Download or read book Africa from MIS 6 2 written by Sacha C. Jones and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, paleontological and genetic data, this book makes a first attempt to reconstruct African population histories from out species' evolution to the Holocene. Africa during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6 to 2 (~190-12,000 years ago) witnessed the biological development and behavioral florescence of our species. Modern human population dynamics, which involved multiple population expansions, dispersals, contractions and extinctions, played a central role in our species’ evolutionary trajectory. So far, the demographic processes – modern human population sizes, distributions and movements – that occurred within Africa during this critical period have been consistently under-addressed. The authors of this volume aim at (1) examining the impact of this glacial-interglacial- glacial cycle on human group sizes, movements and distributions throughout Africa; (2) investigating the macro- and micro-evolutionary processes underpinning our species’ anatomical and behavioral evolution; and (3) setting an agenda whereby Africa can benefit from, and eventually contribute to, the increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological palaeodemographic frameworks developed on other continents.
Download or read book Africa in Global History written by Toyin Falola and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook places emphasis on modern/contemporary times, and offers relevant sophisticated and comprehensive overviews. It aims to emphasize the religious, economic, political, cultural and social connections between Africa and the rest of the world and features comparisons as well as an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the place of Africa in global history. "This book makes an important contribution to the discussion on the place of Africa in the world and of the world in Africa. An outstanding work of scholarship, it powerfully demonstrates that Africa is not marginal to global concerns. Its labor and resources have made our world, and the continent deserves our respect." – Mukhtar Umar Bunza, Professor of Social History, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, and Commissioner for Higher Education, Kebbi State, Nigeria "This is a deep plunge into the critical place of Africa in global history. The handbook blends a rich set of important tapestries and analysis of the conceptual framework of African diaspora histories, imperialism and globalization. By foregrounding the authentic voices of African interpreters of transnational interactions and exchanges, the Handbook demonstrates a genuine commitment to the promotion of decolonized and indigenous knowledge on African continent and its peoples." – Samuel Oloruntoba, Visiting Research Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University
Download or read book Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa written by Amanuel Beyin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-08-17 with total page 2194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook showcases an Africa-wide compendium of Stone Age archaeological sites and methodological advances that have improved our understanding of hominin lifeways and biogeography in the continent. The focal time spans the Pleistocene Epoch (c. 2.5 million–11,700 years ago) during which important human traits, such as obligate bipedalism that freed the hands to engage in creative activities, a large brain relative to body size, language, and social complexity, developed in the general forms that they are found today. The handbook is the first of its kind, and it is expected to play a significant role in human evolutionary research by: ❖ Collating the African Stone Age record, which exists in a fragmented state along the lines of national boundaries and colonial experiences. ❖ Showcasing emerging conceptual and methodological advances in African Pleistocene archaeology. ❖ Providing reference datasets for teaching and researching African prehistory. ❖ Making Africa’s Stone Age record accessible to researchers and students based in Africa who may not have access to journal publications where most new field discoveries are published. The Handbook features 128 chapters, of which 116 are site entries grouped by the host countries and presented in an alphabetical order. A number of those site-related entries examine multiple archaeological localities lumped under specific projects or study areas. The rest of the contributions deal with methodological topics, such as luminescence and radiocarbon dating, field data recovery, lithic analysis, micromorphology, and hominin fossil and zooarchaeological records of Pleistocene Africa. The introductory chapter provides an historical overview of the development of Stone Age (Paleolithic) archaeology in Africa beginning in the mid-19th century, and paleoenvironmental and chronological frameworks commonly used to structure the continent’s Pleistocene record. By making a good amount of African Stone Age literature accessible to researchers and the public, we wish to promote interest in human evolutionary research in the continent and elsewhere.
Download or read book Handbook of Ancient Nubia written by Dietrich Raue and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 1133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous research projects have studied the Nubian cultures of Sudan and Egypt over the last thirty years, leading to significant new insights. The contributions to this handbook illuminate our current understanding of the cultural history of this fascinating region, including its interconnections to the natural world.
Download or read book African Paleoecology and Human Evolution written by Sally C. Reynolds and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of hominin fossil sites across Africa, including the environmental and ecological evidence central to our understanding of human evolution.
Download or read book Integrating Paleoclimate Stratigraphy Sedimentology Paleontology in Human Evolution and Dispersal Studies from Early Hominins to the Holocene written by Verena E. Foerster and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2022-05-25 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Foraging in the Past written by Lemke and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The label “hunter-gatherer” covers an extremely diverse range of societies and behaviors, yet most of what is known is provided by ethnographic and historical data that cannot be used to interpret prehistory. Foraging in the Past takes an explicitly archaeological approach to the potential of the archaeological record to document the variability and time depth of hunter-gatherers. Well-established and young scholars present new prehistoric data and describe new methods and theories to investigate ancient forager lifeways and document hunter-gatherer variability across the globe. The authors use relationships established by cross-cultural data as a background for examining the empirical patterns of prehistory. Covering underwater sites in North America, the peaks of the Andes, Asian rainforests, and beyond, chapters are data rich, methodologically sound, and theoretically nuanced, effectively exploring the latest evidence for behavioral diversity in the fundamental process of hunting and gathering. Foraging in the Past establishes how hunter-gatherers can be considered archaeologically, extending beyond the reach of ethnographers and historians to argue that only through archaeological research can the full range of hunter-gatherer variability be documented. Presenting a comprehensive and integrated approach to forager diversity in the past, the volume will be of significance to both students and scholars working with or teaching about hunter-gatherers. Contributors: Nicholas J. Conard, Raven Garvey, Keiko Kitagawa, John Krigbaum, Petra Krönneck, Steven Kuhn, Julia Lee-Thorp, Peter Mitchell, Katherine Moore, Susanne C. Münzel, Kurt Rademaker, Patrick Roberts, Britt Starkovich, Brian A. Stewart, Mary Stiner
Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 1329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Archaeology is a relatively young though fast growing discipline. The intellectual heart of cognitive archaeology is archaeology, the discipline that investigates the only direct evidence of the actions and decisions of prehistoric people. Its theories and methods are an eclectic mix of psychological, neuroscientific, paleoneurological, philosophical, anthropological, ethnographic, comparative, aesthetic, and experimental theories, methods, and models, united only by their focus on cognition. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology is a landmark publication, showcasing the theories, methods, and accomplishments of archaeologists who investigate the human mind, including its evolutionary development, its ideation (thoughts and beliefs), and its very nature-through material forms. The volume encompasses the wide spectrum of the discipline, showcasing contributions from more than 50 established and emerging scholars from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Prominent among these are contributions that discuss the epistemological frameworks of both the evolutionary and ideational approaches and the leading theories that ground interpretations. Significantly, the majority of chapters deliver substantive contributions that analyze specific examples of material culture, from the oldest known stone tools to ceramic and rock art traditions of the recent millennium. These examples include the gamut of methods and techniques, including typology, replication studies, cha?nes operatoires, neuroarchaeology, ethnographic comparison, and the direct historical approach. In addition, the book begins with retrospective essays by several of the pioneers of cognitive archaeology, presenting a broad range of state-of-the-art investigations into cognitive abilities, tackling thorny issues like the cognitive status of Neandertals, and concluding with speculative essays about the future of an archaeology of mind, and of the mind itself.
Download or read book Convergent Evolution in Stone Tool Technology written by Michael J. O'Brien and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from a variety of disciplines consider cases of convergence in lithic technology, when functional or developmental constraints result in similar forms in independent lineages. Hominins began using stone tools at least 2.6 million years ago, perhaps even 3.4 million years ago. Given the nearly ubiquitous use of stone tools by humans and their ancestors, the study of lithic technology offers an important line of inquiry into questions of evolution and behavior. This book examines convergence in stone tool-making, cases in which functional or developmental constraints result in similar forms in independent lineages. Identifying examples of convergence, and distinguishing convergence from divergence, refutes hypotheses that suggest physical or cultural connection between far-flung prehistoric toolmakers. Employing phylogenetic analysis and stone-tool replication, the contributors show that similarity of tools can be caused by such common constraints as the fracture properties of stone or adaptive challenges rather than such unlikely phenomena as migration of toolmakers over an Arctic ice shelf. Contributors R. Alexander Bentley, Briggs Buchanan, Marcelo Cardillo, Mathieu Charbonneau, Judith Charlin, Chris Clarkson, Loren G. Davis, Metin I. Eren, Peter Hiscock, Thomas A. Jennings, Steven L. Kuhn, Daniel E. Lieberman, George R. McGhee, Alex Mackay, Michael J. O'Brien, Charlotte D. Pevny, Ceri Shipton, Ashley M. Smallwood, Heather Smith, Jayne Wilkins, Samuel C. Willis, Nicolas Zayns
Download or read book Only in Africa written by Norman Owen-Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That humans originated from Africa is well-known. However, this is widely regarded as a chance outcome, dependant simply on where our common ancestor shared the land with where the great apes lived. This volume builds on from the 'Out of Africa' theory, and takes the view that it is only in Africa that the evolutionary transitions from a forest-inhabiting frugivore to savanna-dwelling meat-eater could have occurred. This book argues that the ecological circumstances that shaped these transitions are exclusive to Africa. It describes distinctive features of the ecology of Africa, with emphasis on savanna grasslands, and relates them to the evolutionary transitions linking early ape-men to modern humans. It shows how physical features of the continent, especially those derived from plate tectonics, set the foundations. This volume adequately conveys that we are here because of the distinctive features of the ecology of Africa.
Download or read book Practical Applications of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 13th International Conference written by Florentino Fdez-Riverola and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-21 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book features 21 papers spanning many different sub-fields in bioinformatics and computational biology, presenting the latest research on the practical applications to promote fruitful interactions between young researchers in different areas related to the field. Next-generation sequencing technologies, together with other emerging and diverse experimental techniques, are evolving rapidly, creating numerous types of omics data. These, in turn, are creating new challenges for the expanding fields of bioinformatics and computational biology, which seek to analyse, process, integrate and extract meaningful knowledge from such data. This calls for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as databases, statistics, data mining, machine learning, optimization, computer science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Clearly, biology is increasingly becoming a science of information, requiring tools from the computational sciences. To address these challenges, we have seen the emergence of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context, the interaction of researchers from different scientific areas is, more than ever, vital to boost the research efforts in the field and contribute to the training of the new generation of interdisciplinary scientists.
Download or read book Culture History and Convergent Evolution written by Huw S. Groucutt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together diverse contributions from leading archaeologists and paleoanthropologists, covering various spatial and temporal periods to distinguish convergent evolution from cultural transmission in order to see if we can discover ancient human populations. With a focus on lithic technology, the book analyzes ancient materials and cultures to systematically explore the theoretical and physical aspects of culture, convergence, and populations in human evolution and prehistory. The book will be of interest to academics, students and researchers in archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, and paleontology. The book begins by addressing early prehistory, discussing the convergent evolution of behaviors and the diverse ecological conditions driving the success of different evolutionary paths. Chapters discuss these topics and technology in the context of the Lower Paleolithic/Earlier Stone age and Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age. The book then moves towards a focus on the prehistory of our species over the last 40,000 years. Topics covered include the human evolutionary and dispersal consequences of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition in Western Eurasia. Readers will also learn about the cultural convergences, and divergences, that occurred during the Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene, such as the budding of human societies in the Americas. The book concludes by integrating these various perspectives and theories, and explores different methods of analysis to link technological developments and cultural convergence.
Download or read book A Scientific Bibliography of the Drakensberg Maloti and Adjacent Lowlands written by Rodney Moffett and published by UJ Press. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bibliography includes scientific articles on the Drakensberg, Maloti and Adjacent Lowlands published between 1808 and 2019. Although focussing on material appearing in accredited journals, there is such a wealth of information in the form of unpublished, yet traceable, reports, documents, presentations and dissertations, these are also included. The bibliography has two parts – a complete list arranged alphabetically, and the same references arranged in 33 different disciplines. These range from Palaeobotany with 17 entries, to Rock Art with 502 entries.
Download or read book African Islands written by Peter Mitchell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-11 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Islands provides the first geographically and chronologically comprehensive overview of the archaeology of African islands. This book draws archaeologically informed histories of African islands into a single synthesis, focused on multiple issues of common interest, among them human impacts on previously uninhabited ecologies, the role of islands in the growth of long-distance maritime trade networks, and the functioning of plantation economies based on the exploitation of unfree labour. Addressing and repairing the longstanding neglect of Africa in general studies of island colonization, settlement, and connectivity, it makes a distinctively African contribution to studies of island archaeology. The availability of this much-needed synthesis also opens up a better understanding of the significance of African islands in the continent's past as a whole. After contextualizing chapters on island archaeology as a field and an introduction to the variety of Africa’s islands and the archaeological research undertaken on them, the book focuses on four themes: arriving, altering, being, and colonizing and resisting. An interdisciplinary approach is taken to these themes, drawing on a broad range of evidence that goes beyond material remains to include genetics, comparative studies of the languages, textual evidence and oral histories, island ecologies, and more. African Islands provides an up-to-date synthesis and account of all aspects of archaeological research on Africa’s islands for students and academics alike.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Diet written by Julia Lee-Thorp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans are unique among animals for the wide diversity of foods and food preparation techniques that are intertwined with regional cultural distinctions around the world. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Diet explores evidence for human diet from our earliest ancestors through the dispersal of our species across the globe. As populations expanded, people encountered new plants and animals and learned how to exploit them for food and other resources. Today, globalization aside, the results manifest in a wide array of traditional cuisines based on locally available indigenous and domesticated plants and animals. How did this complexity emerge? When did early hominins actively incorporate animal foods into their diets, and later, exploit marine and freshwater resources? What were the effects of reliance on domesticated grains such as maize and rice on past populations and the health of individuals? How did a domesticated plant like maize move from its place of origin to the northernmost regions where it can be grown? Importantly, how do we discover this information, and what can be deduced about human health, biology, and cultural practices in the past and present? Such questions are explored in thirty-three chapters written by leading researchers in the study of human dietary adaptations. The approaches encompass everything from information gleaned from comparisons with our nearest primate relatives, tools used in procuring and preparing foods, skeletal remains, chemical or genetic indicators of diet and genetic variation, and modern or historical ethnographic observations. Examples are drawn from across the globe and information on the research methods used is embedded within each chapter. The Handbook provides a comprehensive reference work for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and for professionals seeking authoritative essays on specific topics about diet in the human past.
Download or read book The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies written by Steven L. Kuhn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.
Download or read book ATLAS of Tadrart Acacus rock art A UNESCO World Heritage site in southwestern Libya written by Savino di Lernia and published by All’Insegna del Giglio. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 1026 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rock art sites of the Tadrart Acacus in southwestern Libya were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, largely owing to the activities started in 1955 by Fabrizio Mori, founder of the Libyan-Italian Mission in the Tadrart Acacus and Messak. Since the beginning, the Department of Antiquities of Tripoli and Sebha, Libya, and Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, have worked in the region nearly without interruption until 2011. This book presents the archive of the rock art sites, identified and recorded by the Italian Mission and by independent scholars, as described and critically assessed by the authors within the framework of the ASArt-DATA project (the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme). The contributions introducing the catalogue contextualize the environmental, archaeological, and cultural aspects of the engravings and paintings. They include chapters addressing the historical, cultural, and diplomatic issues involved in the long-term bilateral scientific cooperation.
