Download or read book Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory written by Anne Birgitte Gebauer and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uebergang zur Landwirtschaft - Prähistorie - Wirtschaftsgeschichte.
Download or read book Societies in Transition in Early Greece written by Alex R. Knodell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated at the disciplinary boundary between prehistory and history, this book presents a new synthesis of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece, from the rise and fall of Mycenaean civilization to the emergence of city-states in the Archaic period. These centuries saw the growth and decline of varied political systems and the development of networks across local, regional, and Mediterranean scales. As a groundbreaking study of landscape, interaction, and sociopolitical change, Societies in Transition in Early Greece systematically bridges the divide between the Mycenaean period and the Archaic Greek world to shed new light on an often-overlooked period of world history. “This book reconfigures our understanding of early Greece on a regional level, beyond Mycenaean 'palaces' and across temporal boundaries. Alex Knodell's sophisticated arguments enable a fresh reading of the emergence of early Greek polities, revealing the microregions that put to the test overarching 'Mediterranean' models. His detailed study makes a convincing return to a comparative framework, integrating a 'small world' network and its trajectory with the larger picture of ancient complex societies.” SARAH MORRIS, Steinmetz Professor of Classical Archaeology and Material Culture, University of California, Los Angeles “A comprehensive, thoughtful treatment of the time period before the crystallization of the ancient Greek city states.” WILLIAM A. PARKINSON, Curator and Professor, The Field Museum and University of Illinois at Chicago “An important and must-read account. The strength of this book lies in its close analysis of the important different regional characteristics and evolutionary trajectories of Greece as it transforms into the Archaic and, later, the Classical world.” DAVID B. SMALL, author Ancient Greece: Social Structure and Evolution.
Download or read book Human Bioarchaeology of the Transition to Agriculture written by Ron Pinhasi and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A holistic and comprehensive account of the nature of the transition from hunting to farming in prehistory. It addresses for the first time the main bioarchaeological aspects such as changes in mobility, behaviour, diet and population dynamics. This book is of major interest to the relevant audience since it offers for the first time a global perspective on the bioarchaeology of the transition to agriculture. It includes contributions from world-class researchers, with a particular emphasis on advances in methods (e.g. ancient DNA of pathogens, stable isotope analysis, etc.). The book specifically addresses the following aspects associated with the transition to agriculture in various world regions: Changes in adult and subadult stature and subadult growth profiles Diachronic trends in the analysis of functional morphological structures (craniofacial, vault, lower limbs, etc.) and whether these are associated with change in overall sex-specific morphological variability Changes in mobility Changes in behaviour which can be reconstructed from the study of the skeletal record. These include changes in activity patterns, sexual dimorphism, evidence of inter-personal trauma, and the like. Population dynamics and microevolution by examining intra and inter population variations in dental and cranial metric traits, as well as archaeogenetic studies of ancient DNA (e.g. mtDNA markers).
Download or read book Archaic Transitions in Ohio and Kentucky Prehistory written by Olaf H. Prufer and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the last Ice Age, the southern Lake Erie basin and the Ohio valley were characterized by biotic zones that influenced cultural development of archaic Native American populations. This text looks at the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to the rise of food production in this area.
Download or read book Transitions in Prehistory written by John J. Shea and published by American School of Prehistoric. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers celebrates the career of Ofer Bar-Yosef and his contribution to the study of prehistory. As professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University (1970-1988) and as MacCurdy Professor at Harvard University (1989-present), Ofer has had a huge impact on prehistoric archaeology, fostering multi-national research projects worldwide. With such wide-ranging research interests spanning his career, the editors of this book needed to find a theme which could somehow reflect the entirety of his career so far. The theme they chose was transitions in prehistory a topic that Ofer has written on from the early phases of his career to the present day. They have called upon students and long-term collaborators to address questions about important transitions in prehistory, dividing the papers into three groups: transitions in the Pleistocene; transitions in the Holocene; and methodological and theoretical transitions, changes in the way archaeologists view the nature of the evidence and our explanations of the archaeological record.
Download or read book Decolonizing Indigenous Histories written by Maxine Oland and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decolonizing Indigenous Histories makes a vital contribution to the decolonization of archaeology by recasting colonialism within long-term indigenous histories. Showcasing case studies from Africa, Australia, Mesoamerica, and North and South America, this edited volume highlights the work of archaeologists who study indigenous peoples and histories at multiple scales. The contributors explore how the inclusion of indigenous histories, and collaboration with contemporary communities and scholars across the subfields of anthropology, can reframe archaeologies of colonialism. The cross-cultural case studies employ a broad range of methodological strategies—archaeology, ethnohistory, archival research, oral histories, and descendant perspectives—to better appreciate processes of colonialism. The authors argue that these more complicated histories of colonialism contribute not only to understandings of past contexts but also to contemporary social justice projects. In each chapter, authors move beyond an academic artifice of “prehistoric” and “colonial” and instead focus on longer sequences of indigenous histories to better understand colonial contexts. Throughout, each author explores and clarifies the complexities of indigenous daily practices that shape, and are shaped by, long-term indigenous and local histories by employing an array of theoretical tools, including theories of practice, agency, materiality, and temporality. Included are larger integrative chapters by Kent Lightfoot and Patricia Rubertone, foremost North American colonialism scholars who argue that an expanded global perspective is essential to understanding processes of indigenous-colonial interactions and transitions.
Download or read book Transitions Before the Transition written by Erella Hovers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-01-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern human origins and the fate of the Neanderthals are arguably the most compelling and contentious arenas in paleoanthropology. The much-discussed split between advocates of a single, early emergence of anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa and supporters of various regional continuity positions is only part of the picture. Equally if not more important are questions surrounding the origins of modern behavior, and the relationships between anatomical and behavioral changes that occurred during the past 200,000 years. Although modern humans as a species may be defined in terms of their skeletal anatomy, it is their behavior, and the social and cognitive structures that support that behavior, which most clearly distinguish Homo sapiens from earlier forms of humans. This book assembles researchers working in Eurasia and Africa to discuss the archaeological record of the Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age. This is a time period when Homo sapiens last shared the world with other species, and during which patterns of behavior characteristic of modern humans developed and coalesced. Contributions to this volume query and challenge some current notions about the tempo and mode of cultural evolution, and about the processes that underlie the emergence of modern behavior. The papers focus on several fundamental questions. Do typical elements of "modern human behavior" appear suddenly, or are there earlier archaeological precursors of them? Are the archaeological records of the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age unchanging and monotonous, or are there detectable evolutionary trends within these periods? Coming to diverse conclusions, the papers in this volume open up new avenues to thinking about this crucial interval in human evolutionary history.
Download or read book The Transition to Statehood in the New World written by Robert R. Kautz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1982 collection of eight original anthropological essays provides an exciting synthesis of theory and practice in one of the key issues of contemporary cultural evolutionary thought. The contributors ask why complex, highly stratified societies emerged at several locations in the New World at the same point in prehistory. Focusing primarily on the initial centers of civilization in Mesoamerica and the Andean region, they consider the sociopolitical, environmental and ideological factors in state formation. The essays discuss the prehistoric conditions and processes that simulated the development of the first state-level societies in Mesoamerica and Peru, and explore the difficulties archaeologists must face in their direct analysis of physical remains. In general, the contributors recognize a growing need for better archaeological solutions to the question of state origin and for more sensitivity to the problems as well as to the possibilities of ethnographic analogy.
Download or read book Last Hunters First Farmers written by Theron Douglas Price and published by School for Advanced Research Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During virtually the entire four-million-year history of our habitation on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for nourishment on the availability of wild plants and animals. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, however, the most remarkable phenomenon in the course of human prehistory was set in motion. At locations around the world, over a period of about 5,000 years, hunters became farmers. Far more than the domestication of plant and animal species was involved in this revolution, which was accompanied by massive changes in the structure and organization of the societies that adopted agriculture and by a totally new relationship with the environment. Whereas hunter-gatherers live off the land in an extensive fashion, exploiting a diversity of resources over a broad area, farmers utilize the landscape intensively. The implications of these changes in human activity and social organization reverberate down to the present day.
Download or read book The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe written by Albert J. Ammerman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture as a way of life and the implications of this neolithic transition for the genetic structure of European populations. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Becoming Villagers written by Matthew S. Bandy and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outgrowth of a symposium at the 2006 Society for American Archaeology meetings in San Juan, and of a seminar at the Amerind Foundation. Cf. pref.
Download or read book The Neolithic Demographic Transition and its Consequences written by Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition from hunting and gathering to farming – the Neolithic Revolution – was one of the most signi cant cultural processes in human history that forever changed the face of humanity. Natu an communities (15,100–12,000Cal BP) (all dates in this chapter are calibrated before present) planted the seeds of change, and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) (ca. 12,000–ca. 8,350Cal BP) people, were the rst to establish farming communities. The revolution was not fully realized until quite late in the PPN and later in the Pottery Neolithic (PN) period. We would like to ask some questions and comment on a few aspects emphas- ing the linkage between biological and cultural developments during the Neolithic Revolution. The biological issues addressed in this chapter are as follows: × Is there a demographic change from the Natu an to the Neolithic? × Is there a change in the overall health of the Neolithic populations compared to the Natu an? × Is there a change in the diet and how is it expressed? × Is there a change in the physical burden/stress people had to bear with? × Is there a change in intra- and inter-community rates of violent encounters? From the cultural perspective the leading questions will be: × What was the change in the economy and when was it fully realized? × Is there a change in settlement patterns and site nature and organization from Natu an to Neolithic? × Is there a change in human activities and division of labor?
Download or read book Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture written by Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
Download or read book Persistent Traditions written by Luc W.S.W. Amkreutz and published by Sidestone Press. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The adoption of agriculture is one of the major developments in human history. Archaeological studies have demonstrated that the trajectories of Neolithisation in Northwest Europe were diverse. This book presents a study into the archaeology of the communities involved in the process of Neolithisation in the Lower Rhine Area (5500-2500 cal BC). It elucidates the role played by the indigenous communities in relation to their environmental context and in view of the changes that becoming Neolithic brought about. This work brings together a comprehensive array of excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area. Their analysis shows that the succession of Late Mesolithic, Swifterbant culture, Hazendonk group and Vlaardingen culture societies represents a continuous long-term tradition of inhabitation of the wetlands and wetland margins of this area, forming a culturally continuous record of communities in the transition to agriculture. After demonstrating the diversity of the Mesolithic, the subsequent developments regarding Neolithisation are studied from an indigenous perspective. Foregrounding the relationship between local communities and the dynamic wetland landscape, the study shows that the archaeological evidence of regional inhabitation points to long-term flexible behaviour and pragmatic decisions being made concerning livelihood, food economy and mobility. This disposition also influenced how the novel elements of Neolithisation were incorporated. Animal husbandry, crop cultivation and sedentism were an addition to the existing broad spectrum economy but were incorporated within a set of integrative strategies. For the interpretation of Neolithisation this study offers a complementary approach to existing research. Instead of arguing for a short transition based on the economic importance of domesticates and cultigens at sites, this study emphasises the persistent traditions of the communities involved. New elements, instead of bringing about radical changes, are shown to be attuned to existing hunter-gatherer practices. By documenting indications of the mentalité of the inhabitants of the wetlands, it is demonstrated that their mindset remained essentially ‘Mesolithic’ for millennia. This book is accompanied by a separate 422 page volume containing the appendices. These constitute a comprehensive inventory of 159, mostly excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area.
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 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 306 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 Simulating Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory written by Salvador Pardo-Gordó and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-24 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights new and innovative approaches to archaeological research using computational modeling while focusing on the Neolithic transition around the world. The transformative effect of the spread and adoption of agriculture in prehistory cannot be overstated. Consequently, archaeologists have often focused their research on this transition, hoping to understand both the ecological causes and impacts of this shift, as well as the social motivations and constraints involved. Given the complex interplay of socio-ecological factors, the answers to these types of questions cannot be found using traditional archaeological methods alone. Computational modeling techniques have emerged as an effective approach for better understanding prehistoric data sets and the linkages between social and ecological factors at play during periods of subsistence change. Such techniques include agent-based modeling, Bayesian modeling, GIS modeling of the prehistoric environment, and the modeling of small-scale agriculture. As more archaeological data sets aggregate regarding the transition to agriculture, researchers are often left with few ways to relate these sets to one another. Computational modeling techniques such as those described above represent a critical next step in providing archaeological analyses that are important for understanding human prehistory around the world. Given its scope, this book will appeal to the many interdisciplinary scientists and researchers whose work involves archaeology and computational social science. Chapter “The Spread of Agriculture: Quantitative Laws in Prehistory?” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via springer.com.
