Reveals a profound understanding of evolutionary biology, and an excellent up-to-date knowledge of human evolution studies. It is not only very well done, but...it is written from a novel point of view. It needs to be very widely read and I hope that it will be. Megarry is doing his subject a great service. --Bernard Campbell University of California Social scientists have tended to neglect prehistory in their approach to human societies. Tim Megarry's lucid and authoritative book remedies this neglect. It will be of great value to students of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. --Paul HirstBirkbeck College, University of London Stressing the importance of culture as a formative agent in the evolutionary emergence of modern humans, Society in Prehistory provides an impressive, interdisciplinary, and deeply informed survey of prehistory. Individual chapters focus on culture and evolution; biology and culture; primate societies; the first hominids; tools and culture; the economics of foraging; modern humans and human behavior; sex and the division of labor; and sexuality and social life. The book reveals that, while social behavior is biologically grounded, it is not biologically determined.

Explains how recent scientific advances have revolutionised our understanding of prehistoric diet, economy and society.

In this fully illustrated study, Niall Sharples examine the complex social relationships of the Wessex region of southern England in the first millennium BC. He considers the nature of the landscape and manner of its organization, the methods that bring people together into large communities, the role of the individual, and how the region relates to other regions of Britain and Europe. These thematic concerns cover a detailed analysis of the significance of hillforts, the development of coinage and other exchange processes, the character of houses, and the nature of burial practices. Sharples offers an exciting new picture of a period and a region which has considerable importance for British archaeology, and he also provides all archaeologists interested in prehistory with a model of how later prehistoric society can be interpreted.

The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

A collection of writings by participants in the Black Mesa Archaeological Project offers a synthesis of Kayenta-area archaeology, examining the ancestral Puebloan and Navajo occupation of the Four Corners region, and analysing faunal, lithic, ceramic, chronometric, and human osteological data, to construct an account of the prehistory and ethnohistory of northern Arizona that demonstrates how organizational variation and other aspects of culture change are largely a response to a changing natural environment.

Material Culture from Prehistoric Virginia: Volume 1 is one volume of a two-volume set. This two-volume set is available in black and white and in color. Volume 1 contains artifact listings from A through L. Volume 2 contains the remainder of the alphabetical listings. These publications contain over 10,000 prehistoric artifacts mainly from Virginia, but the publication covers the eastern U. S. The set starts with Pre-Clovis and goes through Woodland times with some Indian ethnography and rockart. Each volume is indexed, contains references, has charts and graphs, drawings, photographs, artifact dates, and artifact descriptions. These volumes contain artifacts that have never appeared in the archaeological literature. From beginners to experienced archaeologists, they offer a complete library for the American Indian culture and experience. If the prehistoric Indian made it, an example is probably shown.

Academic survey of the Pacific Islands. Includes maps, photographs, tables, diagrams, atlas, and detailed index.

The Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology focuses on the material culture and lifeways of the peoples of prehistoric and early historic East and Southeast Asia; their origins, behavior and identities as well as their biological, linguistic and cultural differences and commonalities. Emphasis is placed upon the interpretation of material culture to illuminate and explain social processes and relationships as well as behavior, technology, patterns and mechanisms of long-term change and chronology, in addition to the intellectual history of archaeology as a discipline in this diverse region. The Handbook augments archaeologically-focused chapters contributed by regional scholars by providing histories of research and intellectual traditions, and by maintaining a broadly comparative perspective. Archaeologically-derived data are emphasized with text-based documentary information, provided to complement interpretations of material culture. The Handbook is not restricted to art historical or purely descriptive perspectives; its geographical coverage includes the modern nation-states of China, Mongolia, Far Eastern Russia, North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.

Proceedings of a symposium devoted to Thule archaeology and related northern studies, held at the tenth annual meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association in Ottawa in 1977. The thirty-one papers range from Thule chronology and culture history, prehistoric-recent continuities, adaptation and climatological relationships, site interpretations, technology and art, human biology, to the history of archaeological development.