Paleobiology struggled for decades to influence our understanding of evolution and the history of life because it was stymied by a focus on microevolution and an incredibly patchy fossil record. But in the 1970s, the field took a radical turn, as paleobiologists began to investigate processes that could only be recognized in the fossil record across larger scales of time and space. That turn led to a new wave of macroevolutionary investigations, novel insights into the evolution of species, and a growing prominence for the field among the biological sciences. In The Quality of the Archaeological Record, Charles Perreault shows that archaeology not only faces a parallel problem, but may also find a model in the rise of paleobiology for a shift in the science and theory of the field. To get there, he proposes a more macroscale approach to making sense of the archaeological record, an approach that reveals patterns and processes not visible within the span of a human lifetime, but rather across an observation window thousands of years long and thousands of kilometers wide. Just as with the fossil record, the archaeological record has the scope necessary to detect macroscale cultural phenomena because it can provide samples that are large enough to cancel out the noise generated by micro-scale events. By recalibrating their research to the quality of the archaeological record and developing a true macroarchaeology program, Perreault argues, archaeologists can finally unleash the full contributive value of their discipline.

Synthesizes the most important principles of cultural and environmental formation processes for both students and practicing archaeologists.

This book draws on the complementary fields of visual cultural studies and interpretative archaeology to examine how successive generations transformed their visual culture to construct themselves. It explores this process through an extended case-study of art and social life in prehistoric south-east Italy, between the Upper Palaeolithic and the Bronze Age. A central argument of the book is that a wide range of visually communicative artworks were consumed and produced in the cultural process. Such objects range from portable artefacts, to installations within sites, to monumental structures in the landscape - all of which were interwoven with people's bodies in the experiences of daily life and special performances. More specifically, it is argued that these powerful aesthetic objects were actively used by people across space and time to perceive the world around them and to reproduce their social lives. They helped people to establish personal and collective boundaries, identities and relationships, to acquire and exercise power, to promote ideologies, and to contest them, especially at time of social tension.

Non-Aboriginal material.

Grossbritannien/Irland - Rekonstruktion - Museologie/Didaktik.