Download or read book Late Pleistocene Deer Fossils from Corbeddu Cave written by Gerard Klein Hofmeijer and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 1997 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corbeddu cave in Sardinia contains Late Pleistocene sediments bearing numerous deer fossils. The faunal analyses described in the present study reconstruct the role of human activities in the site formation processes based on quantitative analyses of these fossil assemblages. The collected material and a large dataset provide detailed information about the microstratigraphy of the site, which has been reconstructed using a newly developed computer program, making it possible to distinguish fossil levels. For each reconstructed level the horizontal spatial distribution, the skeletal element representation, the degree of fragmentation, the presence of associated elements, the age and sex compositions, and specific damage patterns have been analyzed. It is concluded that the assemblages cannot have been formed by natural processes alone. In the Corbeddu cave the assemblages' relationship with feeding activity is less evident than for mainland assemblages; possibly the use of bones as tools played an important role.
Download or read book Earliest Italy written by Margherita Mussi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to synthesize more than 600,000 years of Italian prehistory, beginning with the Lower Paleolithic and ending with the last hunter-gatherers of the early Holocene. The author treats such issues as the development of social structure, the rise and fall of specific cultural traditions, climatic change, modifications of the landscape, fauna and flora, and environmental adaptation and exploitation and includes detailed descriptions of the most important sites.
Download or read book Evolution of Island Mammals written by Alexandra van der Geer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution on islands differs in a number of important ways from evolution on mainland areas. Over millions of years of isolation, exceptional and sometimes bizarre mammals evolved on islands, such as pig-sized elephants and hippos, giant rats and gorilla-sized lemurs that would have been formidable to their mainland ancestors. This timely and innovative book is the first to offer a much-needed synthesis of recent advances in the exciting field of the evolution and extinction of fossil insular placental mammals. It provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge on fossil island mammals worldwide, ranging from the Oligocene to the onset of the Holocene. The book addresses evolutionary processes and key aspects of insular mammal biology, exemplified by a variety of fossil species. The authors discuss the human factor in past extinction events and loss of insular biodiversity. This accessible and richly illustrated textbook is written for graduate level students and professional researchers in evolutionary biology, palaeontology, biogeography, zoology, and ecology.
Download or read book Extinctions in Near Time written by Ross D.E. MacPhee and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-09 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Near time" -an interval that spans the last 100,000 years or so of earth history-qualifies as a remarkable period for many reasons. From an anthropocentric point of view, the out standing feature of near time is the fact that the evolution, cultural diversification, and glob al spread of Homo sapiens have all occurred within it. From a wider biological perspective, however, the hallmark of near time is better conceived of as being one of enduring, repeat ed loss. The point is important. Despite the sense of uniqueness implicit in phrases like "the biodiversity crisis," meant to convey the notion that the present bout of extinctions is by far the worst endured in recent times, substantial losses have occurred throughout near time. In the majority of cases, these losses occurred when, and only when, people began to ex pand across areas that had never before experienced their presence. Although the explana tion for these correlations in time and space may seem obvious, it is one thing to rhetori cally observe that there is a connection between humans and recent extinctions, and quite another to demonstrate it scientifically. How should this be done? Traditionally, the study of past extinctions has fallen largely to researchers steeped in such disciplines as paleontology, systematics, and paleoecology. The evaluation of future losses, by contrast, has lain almost exclusively within the domain of conservation biolo gists. Now, more than ever, there is opportunity for overlap and sharing of information.
Download or read book Archaeology and History in Sardinia from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages written by Stephen L. Dyson and published by UPenn Museum of Archaeology. This book was released on 2007 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With one of the richest archaeological records and most complicated histories in the Mediterranean, Sardinia provides an important laboratory for studying the interaction of indigenous societies and outside forces in a partly isolated geographical context. Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland, Jr. use both material culture and written documents to reconstruct the social and economic processes of an island society that showed both cultural creativity and continuity but responded to invasions from the Phoenicians through the Romans to the Aragonese. This first accessible reconstruction of island archaeology provides a balanced picture of the sweep of Sardinian history.
Download or read book Escaping the Labyrinth written by Valasia Isaakidou and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2008-07-25 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beneath the Bronze Age 'Palace of Minos', Neolithic Knossos is one of the earliest known farming settlements in Europe and perhaps the longest-lived. For 3000 years, Neolithic Knossos was also perhaps one of very few settlements on Crete and, for much of this time, maintained a distinctive material culture. This volume radically enhances understanding of the important, but hitherto little known, Neolithic settlement and culture of Crete. Thirteen papers, from the tenth Sheffield Aegean Round Table in January 2006, explore two aspects of the Cretan Neolithic: the results of recent re-analysis of a range of bodies of material from J.D. Evans' excavations at EN-FN Knossos; and new insights into the Cretan Late and Final Neolithic and the contentious belated colonisation of the rest of the island, drawing on both new and old fieldwork. Papers in the first group examine the idiosyncratic Knossian ceramic chronology (P. Tomkins), human figurines from a gender perspective (M. Mina), funerary practices (S. Triantaphyllou), chipped stone technology (J. Conolly), land and-use and its social implications (V. Isaakidou). Those in the second group, present a re-evaluation of LN Katsambas (N. Galanidou and K. Mandeli), evidence for later Neolithic exploration of eastern Crete (T. Strasser), Ceremony and consumption at late Final Neolithic Phaistos (S. Todaro and S. Di Tonto), Final Neolithic settlement patterns (K. Nowicki), the transition to the Early Bronze Age at Kephala Petra (Y. Papadatos), and a critical appraisal of Final Neolithic 'marginal colonisation' (P. Halstead). In conclusion, C. Broodbank places the Cretan Neolithic within its wider Mediterranean context and J.D. Evans provides an autobiographical account of a lifetime of insular Neolithic exploration.
Download or read book Stone Age Sailors written by Alan H Simmons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Simmons summarizes and synthesizes the evidence for prehistoric seafaring and island habitation in the Mediterranean as part of the mounting evidence that our ancestors developed sailing skills early in prehistory.
Download or read book Annales g ologiques des pays hell niques written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cranium written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mediterranean Island Landscapes written by Ioannis N. Vogiatzakis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediterranean islands exhibit many similarities in their biotic ecological, physical and environmental characteristics. There are also many differences in terms of their human colonization and current anthropogenic pressures. This book addresses in three sections these characteristics and examines the major environmental changes that the islands experienced during the Quaternary period. The first section provides details on natural and cultural factors which have shaped island landscapes. It describes the environmental and cultural changes of the Holocene and their effects on biota, as well as on the current human pressures that are now threats to the sustainability of the island communities. The second section focuses on the landscapes of the largest islands namely Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Cyprus, Crete, Malta and the Balearics. Each island chapter includes a special topic reflecting a particular characteristic of the island. Part three presents strategies for action towards sustainability in Mediterranean islands and concludes with a comparison between the largest islands. Despite several published books on Mediterranean ecosystems/landscapes there is no existing book dealing with Mediterranean islands in a collective manner. Students, researchers and university lecturers in environmental science, geography, biology and ecology will find this work invaluable as a cross-disciplinary text while planners and politicians will welcome the succinct summaries as background material to planning decisions.
Download or read book Rivista Italiana Di Paleontologia E Stratigrafia written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dwarf Deer and Other Late Pleistocene of the Simonelli Cave in Crete written by Alberto Malatesta and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Periphery in the Center written by Robert J. Rowland and published by BAR International Series. This book was released on 2001 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A good overview of the archaeology and history of Sardinia from the earliest inhabitation on the island, through the prehistoric period to the Romans, late Roman, medieval and late medieval periods.
Download or read book Dwarf deer and other late Pleistocene fauna of the Simonelli cave in Crete written by Alberto Malatesta and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Red Deer Their Ecology and how They Were Hunted by Late Pleistocene Hominids in Western Europe written by Teresa Eleanor Steele and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fossil hominid morphology, archaeology, and genetics indicate that in Europe 30,000-40,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans and their Upper Paleolithic industries replaces Neandertals and the Middle Paleolithic tools. Neandertals had thrived for hundreds of thousands of years, so why were they replaced? One possibility is that modern humans were able to extract more resources from the environment. This dissertation tests this explanation by assessing variation present in ancient hunting practices and investigating the relationship between Late Pleistocene hominids, tool industries, and hunting. I examined the hunting of one species, red deer (Cervus elaphus), through time and across spaceusing prey age-at-death as an indicator of hunting strategy. In the process, I evaluated the ability of the Quadratic Drown Height Method to accurately assign age-at-death; compared how well histograms, boxplots, and triangular graphs reconstruct mortality proflies from fossil assemblages; and developed a novel method for statistically comparing samples on triangular graphs. My results show that Neandertals and modern humans did not differ significantly in their ability to hunt prime-age red deer. None of the mortality distributions from the archaeological samples resemble the distribution constructed from eld killed by wolves in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Like other carnivores, wolves usually take young, old, and infirm prey. Nevertheless, the samples included in this study show a shift in prey age-at-death durin gthe Middle Paleolithic approximately 5- kya. Young adult prey are more abundant in recent assemblages than in more ancient assemblages. Over 25 archaeological samples from western European contribute to these conclusions, making this dissertation the most comprehensive study of Pleistocene hunting to date. More well-dated samples are needed, however, to confirm these results. Because red deer skeletal and tooth size fluctuated across my samples, I investigated the relationship between clime and C. elaphus size to determine if body size could indicate paleoclimates. In modern North American specimens, distal metatarsal bredth has a good relationship with climate, and tooth breadth has a similar but weaker relationship. The modern European data do not relate clearly to climate. Fossil red deer are larger during glacials than interglacials, but additional data are needed to better define patterns.
Download or read book The Holocene History of the European Vertebrate Fauna written by Norbert Benecke and published by Verlag Marie Leidorf. This book was released on 1999 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises 29 interdisciplinary papers presented by participants from 17 nations during a workshop in Berlin. Topics of major interest include faunal changes at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition, the formation and evolution of the Holocene fauna in different regions of Europe and methodological problems, as well as single species as natural and anthropogenic factors in the evolution of vertebrate fauna of Europe. All papers are in English except for two German articles.