Archaeology

Read about Mike Smith's The Archaeology of Australia's Deserts in Inside Story http://inside.org.au/.

Human Adaptation in the Asian Palaeolithic

Hominin Dispersal and Behaviour during the Late Quaternary

Ryan J. Rabett

This book examines the first human colonization of Asia and particularly the tropical environments of Southeast Asia during the Upper Pleistocene. In studying the unique character of the Asian archaeological record, it reassesses long-accepted propositions about the development of human 'modernity.'

$99.00 (C)

From Chiefdom to State in Early Ireland

D. Blair Gibson

This book examines the development of social complexity in late prehistoric and Early Medieval Ireland. Using a range of methods and techniques, particularly data from settlement patterns, D. Blair Gibson demonstrates how Ireland evolved from constellations of chiefdoms into a political entity bearing the characteristics of a rudimentary state.

$99.00 (C)

The Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Beyond Pharaohs

Douglas J. Brewer

Egyptologists, philologists, and archaeologists have long worked side by side in Egypt, but they often fail to understand one another's approaches. This book aims to introduce students to the archaeological side of the study of ancient Egypt and to bridge the gap between disciplines by explaining how archaeologists tackle a variety of problems.

$29.99 (X)

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Lithic Technology

Measures of Production, Use and Curation

William Andrefsky, Jr

This volume brings together essays that measure the life history of stone tools relative to retouch values, raw material constraints, and evolutionary processes. Collectively, they explore the association of technological organization with facets of tool form such as reduction sequences, tool production effort, artifact curation processes, and retouch measurement.

$39.99 (Z)

Divining the Etruscan World

The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice

Jean MacIntosh Turfa

The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is a rare document of omens foretold by thunder. It long lay hidden, embedded in a Greek translation within a Byzantine treatise from the age of Justinian. The first complete English translation of the Brontoscopic Calendar, this book provides an understanding of Etruscan Iron Age society as revealed through the ancient text, especially Etruscans' concerns with the environment, food, health, and disease.

$99.00 (C)

Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica

Julia Guernsey

This book examines the functions of sculpture during the Preclassic period in Mesoamerica and its significance in statements of social identity. Julia Guernsey focuses specifically on an enigmatic type of public, monumental sculpture known as the "potbelly" that traces its antecedents to small domestic ritual objects. The potbellies became central to the physical representation of new forms of social identity and expressions of political authority during the development of the first state-level societies in Mesoamerica.

$99.00 (C)

The Archaeology of China

From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age

Li Liu, Xingcan Chen

This book explores the roles of agricultural development and advancing social complexity in the processes of state formation in China. Over a period of about 10,000 years, it follows evolutionary trajectories of society from the last Paleolithic hunting-gathering groups, through Neolithic farming villages, and on to the Bronze Age Shang dynasty in the latter half of the second millennium BC.

$36.99 (Z)

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Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations

Weaving Together Society

Anne Porter

In this book, Anne Porter explores the idea that mobile and sedentary members of the ancient world were integral parts of the same social and political groups in greater Mesopotamia during the period 4000 to 1500 BCE. She draws on a wide range of archaeological and cuneiform sources to show how networks of structure, ideology, and practice shaped such innovations as the Uruk expansion, the introduction of writing, the organization and operation of government, the first stories of Gilgamesh, and the emergence of the Amorrites.