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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner examines how specific types of food were prepared and eaten during feasting rituals in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. Such rituals allowed people to build and maintain their power and prestige and to maintain or contest the status quo. At the same time, they also contributed to the inner cohesion and sense of community of a group. When eating and drinking together, people share thoughts and beliefs and perceive the world and human relationships in a certain way. The twelve contributions to this book reflect the main theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of food and feasting in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. The book is introduced by Ferrán Adrià, considered to be the world's greatest chef. Famed for his "molecular gastronomy", he invented the technique of reducing foods to their essence and then changing how they are presented, for example in the form of foam. In 2010, he was named Best Chef of the Decade by the prestigious Restaurant magazine.
The origin and early development of social stratification is essentially an archaeological problem. The impressive advance of archaeological research has revealed that, first and foremost, the pre-eminence of stratified or class society in today’s world is the result of a long social struggle. This volume advances the archaeological study of social organisation in Prehistory, and more specifically the rise of social complexity in European Prehistory. Within the wider context of world Prehistory, in the last 30 years the subject of early social stratification and state formation has been a key subject on interest in Iberian Prehistory. This book illustrates the differing forms of resistance...
After more than a century of research, an enormous body of scientific literature in the field of El Argar studies has been generated, comprising some 700 bibliographic items. No fully-updated synthesis of the literature is available at the moment; recent works deal only with specific characteristics of Argaric societies or some of the regions where their influence spread. The Archaeology of Bronze Age Iberia offers a much-needed, comprehensive overview of Argaric Bronze Age societies, based on state-of-the-art research. In addition to expounding on recent insights in such areas as Argaric origin and expansion, social practices, and socio-politics, the book offers reflections on current issues in the field, from questions concerning the genealogy of discourses on the subject, to matters related to professional practices. The book discusses the values and interests guiding the evolution of El Argar studies, while critically reexamining its history. Scholars and researchers in the fields of Prehistory and Archaeology will find this volume highly useful.
The Life of Trade utilizes archaeological and historical sources to address the dynamic nature of the Atlantic trade on the Gambia River. Taking a fresh multi-disciplinary approach, the book highlights the region’s atypical position as a commercial crossroads and access point for both interior and Atlantic markets. This engagement with a diversified commodities trade brought about the formation of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious community which was supported by, and reliant on, economic exchange. Gijanto situates the Niumi Kingdom within the emerging capitalist world-system through the analysis of data collected from archaeological excavations at four sites: the central multi-ethnic tradin...
Children, Death and Burials assembles a panorama of studies with a focus on juvenile burials; the 16 papers have a wide geographic and temporal breadth and represent a range of methodological approaches. All have a similar objective in mind, however, namely to understand how children were treated in death by different cultures in the past; to gain insights concerning the roles of children of different ages in their respective societies and to find evidence of the nature of past adult–child relationships and interactions across the life course. The contextualisation and integration of the data collected, both in the field and in the laboratory, enables more nuanced understandings to be gain...
From remote antiquity to contemporary contexts, food and the ‘stuff’ of food remains central to people’s daily experiences as well as their sense and expression of identity. This volume explores the materiality of foodstuffs past and present, examining humanity’s intriguingly complex relationships with, and experiences of, food. The book also makes a fresh contribution to our understanding of materiality through a novel focus on material culture, analysing objects used to prepare, wrap, serve and consume food and the tactile experiences involved in its production and consumption. Considering a wide range of cultures, spanning from ancient China to modern-day Kenya, this broad collection of interdisciplinary chapters reveal the multiple interplays between foods, bodies, material worlds, rituals and embodied knowledge that emerge from these encounters and which, in turn, shape the material culture of food. Exploring the Materiality of Food 'Stuffs' makes an important contribution to this burgeoning field and will be of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists working in the key area of food research.
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.
Archaeology’s Visual Culture explores archaeology through the lens of visual culture theory. The insistent visuality of archaeology is a key stimulus for the imaginative and creative interpretation of our encounters with the past. Balm investigates the nature of this projection of the visual, revealing an embedded subjectivity in the imagery of archaeology and acknowledging the multiplicity of meanings that cohere around artifacts, archaeological sites and museum displays. Using a wide range of case studies, the book highlights how archaeologists can view objects and the consequences that ensue from these ways of seeing. Throughout the book Balm considers the potential for documentary imag...
This volume originates in a conference session that took place at the 2018 International Council of Archaeozoology conference in Ankara, Turkey, entitled "Humans and Cattle: Interdisciplinary Perspectives to an Ancient Relationship." The aim of the session was to bring together zooarchaeologists and their colleagues from various other research fields working on human cattle interactions over time. The contributions in this volume reflect well the breadth of work being undertaken on the ancient relationship between humans and cattle across the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, and from the late Pleistocene to postmedieval period. Almost all involve the study of archaeological cattle remains and use different zooarchaeological methods, but the combination of these approaches with that of ethnography, isotopes and genetics is also featured. Author Interview
This is the first book to explore prehistoric warfare and violence by integrating qualitative research methods with quantitative, scientific techniques of analysis such as paleopathology, morphometry, wear analysis, and experimental archaeology. It investigates early warfare and violence from the standpoint of four broad interdisciplinary themes: skeletal markers of violence and weapon training; conflict in prehistoric rock-art; the material culture of conflict; and intergroup violence in archaeological discourse. The book has a wide-ranging chronological and geographic scope, from early Neolithic to late Iron Age and from Western Europe to East Asia. It includes world-renowned sites and art...