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Proceedings of a Prehistoric Society conference at Sheffield University
In this book, Lynne Kelly explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts. In the first part, she examines knowledge systems within historically recorded oral cultures, showing how the link between power and the control of knowledge is established. Analyzing the material mnemonic devices used by documented oral cultures, she demonstrates how early societies maintained a vast corpus of pragmatic information concerning animal behavior, plant properties, navigation, astronomy, genealogies, laws and trade agreements, among other matters. In the second part Kelly turns to the archaeological record of three sites, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge, offering new insights into the purpose of the monuments and associated decorated objects. This book demonstrates how an understanding of rational intellect, pragmatic knowledge and mnemonic technologies in prehistoric societies offers a new tool for analysis of monumental structures built by non-literate cultures.
In this innovative study, James Whitley examines the relationship between the development of pot style and social changes in the Dark Age of Greece (1100-700 BC). He focuses on Athens where the Protogeometric and Geometric styles first appeared. He considers pot shape and painted decoration primarily in relation to the other relevant features - metal artefacts, grave architecture, funerary rites, and the age and sex of the deceased - and also takes into account different contexts in which these shapes and decorations appear. A computer analysis of grave assemblages supports his view that pot style is an integral part of the collective representations of Early Athenian society. It is a lens through which we can focus on the changing social circumstances of Dark Age Greece. Dr Whitley's approach to the study of style challenges many of the assumptions which have underpinned more traditional studies of Early Greek art.
Explains how recent scientific advances have revolutionised our understanding of prehistoric diet, economy and society.
Homo Britannicustells the epic history of life in Britain, from man's very first footsteps to the present day. Drawing on all the latest evidence and techniques of investigation, Chris Stringer describes times when Britain was so tropical that man lived alongside hippos and sabre tooth tiger, times so cold we shared this land with reindeer and mammoth, and times colder still when we were forced to flee altogether. This is the first time we have known the full extent of this history- the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, led by Chris, has made discoveries that have stunned the world, pushing back the earliest date of arrival to 700,000 years ago. Our ancestors have been fighting a dramatic battle for survival here ever since.
In Breaking the Surface, Doug Bailey offers a radical alternative for understanding Neolithic houses, providing much-needed insight not just into prehistoric practice, but into another way of doing archaeology. Using his years of fieldwork experience excavating the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe, Bailey exposes and elucidates a previously under-theorized aspect of prehistoric pit construction: the actions and consequences of digging defined as breaking the surface of the ground. Breaking the Surface works through the consequences of this redefinition in order to redirect scholarship on the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, offering detailed critiques of current interpretations of these earliest European architectural constructions. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Magura in Romania), with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with cultural diversity in framing spatial reference and through an examination of pre-modern ungrounded ways of living. Breaking the Surface is as much a creative act on its own-in its mixture of work from disparate periods and regions, its use of radical text interruption, and its juxtaposition of text and imagery-as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture. Unflinching and exhilarating, it is a major development in the growing subdiscipline of art/archaeology.
The papers presented at the April 1992 'Trade and Exchange' conference at the University of Bristol are now available in this volume. Contents include: Trade beyond the material (C. Renfrew); Exchange, foraging and local Hominid networks (C. Gamble); Neolithic quarries, the exchange of axes and social control in the southern Vosges (P. Petrequin, F. Jeudy and C. Jeunesse); Trade in Neolithic jadeite axes from the Alps (M. R. Bouard); The polished stone axe in earlier Neolithic Britain (M. Edmonds); Megalithic tombs and Megalithic art in Atlantic Europe (E. S. Twohig); The exchange of obsidian at Neolithic sites in Italy (A. J. Ammerman and C. Polglase); The origin of metal used for making weapons in Early and Middle Minoan Crete (Z. Stos-Gale); The circulation of amber in Prehistoric Europe (C. du Gardin); Europe and the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age (A. Harding); Displacement and Exchange in Archaeological Methodology (S. Needham); East-West Relations in the Paris Basin During the Late Bronze Age (P. Brun); Relations Between Brittany and Great Britain during the Bronze Age (J. Briard); Feasting in the Late Bronze Age (J. G. de Soto); Prehistoric Seafaring in the Channel (S. McGrail); Cheshire Cats, Mickey Mice, the New Europe and Ancient Celtic Art (J. V. S. Megaw and M. R. Megaw); Germans, Celts and Romans in the Late (pre-Roman) Iron Age (A. P. Fitzpatrick); Dependence and idependence in European Prehistory (A. Sherratt).