to other disciplines concerned with the relationship between social networks and societal change.

Download or read book Prehistoric Archeology Along the Zagros Flanks written by University of Chicago. Oriental Institute and published by Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. This book was released on 1983 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert J. Braidwood set out with his wife Linda in the spring of 1948 to explore the field evidence for the transition from hunter-gatherer way of life to sedentary food production in the region surrounding the Mesopotamian Plain. This initial work started many archaeologists thinking about how the processes that lay behind this fundamental change, and ultimately other transitions, could be documented archaeologically. His pioneering effort to introduce specialists from the geological and biological sciences into work on relevant problems in this transition brought about a new set of standards for fieldwork in the Near East and a new appreciation of the richness of the multidimensional archaeological record that can result from these studies. This volume is the final report on the Braidwoods' initial phase of exploration from 1948 to 1955 in the Chemchemal Valley and adjacent regions of Iraqi Kurdistan. In this sense it is a work that can be viewed as the result of a study begun at a transition within archaeology itself, from the goals and techniques of the period between the wars to the methods and purposes that characterize the discipline at present. Approximately half the volume is devoted to reports on the architecture and artifacts recovered during three seasons of work at Jarmo, the first early village site with aceramic levels excavated in the Near East. Substantial sections are also devoted to reports on the earlier aceramic site of Karim Shahir and the later (Halafian) site of Banahilk. [From a review by Arthur J. Jelinek in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 265 (1987) 87-88].

Download or read book Population Circulation and the Transformation of Ancient Zuni Communities written by Gregson Schachner and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because nearly all aspects of culture depend on the movement of bodies, objects, and ideas, mobility has been a primary topic during the past forty years of archaeological research on small-scale societies. Most studies have concentrated either on local moves related to subsistence within geographically bounded communities or on migrations between regions resulting from pan-regional social and environmental changes. Gregson Schachner, however, contends that a critical aspect of mobility is the transfer of people, goods, and information within regions. This type of movement, which geographers term "population circulation," is vitally important in defining how both regional social systems and local communities are constituted, maintained, and—most important—changed. Schachner analyzes a population shift in the Zuni region of west-central New Mexico during the thirteenth century AD that led to the inception of major demographic changes, the founding of numerous settlements in frontier zones, and the initiation of radical transformations of community organization. Schachner argues that intraregional population circulation played a vital role in shaping social transformation in the region and that many notable changes during this period arose directly out of peoples' attempts to create new social mechanisms for coping with frequent and geographically extensive residential mobility. By examining multiple aspects of population circulation and comparing areas that were newly settled in the thirteenth century to some that had been continuously occupied for hundreds of years, Schachner illustrates the role of population circulation in the formation of social groups and the creation of contexts conducive to social change.

Download or read book Social Theory in Archaeology and Ancient History written by Geoff Emberling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when archaeology has turned away from questions of the long-term and large scale, this collection of essays reflects on some of the big questions in archaeology and ancient history - how and why societies have grown in scale and complexity, how they have maintained and discarded aspects of their own cultural heritage, and how they have collapsed. In addressing these long-standing questions of broad interest and importance, the authors develop counter-narratives - new ways of understanding what used to be termed 'cultural evolution'. Encompassing the Middle East and Egypt, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, the American Southwest and Mesoamerica, the fourteen essays offer perspectives on long-term cultural trajectories; on cities, states and empires; on collapse; and on the relationship between archaeology and history. The book concludes with a commentary by one of the major voices in archaeological theory, Norman Yoffee.

Download or read book Bioarchaeology and Climate Change written by Gwen Robbins Schug and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Using subadult skeletons from the Deccan Chalcolithic period of Indian prehistory, along with archaeological and paleoclimate data, this volume makes an important contribution to understanding the effects of ecological change on demography and childhood growth during the second millennium B.C. in peninsular India."--Michael Pietrusewsky, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa In the context of current debates about global warming, archaeology contributes important insights for understanding environmental changes in prehistory, and the consequences and responses of past populations to them. In Indian archaeology, climate change and monsoon variability are often invoked to explain major demographic transitions, cultural changes, and migrations of prehistoric populations. During the late Holocene (1400-700 B.C.), agricultural communities flourished in a semiarid region of the Indian subcontinent, until they precipitously collapsed. Gwen Robbins Schug integrates the most recent paleoclimate reconstructions with an innovative analysis of skeletal remains from one of the last abandoned villages to provide a new interpretation of the archaeological record of this period. Robbins Schug’s biocultural synthesis provides us with a new way of looking at the adaptive, social, and cultural transformations that took place in this region during the first and second millennia B.C. Her work clearly and compellingly usurps the climate change paradigm, demonstrating the complexity of human-environmental transformations. This original and significant contribution to bioarchaeological research and methodology enriches our understanding of both global climate change and South Asian prehistory.

Download or read book The View from Madisonville written by Penelope Ballard Drooker and published by U OF M MUSEUM ANTHRO ARCHAEOLOGY. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madisonville was one of the key settlements of the Ohio Valley Fort Ancient people and was the subject of James Griffin’s 1943 classic, The Fort Ancient Aspect. It is a site rich in burials and artifacts documenting the earliest European influences. Drooker re-explores a century of excavation to explain how Contact Period events affected Madisonville inhabitants and their links to eastern Fort Ancient, northern Ohio, Iroquoian, Oneota, and Mississipian groups.