This volume includes new research on the theoretical implications regarding the mechanisms of change in the geographical distribution of hunter-gatherer settlement and land use. It focuses on the long-term changes in the hunter-gatherer settlement on a global scale, including research from several continents. It will be of interest to archaeologists and cultural anthropologists working in the field of the forager/ collector model throughout the world.

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Europe is dotted with tens of thousands of prehistoric barrows. In spite of their ubiquity, little is known on the role they had in pre- and protohistoric landscapes. In 2010, an international group of archaeologists came together at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in The Hague to discuss and review current research on this topic. This book presents the proceedings of that session. The focus is on the prehistory of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, but also includes an excursion to huge prehistoric mounds in the southeast of North America. One contribution presents new evidence on how the immediate environment of Neolithic Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture megaliths was ordered, another one discusses the role of remarkable single and double post alignments around Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds. Zooming out, several chapters deal with the place of barrows in the broader landscape. The significance of humanly-managed heath in relation to barrow groups is discussed, and one contribution emphasizes how barrow orderings not only reflect spatial organization, but are also important as conceptual anchors structuring prehistoric perception. Other authors, dealing with Early Neolithic persistent places and with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age urnfields, argue that we should also look beyond monumentality in order to understand long-term use of "ritual landscapes". The book contains an important contribution by the well-known Swedish archaeologist Tore Artelius on how Bronze Age barrows were structurally re-used by pre-Christian Vikings. This is his last article, written briefly before his death. This book is dedicated to his memory. This publication is part of the Ancestral Mounds Research Project of the University of Leiden.

The adoption of agriculture is one of the major developments in human history. Archaeological studies have demonstrated that the trajectories of Neolithisation in Northwest Europe were diverse. This book presents a study into the archaeology of the communities involved in the process of Neolithisation in the Lower Rhine Area (5500-2500 cal BC). It elucidates the role played by the indigenous communities in relation to their environmental context and in view of the changes that becoming Neolithic brought about. This work brings together a comprehensive array of excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area. Their analysis shows that the succession of Late Mesolithic, Swifterbant culture, Hazendonk group and Vlaardingen culture societies represents a continuous long-term tradition of inhabitation of the wetlands and wetland margins of this area, forming a culturally continuous record of communities in the transition to agriculture. After demonstrating the diversity of the Mesolithic, the subsequent developments regarding Neolithisation are studied from an indigenous perspective. Foregrounding the relationship between local communities and the dynamic wetland landscape, the study shows that the archaeological evidence of regional inhabitation points to long-term flexible behaviour and pragmatic decisions being made concerning livelihood, food economy and mobility. This disposition also influenced how the novel elements of Neolithisation were incorporated. Animal husbandry, crop cultivation and sedentism were an addition to the existing broad spectrum economy but were incorporated within a set of integrative strategies. For the interpretation of Neolithisation this study offers a complementary approach to existing research. Instead of arguing for a short transition based on the economic importance of domesticates and cultigens at sites, this study emphasises the persistent traditions of the communities involved. New elements, instead of bringing about radical changes, are shown to be attuned to existing hunter-gatherer practices. By documenting indications of the mentalité of the inhabitants of the wetlands, it is demonstrated that their mindset remained essentially ‘Mesolithic’ for millennia. This book is accompanied by a separate 422 page volume containing the appendices. These constitute a comprehensive inventory of 159, mostly excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area.

The natural arc of resource-rich land which forms the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of South-West Asia is regarded as the earliest centre of village-based farming in the world and has been the focus of much of our understanding of the transition from Epipalaeolithic hunter-gathers to Neolithic farmers. Beyond the Fertile Crescent is the first volume of the Azraq Project, a large-scale archaeological and palaeoenvironmental survey and excavation project undertaken between 1982 and 1989 in the ecologically diverse sub-region of the Azraq Basin in north-central Jordan: an area rich in Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. Beginning with an overview to the Project aims, a detailed analysis of past and present environments and land use and the history of excavation in the Basin, Beyond the Fertile Crescent explores the geology, stratigraphy and dating of the Late Palaeolithic sites and provides a detailed description of the technology and typology of the lithic assemblages from the sites. These are then compared with those from the wider Levant, in order to explore possible links between technological traditions and social groups in order to understand the evidence for settlement strategies across the region.

This book provides a basic introduction to key debates in the study of hunter-gatherers, specifically from an anthropological perspective, but designed for an archaeological audience. Hunter-gatherers have been the focus of intense anthropological research and discussion over the last hundred years, and as such there is an enormous literature on communities all over the world. Yet, among the diverse range of peoples studied, there are a number of recurrent themes, including not only the way in which people make a living (hunting, gathering and fishing) but also striking similarities in other areas of life such as belief systems and social organisation. These themes are described and then explored through archaeological case-studies. The overarching theme throughout the volume is the use of ethnographic analogy, and how archaeologists should be critical in its use.

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.

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world. The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.

This book makes a contribution to the developing field of complex hunter-gatherer studies with an archaeological analysis of the development of one such group. It examines the evolution of complex hunter-gatherers on the North Pacific coast of Alaska. It is one of the first books available to examine in depth the social evolution of a specific complex hunter-gatherer tradition on the North Pacific Rim and will be of interest to professional archaeologists, anthropologists, and students of archaeology and anthropology.