The Middle Fraser Canyon contains some of the most important archaeological sites in British Columbia, including the remains of ancient villages that supported hundreds, if not thousands, of people. How and why did these villages come into being? Why were they abandoned? In search of answers to these questions, Prentiss and Kuijt take readers on a voyage of discovery into the ancient history of the St’?t’imc, or Upper Lillooet, a people whose struggles and successes are brought to vivid life through photographs, artistic and fictionalized reconstructions of life in the villages, and discussions of evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations.
Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world. The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.
The Middle Fraser Canyon contains some of the most important archaeological sites in British Columbia, including the remains of ancient villages that supported hundreds, if not thousands, of people. How and why did these villages come into being? Why were they abandoned? In search of answers to these questions, Prentiss and Kuijt take readers on a voyage of discovery into the ancient history of the St’?t’imc, or Upper Lillooet, a people whose struggles and successes are brought to vivid life through photographs, artistic and fictionalized reconstructions of life in the villages, and discussions of evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations.
A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory
McEwan si cimenta nel campo del libretto d'opera e, mettendo il suo talento per l'intreccio perfetto a servizio di una «prosa cadenzata» che ben si adatta al genere, crea un testo ironico, serrato e dal finale sorprendente.
The essays that comprise this study range from detailed discussion of the forms of particular runes in the runic alphabet to the wider matters on which runes throw light, such as magic, paganism, literacy and linguistic change.
Why does the West rule? In this magnum opus, eminent Stanford polymath Ian Morris answers this provocative question, drawing on 50,000 years of history, archeology, and the methods of social science, to make sense of when, how, and why the paths of development differed in the East and West — and what this portends for the 21st century. There are two broad schools of thought on why the West rules. Proponents of "Long-Term Lock-In" theories such as Jared Diamond suggest that from time immemorial, some critical factor — geography, climate, or culture perhaps — made East and West unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West and push it further ahead of the East. But the East led the West between 500 and 1600, so this development can't have been inevitable; and so proponents of "Short-Term Accident" theories argue that Western rule was a temporary aberration that is now coming to an end, with Japan, China, and India resuming their rightful places on the world stage. However, as the West led for 9,000 of the previous 10,000 years, it wasn't just a temporary aberration. So, if we want to know why the West rules, we need a whole new theory. Ian Morris, boldly entering the turf of Jared Diamond and Niall Ferguson, provides the broader approach that is necessary, combining the textual historian's focus on context, the anthropological archaeologist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods to make sense of the past, present, and future — in a way no one has ever done before.
Ian Hodder’s campaigns of excavation at the world-famous Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük are one of the largest, most complex, and most exciting archaeological field projects in the world and recognized as agenda-setting not only in terms of our understanding of early farming communities in the Near East, particularly the central role religion played in their daily lives, but also in terms of the interaction between theory and practice in the trenches and on-site laboratories. This volume presents the results of excavation in three areas of the site, known as South, North, and KOPAL, excavated between 1995 and 1999. The book describes aspects of the excavation, recording and sampling methodologies that are necessary for an understanding of the results presented plus it incorporates interpretive discussion. It brings in data from the study of animal bones, lithics, ceramics, micromorphology and the full suite of analyses conducted on the material. These accounts are interspersed with individual specialists’ commentaries and conclusions, that mimic the process of collaborative interpretation that takes place during excavation and post-excavation. The ‘objective descriptions’ of the archaeology are thus exposed as interpretations involving a balancing of a variety of different types of data and scholarly input. Another thought-provoking volume in the Çatalhöyük excavation series which will be read with profit by any archaeologist engaged in working at theory in practice in the field.
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