There have been edited books on the archaeology of nomadism in various regions, and there have been individual archaeological and anthropological monographs, but nothing with the kind of coverage provided in this volume. Its strength and importance lies in the fact that it brings together a worldwide collection of studies of the archaeology of mobility. This book provides a ready-made reference to this worldwide phenomenon and is unique in that it tries to redefine pastoralism within a larger context by the term mobility. It presents many new ideas and thoughtful approaches, especially in the Central Asian region.

Interaction and mobility have attracted much interest in research within scholarly fields as different as archaeology, history, and more broadly the humanities. Critically assessing some of the most widespread views on interaction and its social impact, this book proposes an innovative perspective which combines radical social theory and currently burgeoning network methodologies. Through an in-depth analysis of a wealth of data often difficult to access, and illustrated by many diagrams and maps, the book highlights connections and their social implications at different scales ranging from the individual settlement to the Mediterranean. The resulting diachronic narrative explores social and economic trajectories over some seven centuries and sheds new light on the broad historical trends affecting the life of people living around the Middle Sea. The Bronze Age is the first period of intense interaction between early state societies of the Eastern Mediterranean and the small-scale communities to the west of Greece, with people and goods moving at a scale previously unprecedented. This encounter is explored from the vantage point of one of its main foci: Apulia, located in the southern Adriatic, at the junction between East and West and the entryway of one of the major routes for the resource-rich European continent.

The Archaeology of Movement discusses movement in the past, including the relationships between mobility and place, moving bodies and material culture, and the challenges of studying past movement. Drawing on a wide range of examples and different archaeological practices, The Archaeology of Movement provides an introduction for those interested in thinking about past movement beyond the ‘fact of mobility’. Almost since the beginning of the modern discipline of archaeology, movement has played a role in helping to shape our understanding of the past. However, the issue of movement is complicated, and where it sits in relation to other indicators of the past is problematic. Until now it has received less serious scrutiny than it merits. This book seeks to address this lacuna by placing movement at the centre of our investigations into the archaeological record. The Archaeology of Movement is an excellent introduction for archaeologists, anthropologists, cultural geographers, and students interested in the ways movement has shaped our understanding of history and the archaeological record.

This volume presents the results of a long study begun in 2004 within the framework of the Archaeological Mission in the Farafra Oasis of Egypt directed by Barbara Barich and Giulio Lucarini, of the Sapienza University of Rome (now under the auspices of ISMEO). The book focuses on the features known as “Steinplatz-type hearths” and their role in the settlement patterns of the human groups living in the Egyptian Western Desert during the middle and late Holocene. Steinplätze are concentrations of burned and fire-cracked stones that vary in shape and size, and have often been slightly elevated above the present ground level by post-depositional erosion processes. Occurring both as isolated features and in clusters, they are often the only visible structures – or even traces – of ancient settlements. The study of these features is closely interconnected with the mobility strategies of the communities that inhabited this desert region during a period of higher average rainfall than at present but also characterised by significant climate fluctuations, with humid periods interrupted by dry spells and eventually ending in an overall trend towards greater desertification. The use of the Steinplatz-type hearths was most widespread in the second half of the sixth millennium BC, when mobile occupation strategies replaced a more sedentary model. An analysis of the Farafra Oasis Steinplätze is coupled with a general reassessment of the subsistence and mobility models hitherto proposed for the Eastern Sahara, suggesting an integrated occupation system for Farafra itself. The economy of the forager-herders of the middle Holocene, during the climate optimum (6900-5550 cal BC), seems to have relied significantly on herding small livestock, but also on hunting, and likely concentrated on the gathering of wild cereals such as sorghum. During the climate optimum, forms of seasonal stabilisation of the settlement strategy seem to emerge, with the alternating occupation of two different winter and summer villages consisting of clusters of stone-slab huts; short-term task-specific camps, using Steinplätze, logistically completed the system. After this phase, only short-term camps with Steinplätze were occupied. These were probably directly dependent on the wettest areas at the centre of the oases and made use of a tethered exploitation strategy, with brief movements from the central oasis (“daisy-chain” movements). The use strategies of the Steinplatz-type hearths within the mobile settlement system are outlined adopting a clear and immediately assessable model. “Yet although they are among the most distinctive of the Sahara’s archaeological features, Steinplätze have received little systematic attention in recent decades. Marina Gallinaro’s work thus marks a new phase in their study, one that draws them back into discussions of how early livestock-keeping populations in Northeast Africa used the resources and landscapes to the west of the Nile along a trajectory of increasing aridification that eventually culminated in the desert we see today (…) Lucidly written, Gallinaro’s volume will, I believe, help inspire individuals to take up the research agenda she sets out. At a time when so much of the Sahara is off-limits to archaeological fieldwork, it is deeply gratifying to see here yet more evidence of the thoroughness and high quality that have characterized the work of Italian archaeologists in this region of Africa over many decades. The continuing publication of their research, Marina Gallinaro’s included, in the Arid Zone Archaeology monograph series will surely help sustain widespread interest in Saharan archaeology until it becomes possible to excavate and survey again free of current geopolitical restrictions. May that day come soon!” Prof. Peter Mitchell, University of Oxford, UK.

The Archaeology of Inequality explores the different aspects of social boundaries and articulation by comparing several interdisciplinary approaches for the analysis of the archaeological data, as well as actual case studies from the Prehistory to the Classical world. The book explores slavery, gender, ethnicity and economy as intersecting areas of study within the larger framework of inequality and exemplifies to what degree archaeologists can identify and analyze different patterns of inequality.

Mobile pastoralist activities occur at different scales across the landscape, including local, regional, and supra-regional scales. Most archaeological studies of mobile pastoralist social organization have focused on the latter two scales via the extant monumental and herding landscapes. Household levels of analysis figure much less in these studies. This volume brings together the work of archaeologists currently engaged in mobile pastoralist household research in different regions of the world to highlight the importance of household studies and the utility of both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches in understanding mobile pastoralist household formation, continuity, and adaptation to environmental, social, economic, and political change.

This monograph uses the latest archaeological results from Mongolia and the surrounding areas of Inner Asia to propose a novel understanding of nomadic statehood, political economy, and the nature of interaction with ancient China. In contrast to the common view of the Eurasian steppe as a dependent periphery of Old World centers, this work views Inner Asia as a locus of enormous influence on neighboring civilizations, primarily through the development and transmission of diverse organizational models, technologies, and socio-political traditions. This work explores the spatial management of political relationships within the pastoral nomadic setting during the first millennium BCE and argues that a culture of mobility, horse-based transport, and long-distance networking promoted a unique variant of statehood. Although states of the eastern steppe were geographically large and hierarchical, these polities also relied on techniques of distributed authority, multiple centers, flexible structures, and ceremonialism to accommodate a largely mobile and dispersed populace. This expertise in “spatial politics” set the stage early on for the expansionistic success of later Asian empires under the Mongols and Manchus. Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire brings a distinctly anthropological treatment to the prehistory of Mongolia and is the first major work to explore key issues in the archaeology of eastern Eurasia using a comparative framework. The monograph adds significantly to anthropological theory on interaction between states and outlying regions, the emergence of secondary complexity, and the growth of imperial traditions. Based on this approach, the window of Inner Asian prehistory offers a novel opportunity to investigate the varied ways that complex societies grow and the processes articulating adjacent societies in networks of mutual transformation.

"As an Indigenous scholar researching the history and archaeology of his own tribe, Tsim D. Schneider provides a unique and timely contribution to the growing field of Indigenous archaeology and offers a new perspective on the primary role and relevance of Indigenous places and homelands in the study of colonial encounters"--

This book presents the state-of-the art in the analysis of animal movements in the past and its implications for human societies. It also addresses the importance of animal activity and mobility for understanding past human societies and past human-animal relationships through cases studies from different periods and areas. It is the first book to focus on the archaeology of animal movement on different scales – from fine-tuned muscle movements of working animals to feeding behavior and to long-distance movements across landscapes and regions. With the recent development of fine-tuned methodologies such as stable isotope analysis and physical activity assessment, the potential to understand how animals moved about in the past has increased substantially. While the chapters in the volume utilize a wide range of archaeological methods, they are all united by an emphasis on understanding animal activity and mobility patterns as something that has a major impact on human societies and human-animal relationships. Chapters in this volume show that animal activity patterns provide information on multiple aspects of human-animal relationships, including analysis of animal management practices, transhumance, global and regional trade networks, and animal domestication. This volume is of interest to scholars working in zooarchaeology and early human societies.

In this book the concept of mobility is explored for the archaeology of the Amazonian and Caribbean region. As a result of technological and methodological progress in archaeology, mobility has become increasingly visible on the level of the individual. However, as a concept it does not seem to fit with current approaches in Amazonian archaeology, which favour a move away from viewing small mobile groups as models for the deeper past. Instead of ignoring such ethnographic tyrannies, in this book they are considered to be essential for arriving at a different past. Viewing archaeological mobility as the sum of movements of both people and objects, the empirical part of Amotopoan Trails focuses on Amotopo, a small contemporary Trio village in the interior of Suriname. The movements of the Amotopoans are tracked and positioned in a century of Trio dynamics, ultimately yielding a recent archaeology of Surinamese-Trio movements for the Sipaliwini River basin (1907-2008). Alongside the construction of this archaeology, novel mobility concepts are introduced. They provide the conceptual footholds which enable the envisioning of mobility at various temporal scales, from a decade up to a century, the sequence of which has remained a blind spot in Caribbean and Amazonian archaeology.