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'Bursts with gloriously geeky detail.' The TelegraphHave you ever made someone you love a mix-tape? Forty years ago, a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important compilation ever conceived. It wasn't from one person to another, it was from Earth to the Cosmos.In 1977 NASA sent Voyager 1 and 2 on a Grand Tour of the outer planets. During the design phase of the Voyager mission, it was realised that this pair of plucky probes would eventually leave our solar system to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space. With this gloomy-sounding outcome in mind, NASA decided to do something optimistic. They commission...
Follow the dog adventurer Cleopatra Bones into a world of explorers, crazy contraptions, and outlandish vehicles.
The fifth millennium BCE was a period of rapid social change. One of the key factors was the developments in technology which led to the rise of the metals industry. Archaeological finds from sites dating to the Chalcolithic period indicate the production and use of copper. 'Dawn of the Metal Age' examines a range of sites - from copper mines in Jordan and Israel to the villages of the northern Negev where copper was produced in household workshops, to a series of cave burials where a range of luxury metal goods were buried with the elite members of Chalcolithic society. Ancient technology is reconstructed from the archaeological evidence, which also illuminates the changing economic, social, religious and political environment of the time.
Hunter-gatherer societies are constrained by their environment and the technologies available to them. However, until now the role of culture in foraging communities has not been widely considered. 'Structured Worlds' examines the role of cosmology, values, and perceptions in the archaeological histories of hunter-fisher-gatherers. The essays examine a range of cultures - Mesolithic Europe, Siberia, Jomon Japan, the Northwest Coast, the northern Plains, and High Arctic of North America - to show the role of conceptual frameworks in subsistence and settlement, technology, mobility, migration, demography, and social organization. Spanning from the early Holocene period to the present day, 'Structured Worlds' draws on archaeology and ethnography to explore the role of beliefs, ritual, and social values in the interaction between foragers and their physical and social landscape. Material culture, animal bones and settlement patterns show that the behaviours of hunter-gatherers were shaped as much by cultural concepts as by material need.
From the first Jewish revolt against Rome in the first century CE to contemporary Islamic fanaticism, faith in the hands of religious zealots has been a powerful and often catastrophic means of enacting radical change. 'Ultimate Devotion' examines a range of religious movements across history to reveal the striking similarities in the way they emerged, the characters of their leaders and followers, and their often tragic conclusions. A rich variety of archaeological materials intersect with textual evidence and anthropological theory to develop a model of mass action inspired by intense religion. In its exploration of religious rebellion in history, 'Ultimate Devotion' illuminates religious fanaticism today.
Egypt, Judaism, and the history of the alphabet intersect in Deciphering The Proto-Sinaitic Script. From its initial appearance, in around the 18th century BC, the origins of proto–Sinaitic writing can be traced back to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, when it was somehow derived from the hieroglyphs, its parent–system. The importance of proto–Sinaitic lies in the fact that it represents the alphabet’s earliest developmental period—a kind of ‘missing link’ between the hieroglyphs and these early Semitic alphabets from which our own Latin one descends, by way of the Phoenician and Greek. However, up until now, proto-Sinaitic has remained for the most part undeciphered. The intri...
"Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. The book explores the emperor's image as conveyed through literature, art, and architecture, and shows how Constantine reconciled the tradition of imperial divinity with his monotheistic faith. It demonstrates how the traditional themes and imagery of kingship were exploited to portray the emperor as the saviour of his people and to assimilate him to Christ. This is the first book to study simultaneously both archaeological and historical information to build a picture of the emperor's image and propaganda. It is extensively illustrated" --Provided by publisher.
The Encyclopedia of Prehistory represents temporal dimension. Major traditions are an attempt to provide basic information also defined by a somewhat different set of on all archaeologically known cultures, sociocultural characteristics than are eth covering the entire globe and the entire nological cultures. Major traditions are prehistory ofhumankind. It is designed as defined based on common subsistence a tool to assist in doing comparative practices, sociopolitical organization, and research on the peoples of the past. Most material industries. but language, ideology, of the entries are written by the world's and kinship tics play little or no part in foremost experts on the particular a...
Sam's dad says that he is too small to fly their new kite, but when Dad, the postman, a bank robber, and some zoo animals get pulled up into the sky, only Sam can save them.
Death, grief and funerary practices are central to any analysis of social, anthropological, artistic and religious worlds. However, cemeteries - the key conceptual and physical site for death - have rarely been the focus of archaeological research. 'Prioritizing Death and Society' examines the structure, organisation and significance of cemeteries in the Southern Levant, one of the key areas for both migration and settlement in both prehistory and antiquity. Spanning 6,000 years, from the Chalcolithic to the present day, 'Prioritizing Death and Society' presents new research to analyse the formation and regional variation in cemeteries. By examining both ancient and present-day - nationally Jewish - cemeteries, the study reveals the commonalities and differences in the ways in which death has been and continues to be ritualised, memorialised and understood.