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The Study Of Prehistory
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Download or read book Prehistory written by Chris Gosden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.
Book Synopsis The Study of Prehistory by : Grahame Clark
Download or read book The Study of Prehistory written by Grahame Clark and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1954 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prehistory written by Colin Renfrew and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Prehistory, the award-winning archaeologist and renowned scholar Colin Renfrew covers human existence before the advent of written records–which is to say, the overwhelming majority of our time here on earth. But Renfrew also opens up to discussion, and even debate, the term “prehistory” itself, giving an incisive, concise, and lively survey of the past, and how scholars and scientists labor to bring it to light. Renfrew begins by looking at prehistory as a discipline, particularly how developments of the past century and a half–advances in archaeology and geology; Darwin’s ideas of evolution; discoveries of artifacts and fossil evidence of our human ancestors; and even more enlightened museum and collection curatorship–have fueled continuous growth in our knowledge of prehistory. He details how breakthroughs such as radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have helped us to define humankind’s past–how things have changed–much more clearly than was possible just a half century ago. Answers for why things have changed, however, continue to elude us, so Renfrew discusses some of the issues and challenges past and present that confront the study of prehistory and its investigators. In the book’s second part, Renfrew shifts the narrative focus, offering a summary of human prehistory from early hominids to the rise of literate civilization that is refreshingly free from conventional wisdom and grand “unified” theories. The author’s own case studies encompass a vast geographical and chronological range–the Orkney Islands, the Balkans, the Indus Valley, Peru, Ireland, and China–and help to explain the formation and development of agriculture and centralized societies. He concludes with a fascinating chapter on early writing systems, “From Prehistory to History.” In this invaluable, brief account of human development prior to the last four millennia, Colin Renfrew delivers a meticulously researched and passionately argued chronicle about our life on earth, and our ongoing quest to understand it.
Book Synopsis Transfixed by Prehistory by : Maria Stavrinaki
Download or read book Transfixed by Prehistory written by Maria Stavrinaki and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how modern art was impacted by the concept of prehistory and the prehistoric Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Transfixed by Prehistory attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene. Rather, it is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the “new” was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought. Stavrinaki focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger), and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology.
Book Synopsis In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory by : John D. Bengtson
Download or read book In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory written by John D. Bengtson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled in honor and celebration of veteran anthropologist Harold C. Fleming, this book contains 23 articles by anthropologists (in the general sense) from the four main disciplines of prehistory: archaeology, biogenetics, paleoanthropology, and genetic (historical) linguistics. Because of Professor Fleming's major focus on language he founded the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory and the journal Mother Tongue the content of the book is heavily tilted toward the study of human language, its origins, historical development, and taxonomy. Because of Fleming's extensive field experience in Africa some of the articles deal with African topics. This volume is intended to exemplify the principle, in the words of Fleming himself, that each of the four disciplines is enriched when it combines with any one of the other four. The authors are representative of the cutting edge of their respective fields, and this book is unusual in including contributions from a wide range of anthropological fields rather than concentrating in any one of them.
Download or read book Prehistory written by M. C. Burkitt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1921 book discusses the early civilizations of Europe and North Africa, providing readers with an introduction to prehistoric societies.
Book Synopsis Systematics in Prehistory by : Robert C. Dunnell
Download or read book Systematics in Prehistory written by Robert C. Dunnell and published by . This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systematics in Prehistory was originally published in 1971. It soon became an essential book for anyone who wished to understand the principles of classification and how they are applied in archaeology. The book clarifies differences among the various kinds of classification (paradigmatic, taxonomic) and discusses the appropriate uses of each. It also discusses groups and grouping devices and how they differ from classification. This continues to be an area of considerable confusion in archaeology. This book is as useful to graduate students and professionals in archaeology now as it was 30 years ago. Its materials have not become dated nor have they been superceded by more recent treatments. This work remains a crucial foundation for knowledgeable application of systematics in archaeology. Dunnell's primary goal was to develop a conceptual framework for the study of prehistory based on systematics. Part I of the book provides an introduction to systematics. Here Dunnell builds a precise and beautifully consistent structure of concepts applicable to phenomena in general. Part II proceeds to illustrate the application of systematics to prehistory. The treatment is concise and rigorous. From an original review of the book in Mankind: "This book makes two original contributions of considerable value to the literature of archaeological theory. First, it not only recognizes the debt which the "new" archaeology owes to the "old" archaeology but it attempts reconciliation between the two. Second, it examines with precision and rigor the basic concepts which prehistorians use implicitly and attempts to make both their usage and their definition explicit." After graduate work at Yale, Dr. Robert C. Dunnell was appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he remained for thirty years. He retains graduate training responsibilities at the University of Washington, where he is emeritus. The central intellectual theme of his career has been recreating archaeology as science. While he pursued this objective along traditional lines early in his career, by the late 1970s this recreation had led him to evolutionary theory and nearly all his published work since that time touches on evolution and its application to the archaeologic record. He is widely regarded as the principal exponent of evolutionary archaeology today.
Book Synopsis California Prehistory by : Terry L. Jones
Download or read book California Prehistory written by Terry L. Jones and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007-07-16 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some forty scholars examine California's prehistory and archaeology, looking at marine and terrestrial palaeoenvironments, initial human colonization, linguistic prehistory, early forms of exchange, mitochondrial DNA studies, and rock art. This work is the most extensive study of California's prehistory undertaken in the past 20 years. An essential resource for any scholar of California prehistory and archaeology!
Book Synopsis World Prehistory by : Brian M. Fagan
Download or read book World Prehistory written by Brian M. Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-21 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This popular introductory textbook provides an overview of more than 3 million years of human prehistory. Written in an accessible and jargon-free style, this engaging volume tells the story of humanity from our beginnings in tropical Africa up to the advent of the world’s first urban civilizations. A truly global account, World Prehistory surveys the latest advances in the study of human origins and describes the great diaspora of modern humans in the millennia that followed as they settled Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Later chapters consider seminal milestones in prehistory: the origins of food production, the colonization of the offshore Pacific, and the development of the first more complex human societies based, for the most part, on agriculture and stock raising. Finally, Fagan and Durrani examine the prevailing theories regarding early state-organized societies and the often flamboyant, usually volatile, preindustrial civilizations that developed in the Old World and the Americas. Fully updated to reflect new research, controversies, and theoretical debates, this unique book remains an ideal resource for the beginner first approaching archaeology. Drawing on the experience of two established writers in the field, World Prehistory is a respected classic that acquaints students with the fascinations of human prehistory.
Book Synopsis The Past in Perspective by : Kenneth L. Feder
Download or read book The Past in Perspective written by Kenneth L. Feder and published by . This book was released on 2025 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Preface Wait. You're reading this? You're reading the Preface? Huh? I mean, nothing in here is going to be on the test. If I were you, I'd skip this and get to the good stuff starting in Chapter 1. But if you really want to know, here's the deal for this new edition. Mid-twentieth-century British author L. P. Hartley begins his novel The Go-Between with the now-iconic phrase: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Now, in the context of that book, Hartley's reference is to an elderly man inspired to think about the trajectory of his own life while going through some of his old junk. I am not the first person to use Hartley's phrase as a metaphor for the broader pursuit of historians and archaeologists who, through reference to the old junk in the world's attic or basement, think about the trajectory of the broader human story. Indeed, the human past is like a foreign country where things are done differently than they are in the present. In this book we will visit that foreign country. I will be your tour guide. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory focuses on the dim echoes of the human past, presenting an accessible chronicle of human physical and cultural evolution. The readers of this text are undergraduates with no previous coursework in archaeology; for many it will be their only academic exposure to our prehistoric past and considering what's freely available about the human past on cable and YouTube, that presents a heavy burden to the textbook author. Rather than overwhelm beginning students with an all-inclusive, detailed, or encyclopedic survey of human antiquity, this text focuses on the major themes of the human evolutionary story. It begins with the evolution of our earliest hominin ancestors, traces the evolution of the modern human species, and follows the various pathways our ancestors took in the development of food-producing societies and complex civilizations. My goal throughout is to instil in readers an appreciation for the long chronicle of humanity and the ongoing processes we use to construct and assess that story. HOW THE TEXT IS ORGANIZED Chapters 1 and 2 provide context and background for the discussion of human prehistory. Chapter 1 places the study of the human past in the context of science, specifically the science of anthropology. Chapter 1 also explains how a scientific approach to the study of prehistory developed. Chapter 2 is a brief overview of key methodologies employed by archaeologists and paleoanthropologists in their study of the human past. It represents a brief introduction to archaeology. Following these introductory chapters, Chapters 3 through 14 go on to present a chronological survey of the human past. Each chapter follows a consistent format with these headings: Prelude, Chronicle, Issues and Debates, Messages From the Past, Case Study Close-up, Summary, and To Learn More. A consistent format provides a pedagogical advantage, and the trajectory of human physical and cultural evolution becomes far more apparent and connected. What we know, what we don't know, and what are still topics of vigorous debate will be clear to the reader. I hope the consistent format makes it easier to follow the stories told in the book. The PRELUDE represents a conscious attempt on my part to provide a pedagogical "hook" for each chapter. Personal anecdotes or fascinating historical incidents, for example, immediately engage students in the key issue or issues of the chapter, whether it is upright locomotion, the origins of artistic expression, or the power of ancient civilizations"--
Book Synopsis Time and History in Prehistory by : Stella Souvatzi
Download or read book Time and History in Prehistory written by Stella Souvatzi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time and History in Prehistory explores the many processes through which time and history are conceptualized and constructed, challenging the perception of prehistoric societies as ahistorical. Drawing equally on contemporary theory and illustrative case studies, and firmly rooted in material evidence, this book rearticulates concepts of time and history, questions the kind of narratives to be written about the past and underlines the fundamentally historical nature of prehistory. From a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives, the authors of this volume address the scales at which archaeological evidence and narrative are interwoven, from a single day to deep history and from a solitary pot to a complete city. In doing so, they argue the need for a multi-scalar approach to prehistoric data that allows for the interplay between short and long term, and for analytical units that encourage us to move continuously between scales. The growing interest in time and history in archaeology and across a wide range of disciplines concerned with human action and the human past highlights that these are exceptionally active fields. By juxtaposing varied viewpoints, this volume bridges gaps in narrative, finds a place for inclusive histories and makes clear the benefit of integrative and interdisciplinary approaches, including different disciplines and types of data.
Book Synopsis Prehistory at Cambridge and Beyond by : Grahame Clark
Download or read book Prehistory at Cambridge and Beyond written by Grahame Clark and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1989-08-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grahame Clark's book examines the development of prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge and the achievements of its graduates, placing this theme against the background of the growth of archaeology as an academic discipline worldwide. Prehistory in Cambridge began to be taught formally in 1920 and emerged as a full tripos soon after the Second World War. From the outset it focused on the aims and methods of archaeological research, providing in addition for combinations of study options ranging from early prehistory to the archaeology of the major civilisations of the Old World and the protohistory of Northern Europe. The measure of its success is shown by the achievement of Cambridge graduates at home and overseas in both the study and the field. A significant outcome of their work has been the widespread recognition of archaeology as a subject of broad educational value, not merely for undergraduates, but for human beings the world over.
Book Synopsis A Prehistory of the North by : John F. Hoffecker
Download or read book A Prehistory of the North written by John F. Hoffecker and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Early humans did not drift north from Africa as their ability to cope with cooler climates evolved. Settlement of Europe and northern Asia occurred in relatively rapid bursts of expansion. This study tells the complex story, spanning almost two million years, of how humans inhabited some of the coldest places on earth.
Book Synopsis World Prehistory by : Brian M. Fagan
Download or read book World Prehistory written by Brian M. Fagan and published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief survey of world archaeology, designed for readers with no previous experience of the subject, provides an overview of the major developments in the early human past. Special attention is given to the latest findings on evolution
Download or read book Time in History written by G. J. Whitrow and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this intriguing book G.J. Whitrow traces the evolution of our general awareness of time and its significance from the dawn of history to the present day. His absorbing study ranges from Ancient Egypt and Persia, Greece, and Israel, to the Islamic world, India and China, and Europe andAmerica, showing the different ways time has been perceived by various civilizations.
Book Synopsis Detecting and Explaining Technological Innovation in Prehistory by : Michela Spataro
Download or read book Detecting and Explaining Technological Innovation in Prehistory written by Michela Spataro and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology refers to any set of standardised procedures for transforming raw materials into finished products. Innovation consists of any change in technology which has tangible and lasting effect on human practices, whether or not it provides utilitarian advantages. Prehistoric societies were never static, but the tempo of innovation occasionally increased to the point that we can refer to transformation taking place. Prehistorians must therefore identify factors promoting or hindering innovation.This volume stems from an international workshop, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 'Scales of Transformation' at Kiel University in November 2017. The meeting challenged its participants to detect and explain technological change in the past and its role in transformation processes, using archaeological and ethnographic case studies. The papers draw mainly on examples from prehistoric Europe, but case-studies from Iran, the Indus Valley, and contemporary central America are also included. The authors adopt several perspectives, including cultural-historical, economic, environmental, demographic, functional, and agent-based approaches.These case studies often rely on interdisciplinary research, whereby field archaeology, archaeometric analysis, experimental archaeology and ethnographic research are used together to observe and explain innovations and changes in the artisan's repertoire. The results demonstrate that interdisciplinary research is becoming essential to understanding transformation phenomena in prehistoric archaeology, superseding typo-chronological description and comparison.This book is a scholarly publication aimed at academic researchers, particularly archaeologists and archaeological scientists working on ceramics, osseous and metal artifacts.
Author :Sarunas Milisauskas Publisher :Springer Science & Business Media ISBN 13 :9780306467936 Total Pages :470 pages Book Rating :4.4/5 (679 download)
Book Synopsis European Prehistory by : Sarunas Milisauskas
Download or read book European Prehistory written by Sarunas Milisauskas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of European archaeology dates back to the 19th century, but the number of archaeologists, projects, and publications has increased greatly during the last three decades. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restructuring of several countries, archaeology in Europe has more opportunity for interaction and research than previously was possible. This comprehensive volume covers the Prehistoric period in Europe, from the earliest appearance of humans to the rise of the Roman Empire and includes the Paleolithic, Mesolithic Bronze and Iron Ages. Throughout these periods, the major developments and explored using the archaeological data including: technology; trade; settlement; warfare; ritual. Using methodologies and theories that were previously unknown in Europe decades ago, new discoveries and arguments are included in the research as well as reevaluations of previous discoveries. This work also includes a present geographical summary and how it impacts the current archaeological discoveries and research being conducted. European Prehistory: A Survey includes many comprehensive maps and site photos. It will be a vital resource to prehistoric archaeologists, anthropologists and historians in and outside of Europe.
