Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains
Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains

Author: Ludomir R Lozny

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-04-16

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1461468159

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​ This volume offers a new perspective on social dynamics and culture change in the North Central European Plains (NCEP) from 600 to 900 CE. It discusses long-term causal processes leading to the formation of state at the fringes of the Merovingian and Frankish Kingdoms, the Carolingian and the Holy Roman Empire, the Scandinavian Kingdoms, the Czech Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Rus. The central problem addressed is how to account for and explain the transition from noncomplex to supra-tribal polities between 600 and 900 CE. The examined evidence shows that a very basic community-level management of common pool resources seems a successful strategy to manage short term risk and may lead to sustainable higher level political organization. In conclusion it present a models of social dynamics of the NCEP, 600-900 CE that suggests that the state formation process was an outcome of spontaneous processes and deterministic factors occurring within a period of approximately 400 years, of which the last two hundred years (800-900 CE) were the most critical. In a broader context, the point discussed is that decisions with short-term goals have long-term consequences.

Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire
Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 9004380132

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The collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire offers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus. Contributors are Mladen Ančić, Ivan Basić, Goran Bilogrivić, Neven Budak, Florin Curta, Danijel Dzino, Krešimir Filipec, Richard Hodges, Nikola Jakšić, Miljenko Jurković, Ante Milošević, Marko Petrak, Peter Štih, Trpimir Vedriš.

Feast, Famine or Fighting?
Feast, Famine or Fighting?

Author: Richard J. Chacon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-20

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 3319484028

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The advent of social complexity has been a longstanding debate among social scientists. Existing theories and approaches involving the origins of social complexity include environmental circumscription, population growth, technology transfers, prestige-based and interpersonal-group competition, organized conflict, perennial wartime leadership, wealth finance, opportunistic leadership, climatological change, transport and trade monopolies, resource circumscription, surplus and redistribution, ideological imperialism, and the consideration of individual agency. However, recent approaches such as the inclusion of bioarchaeological perspectives, prospection methods, systematically-investigated archaeological sites along with emerging technologies are necessarily transforming our understanding of socio-cultural evolutionary processes. In short, many pre-existing ways of explaining the origins and development of social complexity are being reassessed. Ultimately, the contributors to this edited volume challenge the status quo regarding how and why social complexity arose by providing revolutionary new understandings of social inequality and socio-political evolution.

Chiefdoms
Chiefdoms

Author: Robert L. Carneiro

Publisher: Eliot Werner Publications

Published: 2017-12-31

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 173337695X

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What many anthropologists regard as the major step in political development occurred when, for the first time in history, previously autonomous villages gave up their individual sovereignties and were brought together into a multi-village political unit--the chiefdom. Though long neglected as a major stage in history, recent years have seen the chiefdom come in for increased attention. As its importance has been more fully recognized, it has become the object of serious scholarly analysis and interpretation. In this volume specialists in political evolution draw on data from ethnography, archaeology, and history and apply fresh insights to enhance the study of the chiefdom. The papers present penetrating analyses of many aspects of the chiefdom, from how this form of political organization first arose to the role it played in giving rise to the next major stage in the development of human society--the state.

Archaeology of the Communist Era
Archaeology of the Communist Era

Author: Ludomir R Lozny

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-06

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3319451081

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This book contributes to better recognition and comprehension of the interconnection between archaeology and political pressure, especially imposed by the totalitarian communist regimes. It explains why, under such political conditions, some archaeological reasoning and practices were resilient, while new ideas leisurely penetrated the local scenes. It attempts to critically evaluate the political context and its impact on archaeology during the communist era world wide and contributes to better perception of the relationship between science and politics in general. This book analyzes the pressures inflicted on archaeologists by the overwhelmingly potent political environment, which stimulates archaeological thought and controls the conditions for professional engagement. Included are discussions about the perception of archaeology and its findings by the public. ​

The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe
The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe

Author: Florin Curta

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-05-12

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 9004456988

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In The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe, Florin Curta offers a social and economic history of East Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe during the 6th and 7th centuries.

From Justinian to Branimir
From Justinian to Branimir

Author: Danijel Džino

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-25

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1000206858

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From Justinian to Branimir explores the social and political transformation of Dalmatia between c.500 and c.900 AD. The collapse of Dalmatia in the early seventh century is traditionally ascribed to the Slav migrations. However, more recent scholarship has started to challenge this theory, looking instead for alternative explanations for the cultural and social changes that took place during this period. Drawing on both written and material sources, this study utilizes recent archaeological and historical research to provide a new historical narrative of this little-known period in the history of the Balkan peninsula. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Byzantine and early medieval Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. It is important reading for both historians and archaeologists.

Slavs in the Making
Slavs in the Making

Author: Florin Curta

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-28

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1351330012

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Slavs in the Making takes a fresh look at archaeological evidence from parts of Slavic-speaking Europe north of the Lower Danube, including the present-day territories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Nothing is known about what the inhabitants of those remote lands called themselves during the sixth century, or whether they spoke a Slavic language. The book engages critically with the archaeological evidence from these regions, and questions its association with the "Slavs" that has often been taken for granted. It also deals with the linguistic evidence—primarily names of rivers and other bodies of water—that has been used to identify the primordial homeland of the Slavs, and from which their migration towards the Lower Danube is believed to have started. It is precisely in this area that sociolinguistics can offer a serious alternative to the language tree model currently favoured in linguistic paleontology. The question of how best to explain the spread of Slavic remains a controversial issue. This book attempts to provide an answer, and not just a critique of the method of linguistic paleontology upon which the theory of the Slavic migration and homeland relies. The book proposes a model of interpretation that builds upon the idea that (Common) Slavic cannot possibly be the result of Slavic migration. It addresses the question of migration in the archaeology of early medieval Eastern Europe, and makes a strong case for a more nuanced interpretation of the archaeological evidence of mobility. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in medieval history, migration, and the history of Eastern and Central Europe.

Our Lives
Our Lives

Author: Jennifer A. Shannon

Publisher: School for Advanced Research Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9781938645273

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In 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened to the general public. This book, in the broadest sense, is about how that museum became what it is today. For many Native individuals, the NMAI, a prominent and permanent symbol of Native presence in America, in the shadow of the Capitol and at the center of federal power, is a triumph. At the grand opening, the museum's main message was "We are still here." This message was most directly displayed in Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities, one of the NMAI's inaugural exhibitions and the main focus of this book. Ultimately, this is a record of the sincere efforts--and conflicts and achievements--experienced by those who planned, developed, and constructed the NMAI's inaugural exhibitions. It is a narrowly focused account of a particular kind of curatorial practice called "community curating." It is also an account of many different people struggling to do their best under the weight of a monumental task: to represent all Native peoples of the Americas in the first institution of its kind, a national museum dedicated to the first peoples of the hemisphere.