Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands

Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands

Author: Robert K. Hitchcock

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2011-12-31

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 193877020X

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Information and its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands explores the question of how information, broadly conceived, is acquired, stored, circulated, and utilized in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, or bands. Given the nature of this question, the volume brings together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines, including archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and evolutionary ecology. Each of these specialties deals with the question of information in different ways and with different sets of data given different primacy. The fundamental goal of the volume is to bridge disciplines and subdisciplines, open discussion, and see if some common ground-either theoretical perspectives, general principles, or methodologies-can be developed upon which to build future research on the role of information in hunter-gatherer bands.


The East European Plain on the Eve of Agriculture

The East European Plain on the Eve of Agriculture

Author: Pavel Markovich Dolukhanov

Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Limited

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781407304472

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This volume deals with the prehistoric human groups and their environments that occurred during the early and middle Holocene (roughly 10 6 thousand years before present) in a huge segment of the Eurasian continent forming the East European Plain, which predated the early manifestations of food-producing economies: agriculture and stock-rearing. In archaeological terms widely accepted in the West, this period corresponds to the Mesolithic, panoply of hunter-gathering communities that evolved in the aftermath of the Last Ice Age. Contents: 1) Theoretical Background (P.M. Dolukhanov); 2) Geography of East European Plain (P.M. Dolukhanov); 3) Initial Human Settlement of East European Plain (P.M. Dolukhanov et al.); 4) The Mesolithic of East European Plain (P.M. Dolukhanov); 5) Late Quaternary Environments of Northern Black Sea Area (E.P. Larchenkov et al.); 6) The Holocene Vegetation, Climate and Early Human Subsistence in the Ukraine (G.A. Pashkevich & N.P. Gerasimenko); 7) Multiple sources for Neolithic European agriculture: Geographical origins of early domesticates in Moldova and Ukraine (G. Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute et al.); 8) Late Quaternary Environments of the North Caspian Lowland (P.M. Dolukhanov et al.); 9) The Middle Volga Neolithic (A.A. Vybornov et al.); 10) The North Caspian Mesolithic and Neolithic (A.A. Vybornov et al.); 11) The Lower Don Neolithic (A.L. Aleksandrovsky et al.); 12) Early Neolithic in the South of East European Plain (P. M. Dolukhanov et al.); 13) The Holocene Environment and Prehistoric Settlements in North-Western and Central Russia (Kh.A. Arslanov et al.); 14) The Holocene History of the Baltic Sea, Ladoga Lake and Early Human Movements (D.A. Subetto et al.); 15) Mesolithic and Neolithic in the Western Dvina-Lovat Area (A.N. Mazurkevich et al.); 16) The Beginning of Farming in the Eastern Baltic Area (A. Kriiska); 17) Early Farming and Metal Working in Boreal Russia: Zhizhitsa Lake Sits Case Study (B.S. Korotkevich et al.); 18) Mesolithic and Neolithic in North Eastern Europe (M. Lavento & P.M. Dolukhanov); 19) Multiple Sources of the European Neolithic: Mathematical Modelling Constrained by Radiocarbon Dates (K. Davison et al.); 20) Mathematical Modelling of the Neolithic Transition: a Review for Non-Mathematicians (J. Fort); 21) Population Spread Along Self-organized Paths (F.G. Feugier et al.); 22) Archaeology and Languages in Northern Eurasia: New Evidence and Hypotheses (P.M. Dolukhanov); 23) Human Genetics and Neolithic Dispersals (O.P. Balanovsky).


Humans at the End of the Ice Age

Humans at the End of the Ice Age

Author: Lawrence Guy Straus

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1461311454

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Humans at the End of the Ice Age chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses to the global environmental changes at the last glacial-interglacial boundary. Contributions address the nature and consequences of the global climate changes accompanying the end of the Pleistocene epoch-detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the human adaptations that culminated in the development of food production in many parts of the world. The text is aided by vital maps, chronological tables, and charts.


Technological Choices

Technological Choices

Author: Pierre Lemonnier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1134523068

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Technological Choices applies the critical tools of archaeology to the subject of technology and its impact on humankind throughout the ages. An examination of the challenges technological innovations present to various cultures, Technological Choices asserts that in any society, such choices are made on the basis of cultural values and social relations, rather than on the inherent benefits in technology itself. Of course, this revolutionary viewpoint has critical implications for contemporary Western societies. Based on case studies covering a wide range of chronologies and geographies, Technological Choices moves rapidly from Neolithic Europe to the modern industrial age, stopping on the way to examine the tribes of Papua, New Guinea, rural Indian and North African societies as well as several European peasant communities. The techniques studied range from the manufacture of stone implements to the development of high-tech transportation devices. With its breadth of subject matter and multidisciplinary approach, Technological Choices offers new insight into the interrelationship between technology and society. Also unprecedented is the book's emphasis on the functional aspects of material culture.


The Bronze and Early Iron Ages in Estonia

The Bronze and Early Iron Ages in Estonia

Author: V. Lang

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9789949117260

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This book analyses social, economic, and cultural processes during the Bronze and Early Iron Ages (18th century BC - 5th century AD) in what is today Estonia. The above period between the Stone Age (ca. 9000-1800 BC) and the Middle Iron Age (AD 450-800) was an era of significant and crucial developmental processes. The final transition from a foraging to a farming economy occurred during that time and resulted in an extensive settlement shift from suitable hunting and fishing places to agricultural lands. In relation to the above processes, the general settlement pattern changed, and the agricultural household as the main settlement unit became prevalent. Social relations also changed, which contributed to the development of stratified societies, at first mainly in coastal Estonia and later throughout continental Estonia. Significant developments took place both in material and intellectual culture. By the end of the period the Estonian areas had changed beyond recognition compared to what they had been at the beginning of the period.


History from Things

History from Things

Author: Stephen Lubar

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1588343464

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History from Things explores the many ways objects—defined broadly to range from Chippendale tables and Italian Renaissance pottery to seventeenth-century parks and a New England cemetery—can reconstruct and help reinterpret the past. Eighteen essays describe how to “read” artifacts, how to “listen to” landscapes and locations, and how to apply methods and theories to historical inquiry that have previously belonged solely to archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and conservation scientists. Spanning vast time periods, geographical locations, and academic disciplines, History from Things leaps the boundaries between fields that use material evidence to understand the past. The book expands and redirects the study of material culture—an emerging field now building a common base of theory and a shared intellectual agenda.


Archaeological Artefacts as Material Culture

Archaeological Artefacts as Material Culture

Author: Linda Hurcombe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1136802002

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This book is an introduction to the study of artefacts, setting them in a social context rather than using a purely scientific approach. Drawing on a range of different cultures and extensively illustrated, Archaeological Artefacts and Material Culture covers everything from recovery strategies and recording procedures to interpretation through typology, ethnography and experiment, and every type of material including wood, fibers, bones, hides and adhesives, stone, clay, and metals. With over seventy illustrations with almost fifty in full colour, this book not only provides the tools an archaeologist will need to interpret past societies from their artefacts, but also a keen appreciation of the beauty and tactility involved in working with these fascinating objects. This is a book no archaeologist should be without, but it will also appeal to anybody interested in the interaction between people and objects.