Making Sense of History
Making Sense of History

Author: Geoffrey Partington

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2013-07

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1483629198

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Much more is known about the past that is interesting, valuable and and relevant to our problems than any one of us can ever know. Making Sense of History proposes we focus on Five Zones of Priority: Livelihoods, Protection from violence, Freedom, Relationships, and Ideas. Partington examines some perennial problems, such as Progress or Regression, Bias, Prejudice and Moral Judgment, Depth versus Breadth and the ongoing fabrication of myths, and accusations of genocide and cannibalism. Partington warns against looking to history for the certainties that physics or mathematics provide. We have free will and make decisions rather than react uniformly to external forces. Historical understanding is more like proverbial wisdom writ large than the theorems of Pythagoras or Einstein. A more serious problem is the ideological capture of much history teaching in countries like Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Partington does not advocate vainglorious national pride but defends the achievement of those countries in making a better, though imperfect, balance between freedom and security than has been made at almost every other time or place.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers

Author: Vicki Cummings

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 1683

ISBN-13: 0191025267

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For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Our Heart Is the Land
Our Heart Is the Land

Author: Bruce Shaw

Publisher: Aboriginal Studies Press

Published: 1995-11

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0855755695

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This collection of Aboriginal life histories provides a glimpse of a world about which little has been published previously. Focusing on themes such as religious life, living off the land, Dreamings and missions and using the voices of men and women living in and around the Lake Eyre Basin today, Shaw recorded a history of oppression and deprivation, disease and exploitation, but also celebrates the survival of a rich culture, and the growth of political awareness and community self management.

Health and the Rise of Civilization
Health and the Rise of Civilization

Author: Mark Nathan Cohen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1989-01-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780300050233

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Civilized nations popularly assume that "primitive" societies are poor, ill, and malnourished and that progress through civilization automatically implies improved health. In this provocative new book, Mark Nathan Cohen challenges this belief. Using evidence from epidemiology, anthropology, and archaeology, Cohen provides fascinating evidence about the actual effects of civilization on health, suggesting that some aspects of civilization create as many health problems as they prevent or cure. " This book] is certain to become a classic-a prominent and respected source on this subject for years into the future. . . . If you want to read something that will make you think, reflect and reconsider, Cohen's Health and the Rise of Civilization is for you."-S. Boyd Eaton, Los Angeles Times Book Review "A major accomplishment. Cohen is a broad and original thinker who states his views in direct and accessible prose. . . . This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in disease, civilization, and the human condition."-David Courtwright, Journal of the History of Medicine "Deserves to be read by anthropologists concerned with health, medical personnel responsible for communities, and any medical anthropologists whose minds are not too case-hardened. Indeed, it could provide great profit and entertainment to the general reader."-George T. Nurse, Current Anthropology "Cohen has done his homework extraordinarily well, and the coverage of the biomedical, nutritional, demographic, and ethnographic literature about foragers and low energy agriculturists is excellent. The subject of culture and health is near the core of a lot of areas of archaeology and ethnology as well as demography, development economics, and so on. The book deserves a wide readership and a central place in our professional libraries. As a scholarly summary it is without parallel."-Henry Harpending, American Ethnologist