Prehistoric Europe

This book owes its existence to a need felt, we believe, by many people who are trying to teach European prehistory, for an elementary textbook suitable for students taking their first course in the subject with little or no previous experience in archeology. Several years of struggling with the literature in its present form finally convinced us that there was no alternative but to write it for ourselves. The primary evidence, where published at all, is notoriously scattered through a bewildering range of books, pamphlets and journals, written in almost every European language and in any case frequently unobtainable except in a few specialist libraries. For some areas and periods secondary works, sometimes excellent, exist, but their coverage if far from complete and they are mostly at too advanced a level for first-year students. Some general books exist, but none covers the chronological and geographical range that we thought desirable, with a proper concentration on the themes characteristic of modern archaeology at a level suitable for our intended readership.

History

Gamble, Clive

SHENNAN, STEPHEN

Champion, T. C.

Ancient Civilizations

Emerald Group Pub Ltd

This book introduces archaeologists to the most important quantitative methods, from the initial description of archaeological data to techniques of multivariate analysis. These are presented in the context of familiar problems in archaeological practice, an approach designed to illustrate their relevance and to overcome the fear of mathematics from which archaeologists often suffer.

Quantifying Archaeology

Academic Press

Much of what we are comes from our ancestors. Through cultural and biological inheritance mechanisms, our genetic composition, instructions for constructing artifacts, the structure and content of languages, and rules for behavior are passed from parents to children and from individual to individual. Mapping Our Ancestors demonstrates how various genealogical or "phylogenetic" methods can be used both to answer questions about human history and to build evolutionary explanations for the shape of history. Anthropologists are increasingly turning to quantitative phylogenetic methods. These methods depend on the transmission of information regardless of mode and as such are applicable to many anthropological questions. In this way, phylogenetic approaches have the potential for building bridges among the various subdisciplines of anthropology; an exciting prospect indeed. The structure of Mapping Our Ancestors reflects the editors' goal of developing a common understanding of the methods and conditions under which ancestral relations can be derived in a range of data classes of interest to anthropologists. Specifically, this volume explores the degree to which patterns of ancestry can be determined from artifactual, genetic, linguistic, and behavioral data and how processes such as selection, transmission, and geography impact the results of phylogenetic analyses. Mapping Our Ancestors provides a solid demonstration of the potential of phylogenetic methods for studying the evolutionary history of human populations using a variety of data sources and thus helps explain how cultural material, language, and biology came to be as they are.

Mapping Our Ancestors: Phylogenetic Approaches in Anthropology and Prehistory

World

Routledge

Covers recent work on the cultural aspects of past societies, focusing especially on studies of colonisation and migration, and the impact of population growth.

Population and Demography: World archaeology 30:2 (World Archaeology S)

Reference

As biological information is passed through genes, so cultural information is passed through what Richard Dawkins has termed `memes'. In this theoretical but readable study, Shennan explores the potential for a neo-Darwinian evolutionary approach to some of the major concerns and issues within archaeology in recent times. Drawing on the work of Richard Dawkins as a stimulus, Shennan reviews the concept of memes as applied to animal behaviour and critiques their role in relation to human populations. Arguing that archaeologists are currently struggling with a lost past, this study reinforces what should be the prime concern of archaeology - to search for valid knowledge and to seek to make sense of long-term patterning and material culture. Shennan puts forward a framework to this end and applies it to looking at how humans exploit resources, population histories, the transmission of cultural traditions, male-female relationships and social evolution, competition and warfare.

Genes, Memes, and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Thames&Hudson

The second edition of this popular textbook introduces archaeology students to the use of statistics in their subject. Based on the author's long-running undergraduate course, it explains the relevant areas of statistics in terms that archaeology students can easily assimilate. This new edition includes a wider range of topics presented in greater depth, reflecting the subject's growing importance within archaeology.

Archaeology

Edinburgh University Press

Quantifying archaeology

Edinburgh Univ Pr

Quantifying Archaeology: Second Edition

University Of Iowa Press

Experiments in the Collection and Analysis of Archaeological Survey Data

John Collis Publications

Infrared absorption spectroscopy is able to pinpoint the source of British Prehistoric amber, here shown by analysis of all surviving finds to be predominantly Baltic. This leads on to a discussion of British amber in a European context, and of its particular significance as a social indicator, and as an item of trade or exchange. Complete with catalogue, analyses, drawings. 231p with figs. (Oxbow Monograph 8, 1991) Pb

Amber in Prehistoric Britain (int-uk)

Beck, Curt

Europe

Oxbow Books

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