Browse

Taking the European Neolithic as its focal point, this wide-ranging set of chapters illustrates how the different disciplinary paths within scientific and interpretative archaeology can be woven together to forward our understanding of early farmers, including their origins, varied subsistence practices and social networks. Contributions to the volume present a broad range of innovative approaches, including isotopic studies of mobility and diet, lipid analysis of pottery, recent advances in osteological studies and ancient DNA analysis. These are combined with chapters considering the wider theoretical implications of these analytical advances and new directions of research. The case studies discussed range across the European continent, covering from the Near East to the UK. Together this research has forced the reconsideration of long-held assumptions about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, the social organisation of the earliest farmers and individual biographies of past persons. In surveying the impact of recent developments in scientific archaeology on the research questions being asked of the Neolithic, an agenda is set for future collaborative research.

The processes involved in the transformation of society from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic farmers were complex. They involved changes not only in subsistence but also in how people thought about themselves and their worlds, from their pasts to their animals. Two sets of protagonists have often been lined up in the long-running debates about these processes: on the one hand incoming farmers and on the other indigenous hunter-gatherers. Both have found advocates as the dominant force in the transitions to a new way of life. North-west Europe presents a very rich data set for this fundamental change, and research has both extended and deepened our knowledge of regional sequences, from the sixth to the fourth millennia bc. One of the most striking results is the evident diversity from northern Spain to southern Scandinavia. No one region is quite like another; hunter-gatherers and early farmers alike were also varied and the old labels of Mesolithic and Neolithic are increasingly inadequate to capture the diversity of human agency and belief. Surveys of the most recent evidence presented here also strongly suggest a diversity of transformations. Some cases of colonization on the one hand and indigenous adoption on the other can still be argued, but many situations now seem to involve complex fusions and mixtures. This wide-ranging set of papers offers an overview of this fundamental transition.

These fifteen chapters explore the ways in which recent developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display and diffusion can be applied to objects of material culture in order to enhance historians' understanding of the period from which the objects came (in this case, the remote past). In interpreting artefacts, the historian acts out a perceptual-cognitive task of transforming often noisy and impoverished signals into semantically rich symbols that have to be set within a cultural and historical context. Engineering scientists, equipped with a range of sophisticated techniques, equipment and highly specialised knowledge, are not always as aware as they might be of the range and the exact nature of problems faced by historians in interpreting objects of material culture. By providing the opportunity for scholars from these communities to explain to each other what they are doing and how, the chapters explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve methods of presenting evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in their approach to developing methods of image-enhancement and interpretation of objects. A significant further dimension is the improvement of techniques of providing high quality images of important and valuable collections of original artefacts to scholars who cannot always study the originals directly. Another important development discussed here is the fact that such imaging techniques now offer the researcher valuable insurance against the processes of deterioration to which such artefacts are inevitably subject. Seven of the chapters are scientific and technical, while the other eight have an archaeological or historical focus.

This book presents an archaeological case of prehistoric human environmental impact: a study of ecological and cultural change from the arid south coast of Peru, beginning around 750 bc and culminating in a collapse during the Middle Horizon, around ad 900. Its focus is the lower Ica Valley — today depopulated and bereft of cultivation and yet with archaeological remains attesting to substantial prehistoric occupations — thereby presenting a prima facie case for changed environmental conditions. Previous archaeological interpretations of cultural changes in the region rely heavily on climatic factors such as El Niño floods and long droughts. While the archaeological, geomorphological, and archaeobotanical records presented here do indeed include new evidence of huge ancient flood events, they also demonstrate the significance of more gradual, human-induced destruction of Prosopis pallida (huarango) riparian dry-forest. The huarango is a remarkable leguminous hardwood that lives for over a millennium and provides forage, fuel, and food. Moreover, it is crucial to the integration of a fragile desert ecosystem, enhancing microclimate and soil fertility and moisture. Its removal exposed this landscape to the effects of El Niño climatic perturbations long before Europeans arrived in Peru. This case study therefore contradicts the popular perception that Native Americans inflicted barely perceptible disturbance upon a New World Eden. Yet, it also records correlations between changes in society and degrees of human environmental impact. These allow inferences about the specific contexts in which significant human environmental impacts in the New World did, and did not, arise.

Urban life as we know it in the Mediterranean began in the early Iron Age: settlements of great size and internal diversity appear in the archaeological record. This collection of essays offers a systematic discussion of the beginnings of urbanization across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus, through Greece and Italy, to France and Spain. Scholars in the field look critically at what is meant by urbanization, and analyse the social processes that lead to the development of social complexity and the growth of towns. The introduction to the book focuses on the history of the archaeology of urbanization and argues that proper understanding of the phenomenon demands loose and flexible criteria for what is termed a ‘town’. The following eight chapters examine the development of individual settlements and patterns of urban settlement in Cyprus, Greece, Etruria, Latium, southern Italy, Sardinia, southern France, and Spain. These chapters not only provide a general review of current knowledge of urban settlements of this period, but also raise significant issues of urbanization and the economy, urbanization and political organization, and of the degree of regionalism and diversity to be found within individual towns. The three analytical chapters which conclude this collection look more broadly at the town as a cultural phenomenon that has to be related to wider cultural trends, as an economic phenomenon that has to be related to changes in the Mediterranean economy, and as a dynamic phenomenon, not merely a point on the map.

This volume brings together a series of case studies of spatial configurations of power among the early medieval societies of Europe. The geographical range extends from Ireland to Kosovo and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean world and brings together quite different scholarly traditions in a focused enquiry into the character of places of power from the end of the Roman period into the central Middle Ages. The book's strength lies in the basis that it provides for a comparative analysis of the formation, function and range of power relations in early medieval societies. The editors' introductory chapter provides an extended scene setting review of the current state of knowledge in the field of early medieval social complexity and sets out an agenda for future work in this topical area. The regional and local case studies found in the volume, most of them interdisciplinary, showcase detailed studies of particular situations at a range of scales. While much previous work tends to focus on comparisons with the classical world, this volume emphasises the uniqueness of early medieval modes of social organisation and the need to assess these societies on their own terms.

Re-excavating Jerusalem: Archival Archaeology is concerned with the archaeology and history of Jerusalem. It is a story of ongoing crises, of adaptations, inheritance and cultural transmission over many centuries under successive rulers, where each generation owed a cultural debt to its predecessors, from the Bronze Age to the modern world. It is not a summary history of occupation over four millennia, but rather a reflection of events as revealed in a major programme of archaeological excavation conducted by Dame Kathleen Kenyon in the 1960s, which is still in process of publication. The excavation archive has an ongoing relevance, even though knowledge of the city and its inhabitants has increased over the decades since then, revealing fresh insights to set against contemporary work. The preservation of such archives has great importance for future historians. Among topics addressed are the nature of a dispersed settlement pattern in the 2nd millennium BC; a fresh look at the vexed problems of the biblical accounts of the work of David and Solomon and the development of the city in the 10th and 9th centuries BC; the nature of the fortifications of the town re-established by Nehemiah in the 5th century BC; some evidence of the Roman occupation following the almost total destruction of the city in AD 70; and an exploration within the Islamic city during the 12th to 15th centuries. The latter illustrates the endless interest in Jerusalem shown by the outside world.

This volume addresses the question of the speciation of modern Homo Sapiens. The subject raises profound questions about the nature of the species, our defining characteristic (it is suggested it is language), and the brain changes and their genetic basis that make us distinct. The British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences have brought together experts from palaeontology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory to present evidence and theories of our understanding of these issues. Palaeontological and genetic work suggests that the transition from a precursor hominid species to modern man took place between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. Some chapters discuss what is most characteristic of the species, focussing on language and its possible basis in brain lateralization. This work is placed in the context of speciation theory, which has remained a subject of considerable debate since the evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. The timing of specific transitions in hominid evolution is discussed, as also is the question of the neural basis of language. Other chapters address the possible genetic nature of the transition, with reference to changes on the X and Y chromosomes that may account for sex differences in lateralization and verbal ability. These differences are discussed in terms of the theory of sexual selection, and with reference to the mechanisms of speciation.