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The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture
Jacques Cauvin has spent many years researching the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Near East, excavating key sites and developing new ideas to explain the hugely significant cultural, social and economic changes which transformed mobile hunter-gatherers into the first village societies and farmers in the world. In this book, first published in 2000, the synthesis of his mature understanding of the process beginning around 14,000 years ago challenges ecological and materialist interpretations, arguing for a quite different kind of understanding influenced by ideas of structuralist archaeologists and members of the French Annales school of historians. Defining the Neolithic Revolution as essentially a restructuring of the human mentality, expressed in terms of new religious ideas and symbols, the survey ends around nine thousand years ago, when the developed religious ideology, the social practice of village life and the economy of mixed farming had become established throughout the Near East and east Mediterranean, and spreading powerfully into Europe.
The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture
Jacques Cauvin has spent many years researching the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Near East, excavating key sites and developing new ideas to explain the hugely significant cultural, social and economic changes which transformed mobile hunter-gatherers into the first village societies and farmers in the world. In this book, first published in 2000, the synthesis of his mature understanding of the process beginning around 14,000 years ago challenges ecological and materialist interpretations, arguing for a quite different kind of understanding influenced by ideas of structuralist archaeologists and members of the French Annales school of historians. Defining the Neolithic Revolution as essentially a restructuring of the human mentality, expressed in terms of new religious ideas and symbols, the survey ends around nine thousand years ago, when the developed religious ideology, the social practice of village life and the economy of mixed farming had become established throughout the Near East and east Mediterranean, and spreading powerfully into Europe.
The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East
In this 2000 book, an international team of contributors offer a multidisciplinary approach to the evolution of nomadic society in the Middle East.
The Political History of Food
How was human (in)equality built across the table? Why were the first great banquets at the origin of the communal goods of humanity? Who, after forcing men from eating bread, wanted to forbid them chestnuts and popularized the potato? The Egyptian food table invented the notion of "symbols for food." The Greek food table invented the notion of sharing. The Roman food table invented the concept of pleasure. How was the person, caught eating and drinking alone, punished? Why did people die less of hunger in ancient times than in Africa in the 21st century? Why in China do people eat round things to show their love? How and why do we choose to eat this way? Why do societies choose to express t...
The Goddess and the Bull
Veteran science writer Michael Balter skillfully weaves together many threads in this fascinating book about one of archaeology’s most legendary sites— Çatalhöyük. First excavated forty years ago, the site is justly revered by prehistorians, art historians, and New Age goddess worshippers alike for its spectacular finds dating almost 10,000 years ago. Archaeological maverick Ian Hodder, leader of the recent re-excavation at this Turkish mound, designated Balter as the project’s biographer. The result is a skillful telling of many stories about both past and present: of the inhabitants of Neolithic Çatalhöyük and the development of human creativity and ingenuity, as revealed in th...
Becoming Neolithic
Becoming Neolithic examines the revolutionary transformation of human life that was taking place around 12,000 years ago in parts of southwest Asia. Hunter-gatherer communities were building the first permanent settlements, creating public monuments and symbolic imagery, and beginning to cultivate crops and manage animals. These communities changed the tempo of cultural, social, technological and economic innovation. Trevor Watkins sets the story of becoming Neolithic in the context of contemporary cultural evolutionary theory. There have been 70 years of international inter-disciplinary research in the field and in the laboratory. Stage by stage, he unfolds an up-to-date understanding of th...
A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization
Is the lion the symbol of China? Or should it be the dragon or the phoenix? This book makes a provocative interpretation of the Chinese ancient totems such as the bear and the owl. Taking a mythological approach, it explores the origin of Chinese civilization using the quadruple evidence method, which integrates ancient and unearthed literature, oral transmission, and archeological objects and graphs. It testifies to the authenticity of unresolved ancient myths and legends from the origins of Chinese Jade Ware (6200BC-5400 BC) to the names of the Yellow Emperor (2698–2598 BC) and the legends from the Xia (2010BC-1600BC), Shang (1600BC-046BC), Zhou (1046BC-771BC), and Qin (221BC-206BC) Dynasties. The book lays the foundation for a reconstruction of Chinese Mythistory. With well over 200 photographs of historic artifacts, the book appeals to both researchers and general readers.
Before Writing, Vol. I
Before Writing gives a new perspective on the evolution of communication. It points out that when writing began in Mesopotamia it was not, as previously thought, a sudden and spontaneous invention. Instead, it was the outgrowth of many thousands of years' worth of experience at manipulating symbols. In Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform, Denise Schmandt-Besserat describes how in about 8000 B.C., coinciding with the rise of agriculture, a system of counters, or tokens, appeared in the Near East. These tokens—small, geometrically shaped objects made of clay—represented various units of goods and were used to count and account for them. The token system was a breakthrough in data processi...
From Foragers to Farmers
This volume celebrates the career of archaebotanist Professor Gordon C. Hillman. Twenty-eight papers cover a wide range of topics reflecting the great influence that Hillman has had in the field of archaeobotany. Many of his favourite research topics are covered, the body of the text being split into four sections: Personal reflections on Professor Hillman's career; archaeobotanical theory and method; ethnoarchaeological and cultural studies; and ancient plant use from sites and regions around the world. The collection demonstrates, as Gordon Hillman believes, that the study of archaebotany is not only valuable, but vital for any study of humanity.
Inside the Neolithic Mind
Drawing on the latest research, this brilliantly argued, elegantly written book examines belief, myth and society in the Neolithic period, arguably the most significant turning point in human history, when the society we know was born. Linking consciousness, imagery and belief systems the authors create a bridge to the thought-lives of the past.
