Origins of Cattle Traction and the Making of Early Civilisations in North China
Origins of Cattle Traction and the Making of Early Civilisations in North China

Author: Minghao Lin

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 3031155351

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This book is the first to apply systematic palaeopathological, archaeological and historical investigations (using bones as a focus as well as other supporting lines of information) to Chinese osteological materials in order to answer the question about the origins of cattle labour. Structurally, this monograph flows from an introduction and review of previous scholarship and questions, through employed theory and developed methods, to analyses of archaeological materials, and finally finishes by overall discussion and closing remarks. Topics covered in this monograph include the significance of the study of cattle traction in North China, understanding and research into cattle traction within history, art and archaeology, and identifying traction in cattle bones. The author also uses the Pathological Index-refined (PIr) and morphometrics to test the reliability of both methods in identifying traction in cattle bones. The author applies both methods to archaeological sites in the Yellow River region. This book is of interest to researchers studying the Late Bronze Age and zooarchaeology.

Origins of Cattle Traction and the Making of Early Civilisations in North China
Origins of Cattle Traction and the Making of Early Civilisations in North China

Author: Minghao Lin

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783031155369

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This book is the first to apply systematic palaeopathological, archaeological and historical investigations (using bones as a focus as well as other supporting lines of information) to Chinese osteological materials in order to answer the question about the origins of cattle labour. Structurally, this monograph flows from an introduction and review of previous scholarship and questions, through employed theory and developed methods, to analyses of archaeological materials, and finally finishes by overall discussion and closing remarks. Topics covered in this monograph include the significance of the study of cattle traction in North China, understanding and research into cattle traction within history, art and archaeology, and identifying traction in cattle bones. The author also uses the Pathological Index-refined (PIr) and morphometrics to test the reliability of both methods in identifying traction in cattle bones. The author applies both methods to archaeological sites in the Yellow River region. This book is of interest to researchers studying the Late Bronze Age and zooarchaeology.

The Prehistory of the Silk Road
The Prehistory of the Silk Road

Author: E. E. Kuzmina

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-02-23

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0812292332

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In ancient and medieval times, the Silk Road was of great importance to the transport of peoples, goods, and ideas between the East and the West. A vast network of trade routes, it connected the diverse geographies and populations of China, the Eurasian Steppe, Central Asia, India, Western Asia, and Europe. Although its main use was for importing silk from China, traders moving in the opposite direction carried to China jewelry, glassware, and other exotic goods from the Mediterranean, jade from Khotan, and horses and furs from the nomads of the Steppe. In both directions, technology and ideologies were transmitted. The Silk Road brought together the achievements of the different peoples of Eurasia to advance the Old World as a whole. The majority of the Silk Road routes passed through the Eurasian Steppe, whose nomadic people were participants and mediators in its economic and cultural exchanges. Until now, the origins of these routes and relationships have not been examined in great detail. In The Prehistory of the Silk Road, E. E. Kuzmina, renowned Russian archaeologist, looks at the history of this crucial area before the formal establishment of Silk Road trade and diplomacy. From the late Neolithic period to the early Bronze Age, Kuzmina traces the evolution of the material culture of the Steppe and the contact between civilizations that proved critical to the development of the widespread trade that would follow, including nomadic migrations, the domestication and use of the horse and the camel, and the spread of wheeled transport. The Prehistory of the Silk Road combines detailed research in archaeology with evidence from physical anthropology, linguistics, and other fields, incorporating both primary and secondary sources from a range of languages, including a vast accumulation of Russian-language scholarship largely untapped in the West. The book is complemented by an extensive bibliography that will be of great use to scholars.

Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia
Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia

Author: David R. Harris

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1934536512

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In Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia, archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert. This project has demonstrated unequivocally that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into Europe. By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia, between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture.

The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology
The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology

Author: Umberto Albarella

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0199686475

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Animals have played a fundamental role in shaping human history, and the study of their remains from archaeological sites - zooarchaeology - has gradually been emerging as a powerful discipline and crucible for forging an understanding of our past. This Handbook offers a cutting-edge, global compendium of zooarchaeology that seeks to provide a holistic view of the role played by animals in past human cultures. Case studies from across five continents explore ahuge range of human-animal interactions from an array of geographical, historical, and cultural contexts, and also illuminate the many approaches and methods adopted by different schools and traditions instudying these relationships.

First Farmers
First Farmers

Author: Peter Bellwood

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2004-11-30

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0631205659

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First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world. Uses data from archaeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years Examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture Focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes Covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan

The Formation of Chinese Civilization
The Formation of Chinese Civilization

Author: Kwang-chih Chang

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0300093829

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Paleolithic sites from one million years ago, Neolithic sites with extraordinary jade and ceramic artifacts, excavated tombs and palaces of the Shang and Zhou dynasties--all these are part of the archaeological riches of China. This magnificent book surveys China's archaeological remains and in the process rewrites the early history of the world's most enduring civilization. Eminent scholars from China and America show how archaeological evidence establishes that Chinese culture did not spread from a single central area, as was long assumed, but emerged out of geographically diverse, interacting Neolithic cultures. Taking us to the great archaeological finds of the past hundred years--tombs, temples, palaces, cities--they shed new light on many aspects of Chinese life. With a wealth of fascinating detail and hundreds of reproductions of archaeological discoveries, including very recent ones, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Chinese antiquity and Chinese views on the formation of their own civilization.

Ancient Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamia

Author: A. Leo Oppenheim

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 022617767X

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"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.