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Includes papers presented at a conference entitled "Economic archaeology, towards an integrated approach," held at New Hall, Cambridge, in January 1979.
"Nowhere in archaeology is the gap between theory and practice more evident than in its ambivalent engagement with economic development. This groundbreaking volume assembles practicing archaeologists, economists, and NGO officials in an extensive exploration of the theoretical, practical and ethical issues raised by archaeologists' use of cultural heritage to support economic development. The first chapters consider the problem of articulating the value of tangible and intangible heritage when economic measures alone are inadequate. Subsequent chapters present regional perspectives on archaeology and development, and present a host of case studies from around the globe that describe archaeologists' development projects, including some that are successful and others that are less so. These studies both suggest best practices in the implementation of development projects and illuminate the obstacles to success created by political conflict and competing human needs. Ethical issues and practical considerations converge in chapters that explore the role that members of local communities should play in the design, management and governance of archaeological and heritage resources. In this volume, archaeologists and heritage professionals will encounter a thought-provoking international discourse concerning the path forward for archaeology as the field engages with economic development."
Explains how recent scientific advances have revolutionised our understanding of prehistoric diet, economy and society.
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-running controversy over the milking of animals and the use of dairy products by humans is discussed as is the ecological impact of hunting by farmers, with studies from Serbia and Syria. For Britain, coverage extends from Mesolithic Star Carr, via the origins of agriculture and the farmers of Lismore Fields, through considerations of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Outside Britain, papers discuss Neolithic subsistence in Cyprus and Croatia, Iron Age society in Spain, Medieval and post-medieval animal utilisation in northern Russia, and the claimed finding of a modern red deer skeleton in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. In exploring these themes, this volume celebrates the life and work of Tony Legge (zoo)archaeologist and teacher.
Kevin Greene shows how archaeology can help provide a more balanced view of the Roman economy by informing the classical historian about geographical areas and classes of society that received little attention from the largely aristocratic classical writers whose work survives.
In this book, Kenneth Hirth provides a comparative view of the organization of ancient and premodern society and economy. Hirth establishes that humans adapted to their environments, not as individuals but in the social groups where they lived and worked out the details of their livelihoods. He explores the variation in economic organization used by simple and complex societies to procure, produce, and distribute resources required by both individual households and the social and political institutions that they supported. Drawing on a wealth of archaeological, historic, and ethnographic information, he develops and applies an analytical framework for studying ancient societies that range from the hunting and gathering groups of native North America, to the large state societies of both the New and Old Worlds. Hirth demonstrates that despite differences in transportation and communication technologies, the economic organization of ancient and modern societies are not as different as we sometimes think.
Emphasizing the important social relationships that form among people who participate in small-scale economic transactions, contributors to this volume explore often-overlooked networks of intimate and shadow economies—terms used to describe trade that takes place outside formal market systems. Case studies from a variety of historical contexts around the world reveal the ways such transactions created community and identity, subverted class and power relations, and helped people adapt to new social realities. In Maine, woven baskets sold by Native American artisans to Euroamerican consumers supported Native strategies for cultural survival and agency. Alcohol exchanged by Scandinavian merchants for furs and skins enabled their indigenous trading partners to expand social webs that contested colonialism. Moonshine production in Appalachia was an integral part of economic exchanges in isolated mountain communities. Caribbean and American plantations contain evidence of interactions, exchanges, and attachments between enslaved communities and poor whites that defied established racial boundaries. From brothel workers in Boston to seal hunters in Antarctica, the examples in this volume show how historical archaeologists can use the concept of intimate economies to uncover deeply meaningful connections that exist beyond the traditional framework of global capitalism.
Economic archaeology and ancient economic history have boomed the past decades. The former thanks to greatly enhanced techniques to identify, collect, and interpret material remains as proxies for economic interactions and performance; the latter by embracing the frameworks of new institutional economics. Both disciplines, however, still have great difficulty talking with each other. There is no reliable method to convert ancient proxy-data into the economic indicators used in economic history. In turn, the shared cultural belief-systems underlying institutions and the symbolic ways in which these are reproduced remain invisible in the material record. This book explores ways to bring both disciplines closer together by building a theoretical and methodological framework to evaluate and integrate archaeological proxy-data in economic history research. Rather than the linear interpretations offered by neoclassical or neomalthusian models, we argue that complexity economics, based on system theory, offers a promising way forward.
Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies is a collection of essays which focuses on the art of questioning; it is about ideas and analytical experiment. Ancient economic history has developed enormously since the publication of M.I. Finley’s The Ancient Economy in 1973. Much new material has been brought to bear on the debate on the character of economic life in the Greek and Roman world. But, at the same time, discussions have been going round in circles. This is because not enough attention has been given to the questions ancient historians ask and the concepts with which they approach the economy. In this collection, an attempt is made to renew the terms of the debate by presenting a wide variety of new analytical approaches to ancient economic history ranging from literary theory, cross-cultural comparison, statistical analysis of archaeological data to neo-institutional economics and model-building.