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What do we know about the Mesolithic? What distinguishes the Mesolithic from earlier and later periods of human history? What do the Mesolithic cultures of Europe have in common, and what differentiates them from one another? This comprehensive volume contains 89 papers which attempt to answer the questions of the Mesolithic; the papers were presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe held in Stockholm, 2000.
The Mesolithic in Britain proposes a new division of the Mesolithic period into four parts, each with its distinct character. The Mesolithic has previously been seen as timeless, where little changed over thousands of years. This new synthesis draws on advances in scientific dating to understand the Mesolithic inhabitation of Britain as a historical process. The period was, in fact, a time of profound change: houses, monuments, middens, long-term use of sites and regions, manipulation of the environment and the symbolic deposition of human and animal remains all emerged as significant practices in Britain for the first time. The book describes the lives of the first pioneers in the Early Mesolithic; the emergence of new modes of inhabitation in the Middle Mesolithic; the regionally diverse settlement of the Late Mesolithic; and the radical changes of the final millennium of the period. The first synthesis of Mesolithic Britain since 1932, it takes both a chronological and a regional approach. This book will serve as an essential text for anyone studying the period: undergraduate and graduate students, specialists in the field and community archaeology groups.
Coastal Landscapes of the Mesolithic: Human Engagement with the Coast from the Atlantic to the Baltic Sea explores the character and significance of coastal landscapes in the Mesolithic – on different scales and with various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Mesolithic people were strongly connected to the sea, with coastal areas vital for subsistence and communication across the water. This anthology includes case studies from Scandinavia, western Europe and the Baltic area, presented by key international researchers. Topics addressed include large-scale analyses of the archaeological and geological development of coastal areas, the exploration of coastal environments with interdisciplinary methods, the discussion of the character of coastal settlements and of their possible networks, social and economic practices along the coast, as well as perceptions and cosmological aspects of coastal areas. Together, these topics and approaches contribute in an innovative way to the understanding of the complexity of topographically changing coastal areas as both border zones between land and sea and as connecting landscapes. Providing novel insights into the study of the Mesolithic as well as coastal areas and landscapes in general, the book is an important resource for researchers of the Mesolithic and coastal archaeology.
Over the last 20 years a vast number of new and important Swedish Mesolithic sites have been excavated and published in different ways as articles, books and site reports. As yet there has been no study that tries to bring the loose ends together and so the main task of this important new work by one of Sweden’s leading prehistorians is to provide an extensive overview of some of the main sites and results. The time span is long: c. 10 000-4000 BC and the amount and choice of data very large so rather than attempt to describe everything in detail Mats Larsson focuses on a series of fundamental research perspectives concerning Mesolithic lifeways and settlement patterns and chooses key sites to illustrate them. The emphasis is on southern and middle Sweden, though the country’s northern regions are in no way forgotten. This companion piece to the author’s recent successful volume Paths Towards a New World: Neolithic in Sweden, written for a general audience is also a must for all those archaeologists interested in the Mesolithic of Northern Europe and would be students of prehistory
Human Colonization of the Arctic: The Interaction Between Early Migration and the Paleoenvironment explores the relationship between humans and the environment during this early time of colonization, utilizing analytical methods from both the social and natural sciences to develop a unique, interdisciplinary approach that gives the reader a much broader understanding of the interrelationship between humanity and the environment. As colonization of the polar region was intermittent and irregular, based on how early humans interacted with the land, this book provides a glance into how humans developed new ways to make the region more habitable. The book applies not only to the physical continents, but also the arctic waters. This is how humans succeeded in crossing the Bering Strait and water area between Canadian Arctic Islands. About 4500 years ago , humans reached the northern extremity of Greenland and were able to live through the months of polar nights by both adapting to, and making, changes in their environment. - Written by pioneering experts who understand the relationship between humans and the environment in the arctic - Addresses why the patterns of colonization were so irregular - Includes coverage of the earliest examples of humans, developing an understanding of ecosystem services for economic development in extreme climates - Covers both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
Since its development in 1949, radiocarbon dating has increasingly been used in prehistoric research in order to get a better grip on the chronology of sites, cultures and environmental changes. Refinement of the dating, sampling and calibration methods has continuously created new and challenging perspectives for absolute dating. In these proceedings the focus lies on the contribution of carbon-14 dates in current Mesolithic research in North-West Europe. Altogether 40 papers dealing with radiocarbon dates from 15 different countries are presented. Major themes are the typo-technological evolution of lithic and bone industries, changes in settlement patterns, burial practices, demography and subsistence, human impact on the Mesolithic environment and the neolithisation process. Some papers also deal with more methodological aspects of carbon-14 dating (e.g. calculation of various reservoir effects, the use of cumulative calibrated probability distributions), and related techniques (e.g. stable isotope analysis for palaeodiet reconstruction).
Incomplete Archaeologies takes a familiar archaeological concept – assemblages – and reconsiders such groupings, collections and sets of things from the perspective of the work required to assemble them. The discussions presented here engage with the practices of collection, construction, performance and creation in the past (and present) which constitute the things and groups of things studied by archaeologists – and examine as well how these things and thing-groups are dismantled, rearranged, and even destroyed, only to be rebuilt and recreated. The ultimate aim is to reassert an awareness of the incompleteness of assemblage, and thus the importance of practices of assembling (whether they seem at first creative or destructive) for understanding social life in the past as well as the present. The individual chapters represent critical engagements with this aim by archaeologists presenting a broad scope of case studies from Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Case studies include discussions of mortuary practice from numerous angles, the sociopolitics of metallurgy, human-animal relationships, landscape and memory, the assembly of political subjectivity and the curation of sovereignty. These studies emphasize the incomplete and ongoing nature of social action in the past, and stress the critical significance of a deeper understanding of formation processes as well as contextual archaeologies to practices of archaeology, museology, art history, and other related disciplines. Contributors challenge archaeologists and others to think past the objects in the assemblage to the practices of assembling, enabling us to consider not only plural modes of interacting with and perceiving things, spaces, human bodies and temporalities in the past, but also to perhaps discover alternate modes of framing these interactions and relationships in our analyses. Ultimately then, Incomplete Archaeologies takes aim at the perceived totality not only of assemblages of artifacts on shelves and desks, but also that of some of archaeology’s seeming-seamless epistemological objects.
The seabed in southern Scandinavia contains numerous traces of a submerged landscape that is thought to be the remnant of a once important habitat for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Large parts of this landscape were gradually flooded by rising seas between 9500 and 4000 BC and perceptions of the Maglemose culture (9500-6400 BC) have, consequently, been based almost exclusively on former inland settlements. As a result, Early and Late Mesolithic societies have been understood as almost diametrically opposed with regards to their reliance upon marine resources and their degree of sedentism. The main objective of the book is to investigate two questions that are directly related to our current understanding of the populations of the now submerged areas: 1) Do we have a representative picture of the spread of Early Mesolithic sites in southern Scandinavia, or does the weighting towards inland sites reflect the fact that coastal sites have not been identified below present-day sea-level? 2) How did sea-level changes impact Mesolithic populations at different temporal and spatial scales, and how were these experienced from 8000-4000 BC? The book presents an extensive and up-to-date review of various types of evidence from the Boreal period such as faunal remains, fishing instruments, d13C values in bones, settlement positions and available marine resources. These are used to discuss the extent to which marine resources were utilised in the Maglemose culture. Another central component of this book is a series of new coastline models made to determine the Mesolithic sea-level changes / coastline positions. The eight new coastline models are created to facilitate new evaluations of possible relationships between sea-level changes and cultural changes. On the basis of the new coastline models the book also presents the preliminary results of 47 diver investigations conducted with the aim of identifying potential coastal settlements from the Maglemose culture.
Scandinavia, a land mass comprising the modern countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, was the last part of Europe to be inhabited by humans. Not until the end of the last Ice Age when the melting of huge ice sheets left behind a fresh, barren land surface, about 13,000 BC, did the first humans arrive and settle in the region. The archaeological record of these prehistoric cultures, much of it remarkably preserved in Scandinavia's bogs, lakes, and fjords, has given us a detailed portrait of the evolution of human society at the edge of the inhabitable world. In this book, distinguished archaeologist T. Douglas Price provides a history of Scandinavia from the arrival of the first humans to the end of the Viking period, ca. AD 1050. The first book of its kind in English in many years, Ancient Scandinavia features overviews of each prehistoric epoch followed by illustrative examples from the region's rich archaeology. An engrossing and comprehensive picture of change across the millennia emerges, showing how human society evolved from small bands of hunter-gatherers to large farming communities to the complex warrior cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages, cultures which culminated in the spectacular rise of the Vikings at the end of the prehistoric period. The material evidence of these past societies--arrowheads from reindeer hunts, megalithic tombs, rock art, beautifully wrought weaponry, Viking warships--give vivid testimony to the ancient peoples of Scandinavia and to their extensive contacts with the remote cultures of the Arctic Circle, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean