Living Well Together? Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic of South-East and Central Europe

Living Well Together? Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic of South-East and Central Europe PDF Author: Alasdair Whittle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782974814
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
Living Well Together investigates the development of the Neolithic in southeast and central Europe from 6500-3500 cal BC with special reference to the manifestations of settling down. A collection of reports and comments on recent fieldwork in the region, Living Well Together? provides 14 tightly written and targeted papers presenting interpretive discussions from important excavations and reassessments of our understanding of the Neolithic. Each paper makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge about the period, and the book, like its companion (Un)settling the Neolithic (Oxbow 2005) will be a benchmark text for work in this region. The reports in Living Well Together? play out the critical questions posed in the earlier volume: how should one interpret settlement; what of the difference between tells and flat sites; what do we mean by permanent occupation; can we avoid the assumptions that underlie claims for year-round residence or seasonal occupation; why, in some regions and at some times, did people maintain residence for so many generations that monumental tell settlements grew to dominate the visual and social landscape; what would a viewshed analysis of tells reveal; what are the dynamics of households in Neolithic Greece; how should we see the emergence of pottery in terms of material culture; and what were the origins of the LBK, and how can we understand its development? The volume's authors have succeeded in attacking existing thought, in provoking new discussion and in creating new paths to understanding the nature of human existence in the Neolithic. Together they set a new agenda for studying the Neolithic across and beyond southeastern and central Europe.

Living Well Together? Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic of South-East and Central Europe

Living Well Together? Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic of South-East and Central Europe PDF Author: Alasdair Whittle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782974814
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 522

Get Book Here

Book Description
Living Well Together investigates the development of the Neolithic in southeast and central Europe from 6500-3500 cal BC with special reference to the manifestations of settling down. A collection of reports and comments on recent fieldwork in the region, Living Well Together? provides 14 tightly written and targeted papers presenting interpretive discussions from important excavations and reassessments of our understanding of the Neolithic. Each paper makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge about the period, and the book, like its companion (Un)settling the Neolithic (Oxbow 2005) will be a benchmark text for work in this region. The reports in Living Well Together? play out the critical questions posed in the earlier volume: how should one interpret settlement; what of the difference between tells and flat sites; what do we mean by permanent occupation; can we avoid the assumptions that underlie claims for year-round residence or seasonal occupation; why, in some regions and at some times, did people maintain residence for so many generations that monumental tell settlements grew to dominate the visual and social landscape; what would a viewshed analysis of tells reveal; what are the dynamics of households in Neolithic Greece; how should we see the emergence of pottery in terms of material culture; and what were the origins of the LBK, and how can we understand its development? The volume's authors have succeeded in attacking existing thought, in provoking new discussion and in creating new paths to understanding the nature of human existence in the Neolithic. Together they set a new agenda for studying the Neolithic across and beyond southeastern and central Europe.

The Neolithic of Europe

The Neolithic of Europe PDF Author: Penny Bickle
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN: 1785706578
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
The Neolithic of Europe comprises eighteen specially commissioned papers on prehistoric archaeology, written by leading international scholars. The coverage is broad, ranging geographically from southeast Europe to Britain and Ireland and chronologically from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, but with a decided focus on the former. Several papers discuss new scientific approaches to key questions in Neolithic research, while others offer interpretive accounts of aspects of the archaeological record. Thematically, the main foci are on Neolithisation; the archaeology of Neolithic daily life, settlements and subsistence; as well as monuments and aspects of world view. A number of contributions highlight the recent impact of techniques such as isotopic analysis and statistically modeled radiocarbon dates on our understanding of mobility, diet, lifestyles, events and historical processes. The volume is presented to celebrate the enormous impact that Alasdair Whittle has had on the study of prehistory, especially the European and British Neolithic, and his rich career in archaeology.

The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe PDF Author: Chris Fowler
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199545847
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1201

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Book Description
The Neolithic - a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe - has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe and the way research traditions in different countries (and languages) have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic - from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta - offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.

The First Farmers of Central Europe

The First Farmers of Central Europe PDF Author: Penny Bickle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1842179128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
From about 5500 cal BC to soon after 5000 cal BC, the lifeways of the first farmers of central Europe, the LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik), are seen in distinctive practices of longhouse use, settlement forms, landscape choice, subsistence, material culture and mortuary rites. Within the five or more centuries of LBK existence a dynamic sequence of changes can be seen in, for instance, the expansion and increasing density of settlement, progressive regionalisation in pottery decoration, and at the end some signs of stress or even localised crisis. Although showing many features in common across its very broad distribution, however, the LBK phenomenon was not everywhere the same, and there is a complicated mixture of uniformity and diversity. This major study takes a strikingly large regional sample, from northern Hungary westwards along the Danube to Alsace in the upper Rhine valley, and addresses the question of the extent of diversity in the lifeways of developed and late LBK communities, through a wide-ranging study of diet, lifetime mobility, health and physical condition, the presentation of the bodies of the deceased in mortuary ritual. It uses an innovative combination of isotopic (principally carbon, nitrogen and strontium, with some oxygen), osteological and archaeological analysis to address difference and change across the LBK, and to reflect on cultural change in general.

Coming Together

Coming Together PDF Author: Attila Gyucha
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438472773
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists discuss how urbanization first emerged in strikingly different sociopolitical contexts in North America, Europe, and the Near East. The pursuit for universally applicable definitions of the terms “urban” and “city” has frequently distracted scholars from scrutinizing processes of how ancient nucleated settlements evolved and developed. Based on the premise that similar social dynamics to a great extent governed nucleation trajectories throughout human history, Coming Together focuses on both prehistoric aggregated and early urban settlements. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists discuss how nucleation unfolded in strikingly different sociopolitical contexts in North America, Europe, and the Near East. The major themes of the volume are nucleation’s origins, pathways to sustainability, and the transformative role of these sites in sociopolitical and cultural change.

Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods

Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods PDF Author: Ina Wunn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 366252757X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.

Europe Before Rome

Europe Before Rome PDF Author: T. Douglas Price
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199914702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Europe before Rome uses the extraordinary archaeology of prehistoric Europe to explore questions about the origins and evolution of human society

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia PDF Author: Miljana Radivojević
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803270438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.

CAA2014: 21st Century Archaeology

CAA2014: 21st Century Archaeology PDF Author: F. Giligny
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1784911011
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
This volume brings together a selection of papers proposed for the Proceedings of the 42nd Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference (CAA), hosted at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University from 22nd to 25th April 2014.

Stone Age without Stones

Stone Age without Stones PDF Author: Raiko Krauß
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3989450077
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
This volume deals with the results of the excavations from 2010 to 2015 at the Early Neolithic settlement of Bucova Pusta IV near Sânnicolau Mare, in northern Banat. After the end of the Early Neolithic settlement, a large burial mound was erected at this site in the early 3rd millennium BC, the main burial of which was also documented during the excavations. The site was subsequently inhabited once again during the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. In medieval times, the site served as a burial ground for a nomadic equestrian population. The flat landscape of northern Banat is characterised by numerous watercourses. This is why the utilisation of aquatic resources played an important role in the Neolithic period. Another special feature is the lack of natural stones, which is reflected in the special character of the Early Neolithic finds.