Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology
Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology

Author: Ann Brysbaert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-30

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1136582452

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This volume investigates smaller and larger networks of contacts within and across the Aegean and nearby regions, covering periods from the Neolithic until Classical times (6000–323 BC). It explores the world of technologies, crafts and archaeological 'left-overs' in order to place social and technological networks in their larger economic and political contexts. By investigating ways of production, transport/distribution, and consumption, this book covers a chronologically large period in order to expand our understanding of wider cultural developments inside the geographical boundaries of the Aegean and its regions of contact in the east Mediterranean. This book brings together scholars’ expertise in a variety of different fields ranging from historical archaeology (using textual evidence), archaeometry, geoarchaeology, experimental work, archaeobotany, and archaeozoology. Chapters in this volume study and contextualize archaeological remains and explore networks of crafts-people, craft traditions, or people who employed various technologies to survive. Central questions in this context are how and why traditions, techniques, and technologies change or remain stable, or where and why cross-cultural boundaries developed and disintegrated.

Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories
Narrating Objects, Collecting Stories

Author: Sandra H. Dudley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0415692717

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This collection of essays explores the stories that can be told by and about objects and those who choose to collect them. Examining collecting in different historical, social and institutional contexts, the authors consider the meanings and values with which objects are imputed and the processes and implications of collecting.

Knowledge Networks and Craft Traditions in the Ancient World
Knowledge Networks and Craft Traditions in the Ancient World

Author: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1135014442

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This edited volume investigates knowledge networks based on materials and associated technologies in Prehistoric Europe and the Classical Mediterranean. It emphasises the significance of material objects to the construction, maintenance, and collapse of networks of various forms – which are central to explanations of cultural contact and change. Focusing on the materiality of objects and on the way in which materials are used adds a multidimensional quality to networks. The properties, functions, and styles of different materials are intrinsically linked to the way in which knowledge flows and technologies are transmitted. Transmission of technologies from one craft to another is one of the main drivers of innovation, whilst sharing knowledge is enabled and limited by the extent of associated social networks in place. Archaeological research has often been limited to studying objects made of one particular material in depth, be it lithic materials, ceramics, textiles, glass, metal, wood or others. The knowledge flow and transfer between crafts that deal with different materials have often been overlooked. This book takes a fresh approach to the reconstruction of knowledge networks by integrating two or more craft traditions in each of its chapters. The authors, well-known experts and early career researchers, provide concise case studies that cover a wide range of materials. The scope of the book extends from networks of craft traditions to implications for society in a wider sense: materials, objects, and the technologies used to make and distribute them are interwoven with social meaning. People make objects, but objects make people – the materiality of objects shapes our understanding of the world and our place within it. In this book, objects are treated as clues to social networks of different sorts that can be contrasted and compared, both spatially and diachronically.

Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory
Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory

Author: Stella Souvatzi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1135042888

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Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory addresses these two concepts as interrelated, rather than as separate categories, and as a means for understanding past social relations at different scales. The need for this volume was realised through four main observations: the ever growing interest in space and spatiality across the social sciences; the comparative theoretical and methodological neglect of time and temporality; the lack in the existing literature of an explicit and balanced focus on both space and time; and the large amount of new information coming from prehistoric Mediterranean. It focuses on the active and interactive role of space and time in the production of any social environment, drawing equally on contemporary theory and on case-studies from Mediterranean prehistory. Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory seeks to break down the space-time continuum, often assumed rather than inferred, into space-time units and to uncover the varying and variable interrelations of space and time in prehistoric societies across the Mediterranean. The volume is a response to the dissatisfaction with traditional views of space and time in prehistory and revisits these concepts to develop a timely integrative conceptual and analytical framework for the study of space and time in archaeology.

From Prehistoric Villages to Cities
From Prehistoric Villages to Cities

Author: Jennifer Birch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1135045100

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Archaeologists have focused a great deal of attention on explaining the evolution of village societies and the transition to a ‘Neolithic’ way of life. Considerable interest has also concentrated on urbanism and the rise of the earliest cities. Between these two landmarks in human cultural development lies a critical stage in social and political evolution. Throughout world, at various points in time, people living in small, dispersed village communities have come together into larger and more complex social formations. These community aggregates were, essentially, middle-range; situated between the earliest villages and emergent chiefdoms and states. This volume explores the social processes involved in the creation and maintenance of aggregated communities and how they brought about revolutionary transformations that affected virtually every aspect of a society and its culture. While there have been a number of studies that address coalescence from a regional perspective, less is understood about how aggregated communities functioned internally. The key premise explored in this volume is that large-scale, long-term cultural transformations were ultimately enacted in the context of daily practices, interactions, and what might be otherwise considered the mundane aspects of everyday life. How did these processes play out "on the ground" in diverse and historically contingent settings? What are the strategies and mechanisms that people adopt in order to facilitate living in larger social formations? What changes in social relations occur when people come together? This volume employs a broadly cross-cultural approach to interrogating these questions, employing case studies which span four continents and more than 10,000 years of human history.

Archaeology in Environment and Technology
Archaeology in Environment and Technology

Author: David Frankel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1134626088

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Environments, landscapes, and ecological systems are often seen as fundamental by archaeologists, but how they relate to society is understood in very different ways. The chapters in this book take environment, culture, and technology together. All have been the focus of much attention; often one or other has been seen as the starting point for analysis, but this volume argues that it is the study of the inter-relationships between these three factors that offers a way forward. The contributions to this book pick up different strands within the tangled web of intersections between environment, technology, and society, providing a series of case studies which explore facets of this common theme in different settings and circumstances and from different perspectives. As well as addressing themes of theoretical and methodological interest, these case studies draw on primary research dealing with time periods from the late Pleistocene glacial maximum to the very recent past, and involve societies of very different types. Running through all the contributions, however, is a concern with the archaeological record and the ways in which scales of observation and availability of evidence affect the development of questions and explanations. The diversity of the chapters in this volume demonstrates the inherent weakness in any attempt to prioritise environment, technology, or society. These three factors are all embedded in any human activity, as change in one will result in change in the others: social and technical changes alter relations with the environment–and indeed the environment itself—and as environmental change drives changes in society and technology. As this book shows, it is possible to consider the relationship between the three factors from different perspectives, but any attempt to consider one or even two in isolation will mean that valuable insights will be missed.

Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life
Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life

Author: Ian Hodder

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2018-07-02

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1607327376

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This volume explores the role of religion and ritual in the origin of settled life in the Middle East, focusing on the repetitive construction of houses or cult buildings in the same place. Prominent archaeologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion working at several of the region’s most important sites—such as Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe, and Aşıklı Höyük—contend that religious factors significantly affected the timing and stability of settled economic structures. Contributors argue that the long-term social relationships characteristic of delayed-return agricultural systems must be based on historical ties to place and to ancestors. They define different forms of history-making, including nondiscursive routinized practices as well as commemorative memorialization. They consider the timing in the Neolithic of an emerging concern with history-making in place in relation to the adoption of farming and settled life in regional sequences. They explore whether such correlations indicate the causal processes in which history-making, ritual practices, agricultural intensification, population increase, and social competition all played a role. Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life takes a major step forward in understanding the adoption of farming and a settled way of life in the Middle East by foregrounding the roles of history-making and religious ritual. This work is relevant to students and scholars of Near Eastern archaeology, as well as those interested in the origins of agriculture and social complexity or the social role of religion in the past. Contributors: Kurt W. Alt, Mark R. Anspach, Marion Benz, Lee Clare, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Morris Cohen, Oliver Dietrich, Güneş Duru, Yilmaz S. Erdal, Nigel Goring-Morris, Ian Hodder, Rosemary A. Joyce, Nicola Lercari, Wendy Matthews, Jens Notroff, Vecihi Özkaya, Feridun S. Şahin, F. Leron Shults, Devrim Sönmez, Christina Tsoraki, Wesley Wildman

Technology, Crafting and Artisanal Networks in the Greek and Roman World
Technology, Crafting and Artisanal Networks in the Greek and Roman World

Author: Diego Elia

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-12-02

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 3111190587

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This volume aims to merge theoretical models with methodological approaches on ceramic technology and artisanal networks in the Classical world. This convergence of analytical frameworks allowed scholars to explore some traditional archaeological topics that usually have a very low-level of visibility, such as the skillful gestures of the craftspeople involved, the organization of the ceramic production, the dynamics of apprenticeship and knowledge transfer as well as intra and inter-regional artisanal mobility, in the Graeco-Roman ‘communities of practice’. The papers promote interdisciplinary dialogues among various fields of study, such as archaeology, archaeometry, anthropology, ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, and digital humanities - such as Social Network Analysis, computational imaging, and big data analysis.

Cutting-edge Technologies in Ancient Greece
Cutting-edge Technologies in Ancient Greece

Author: Marina Panagiotaki

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2020-04-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1789253012

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This volume examines materials produced with the use of fire and mostly by use of the kiln (metals, plasters, glass and glaze, aromatics). The technologies based on fire have been considered high-tech technologies and they have contributed to the evolution of man throughout history. Papers highlight technical innovations of the technician/artist/pyrotechnologist that lived in the Aegean (mainland Greece and the islands) during the Bronze Age, the Classical and the Byzantine periods.

New Worlds from Old Texts
New Worlds from Old Texts

Author: Elton Thomas Edward Barker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0199664137

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Written by a highly interdisciplinary range of contributors, New Worlds from Old Texts explores ancient Greek perceptions of space, and how they may have differed from the modern cartographic view.