You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
All farming in prehistoric Europe ultimately came from elsewhere in one way or another, unlike the growing numbers of primary centers of domestication and agricultural origins worldwide. This fact affects every aspect of our understanding of the start of farming on the continent because it means that ultimately, domesticated plants and animals came from somewhere else, and from someone else. In an area as vast as Europe, the process by which food production becomes the predominant subsistence strategy is of course highly variable, but in a sense the outcome is the same, and has the potential for addressing more large-scale questions regarding agricultural origins. Therefore, a detailed under...
We are now familiar with the Three Age System, the archaeological partitioning of the past into Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. This division, which amounted at the time to a major scientific revolution, was conceived in Denmark in the 1830s. Peter Rowley-Conwy investigates the reasons why the Three Age system was adopted without demur in Scandinavian archaeological circles, yet was the subject of a bitter and long-drawn-out contest in Britain and Ireland, up to the1870s.
Examining human occupation of the arctic and subarctic zones, irrespective of place and time, this book explores a wide variety of fascinating areas and inhabitants along several points in history. Beautifully illustrated, Arctic Archaeology is essential reading for all those curious about how organisms survived in this life threatening environment.
This volume contains fifteen papers given at the International Workshop on African Archaeobotany in Groningen in 2003. Several papers deal with the domestication history and related aspects of specific plants, including wheat (Triticum), rice (Oryza), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), fig (Ficus), cotton (Gossypium), silk-cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). Other contributions discuss the exploitation of woody vegetations, members of the sedge family (Cyperaceae) and the botanical composition of mummy garlands. Three papers present the subfossil plant remains from Egyptian sites: Pharaonic caravan routes through the Theban Desert, Predynastic Adaïma and Napatan to Islamic Qasr Ibrim. The last contribution presents an update inventory of the ancient plant remains present in the Agricultural Museum (Dokki, Cairo). The book covers a wide range of countries and includes Namibia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Canary Isles, Libya and Egypt.
Economic archaeology is the study of how past peoples exploited animals and plants, using as evidence the remains of those animals and plants. The animal side is usually termed zooarchaeology, the plant side archaeobotany. What distinguishes them from other studies of ancient animals and plants is that their ultimate aim is to find out about human behaviour – the animal and plant remains are a means to this end. The 33 papers present a wide array of topics covering many areas of archaeological interest. Aspects of method and theory, animal bone identification, human palaeopathology, prehistoric animal utilisation in South America, and the study of dog cemeteries are covered. The long-runni...
The adoption of agriculture is one of the major developments in human history. Archaeological studies have demonstrated that the trajectories of Neolithisation in Northwest Europe were diverse. This book presents a study into the archaeology of the communities involved in the process of Neolithisation in the Lower Rhine Area (5500-2500 cal BC). It elucidates the role played by the indigenous communities in relation to their environmental context and in view of the changes that becoming Neolithic brought about. This work brings together a comprehensive array of excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area. Their analysis shows that the succession of Late Mesolithic, Swifterbant cult...
The beginning of the Neolithic in Britain marks the end of a hunter-gatherer way of life with the introduction of domesticated plants and animals, polished stone tools, and a range of new monuments. Julian Thomas offers a coherent argument to explain the process of transition between the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.
This collection examines the Sahara holistically from the earliest (prehistoric) times through the ‘historical’ period to the present and with political direction into the future. The contributions cover palaeoclimatology, history, archaeology (cultural heritage), social anthropology, sociology, politics and international affairs. Structured chronologically, the volume can almost be read as a narrative of the Sahara from the earliest times to the present, i.e. from the past climates of the Sahara in prehistoric times to the current ‘war on terror’ and its implications for the peoples of the Sahara. Importantly, the collection shows how the region must be approached ‘holistically’...
Explains how recent scientific advances have revolutionised our understanding of prehistoric diet, economy and society.
Leading scholars demonstrate the importance of archaeobotanical evidence in the understanding of the spread of agriculture in southwest Asia and Europe.