You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
There are few questions more central to understanding the prehistory of our species than those regarding the institutionalization of social inequality. Social inequality is manifested in unequal access to goods, information, decision-making, and power. This structure is essential to higher orders of social organization and basic to the operation of more complex societies. An understanding of the transformation from relatively egalitarian societies to a hierarchical organization and socioeconomic stratification is fundamental to our knowledge about the human condition. In a follow-up to their 1995 book Foundations of Social Inequality, the Editors of this volume have compiled a new and comprehensive group of studies concerning these central questions. When and where does hierarchy appear in human society, and how does it operate? With numerous case studies from the Old and New World, spanning foraging societies to agricultural groups, and complex states, Pathways to Power provides key historical insights into current social and cultural questions.
The contents of this volume of essays in his honour gives a good overview of the fields in which Prof. Van Doorselaer has been active throughout his academic career. This book is especially an Album Amicorum, filled with reminiscences and intentions to continue the work. The voluminous size of this book may be considered as an adequate measure of the overall sympathy for Prof. Van Doorselaer. We hope that this publication may encourage him to remain active in the field of archaeology, and that the co-operation among colleagues, stimulated by this project, may be continued in the future.
'Early Celtic art' - typified by the iconic shields, swords, torcs and chariot gear we can see in places such as the British Museum - has been studied in isolation from the rest of the evidence from the Iron Age. This book reintegrates the art with the archaeology, placing the finds in the context of our latest ideas about Iron Age and Romano-British society. The contributions move beyond the traditional concerns with artistic styles and continental links, to consider the material nature of objects, their social effects and their role in practices such as exchange and burial. The aesthetic impact of decorated metalwork, metal composition and manufacturing, dating and regional differences within Britain all receive coverage. The book gives us a new understanding of some of the most ornate and complex objects ever found in Britain, artefacts that condense and embody many histories.
More wide ranging, both geographically and chronologically, than any previous study, this well-illustrated book offers a new definition of Celtic art. Tempering the much-adopted art-historical approach, D.W. Harding argues for a broader definition of Celtic art and views it within a much wider archaeological context. He re-asserts ancient Celtic identity after a decade of deconstruction in English-language archaeology. Harding argues that there were communities in Iron Age Europe that were identified historically as Celts, regarded themselves as Celtic, or who spoke Celtic languages, and that the art of these communities may reasonably be regarded as Celtic art. This study will be indispensable for those people wanting to take a fresh and innovative perspective on Celtic Art.
The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore ‘cross-channel’ relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continen...
The Celtic World is a detailed and comprehensive study of the Celts from the first evidence of them in the archaeological and historical record to the early post-Roman period. The strength of this volume lies in its breadth - it looks at archaeology, language, literature, towns, warfare, rural life, art, religion and myth, trade and industry, political organisations, society and technology. The Celtic World draws together material from all over pagan Celtic Europe and includes contributions from British, European and American scholars. Much of the material is new research which is previously unpublished. The book addresses some important issues - Who were the ancient Celts? Can we speak of them as the first Europeans? In what form does the Celtic identity exist today and how does this relate to the ancient Celts? For anyone interested in the Celts, and for students and academics alike, The Celtic World will be a valuable resource and a fascinating read.
A Forged Glamour, which takes its title from a poem, is an exploration of the lives and deaths of ironworking communities renowned for their spectacular material culture, who lived in modern-day East and North Yorkshire, between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. It evaluates settlement and funerary evidence, analyses farming and craftwork, and explores what some of their ideas and beliefs might have been. It situates this regional material within the broader context of Iron Age Britain, Ireland and the near Continent, and considers what manner of society this was. In order to do this it makes use of theoretical ideas on personhood, and relationships with material culture and landscape, arguing that the making of identity always takes work. It is the character, scale and extent of this work (revealed through objects as small as a glass bead, or as big as a cemetery; as local as an earthenware pot or as exotic as coral-decoration) which enables archaeologists to investigate the web of relations which made up their lives, and explore the means of power which distinguished their leaders.
Contributors explore the complex relations among Pacific artists, patrons, collectors, and museums over time, as well as the different meanings given to art objects by each.
This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.
With the help of over 100 illustrations, many of them little known, Martin Henig shows that the art produced in Britannia--particularly in the golden age of Late Antiquity--rivals that of other provinces and deserves comparison with the art of metropolitan Rome. The originality and breadth of Henig's study is shown by its systematic coverage, embracing both the major arts--stone and bronze statuary, wall-painting and mosaics--and such applied arts as jewelery-making, silversmithing, furniture design, figure pottery, figurines and appliques. The author explains how the various workshops were organized, the part played by patronage and the changes that occurred in the fourth century.