Feast, Famine or Fighting?

Feast, Famine or Fighting? PDF Author: Richard J. Chacon
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319484028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
The advent of social complexity has been a longstanding debate among social scientists. Existing theories and approaches involving the origins of social complexity include environmental circumscription, population growth, technology transfers, prestige-based and interpersonal-group competition, organized conflict, perennial wartime leadership, wealth finance, opportunistic leadership, climatological change, transport and trade monopolies, resource circumscription, surplus and redistribution, ideological imperialism, and the consideration of individual agency. However, recent approaches such as the inclusion of bioarchaeological perspectives, prospection methods, systematically-investigated archaeological sites along with emerging technologies are necessarily transforming our understanding of socio-cultural evolutionary processes. In short, many pre-existing ways of explaining the origins and development of social complexity are being reassessed. Ultimately, the contributors to this edited volume challenge the status quo regarding how and why social complexity arose by providing revolutionary new understandings of social inequality and socio-political evolution.

Feast, Famine or Fighting?

Feast, Famine or Fighting? PDF Author: Richard J. Chacon
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319484028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Get Book Here

Book Description
The advent of social complexity has been a longstanding debate among social scientists. Existing theories and approaches involving the origins of social complexity include environmental circumscription, population growth, technology transfers, prestige-based and interpersonal-group competition, organized conflict, perennial wartime leadership, wealth finance, opportunistic leadership, climatological change, transport and trade monopolies, resource circumscription, surplus and redistribution, ideological imperialism, and the consideration of individual agency. However, recent approaches such as the inclusion of bioarchaeological perspectives, prospection methods, systematically-investigated archaeological sites along with emerging technologies are necessarily transforming our understanding of socio-cultural evolutionary processes. In short, many pre-existing ways of explaining the origins and development of social complexity are being reassessed. Ultimately, the contributors to this edited volume challenge the status quo regarding how and why social complexity arose by providing revolutionary new understandings of social inequality and socio-political evolution.

Archaeological and Ethnographic Evidence of Domination in Indigenous Latin America

Archaeological and Ethnographic Evidence of Domination in Indigenous Latin America PDF Author: Yamilette Chacon
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813070465
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
New data and interpretations that shed light on the nature of power relations in prehistoric and contemporary Indigenous societies This volume explores the nature of power relations and social control in Indigenous societies of Latin America. Its chapters focus on instances of domination in different contexts as reflected in archaeological, osteological, and ethnohistorical records, beginning with prehistoric case studies to examples from the ethnographic present. Ranging from the development of nautical and lacustrine warfare technology in precontact Mesoamerica to the psychological functions of domestic violence among contemporary Amazonian peoples, these investigations shed light on how leaders often use violence or the threat of violence to advance their influence. The essays show that while social control can be overt, it may also be veiled in the form of monumental architecture, fortresses or pukara, or rituals that signal to friends and foes alike the power of those in control. Contributors challenge many widely accepted conceptions of violence, warfare, and domination by presenting new evidence, and they also offer novel interpretations of power relations in the domestic, local, and regional spheres. Encompassing societies from tribal to state levels of sociopolitical complexity, the studies in this volume present different dimensions of conflict and power found among the prehistoric and contemporary Indigenous peoples of Latin America. Contributors: Stephen Beckerman | Richard J. Chacon | Yamilette Chacon | Vincent Chamussy | Peter Eeckhout | Pamela Erickson | Mariana Favila Vázquez | Romuald Housse | Nam C. Kim | Krzysztof Makowski | Dennis E. Ogburn | Lawrence Stewart Owens | James Yost

Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe PDF Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000260887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Conditioned by local ways of knowing and doing, Great Zimbabwe develops a new interpretation of the famous World Heritage site of Great Zimbabwe. It combines archaeological knowledge, including recent material from the author’s excavations, with native concepts and philosophies. Working from a large data set has made it possible, for the first time, to develop an archaeology of Great Zimbabwe that is informed by finds and observations from the entire site and wider landscape. In so doing, the book strongly contributes towards decolonising African and world archaeology. Written in an accessible manner, the book is aimed at undergraduate students, graduate students, and practicing archaeologists both in Africa and across the globe. The book will also make contributions to the broader field such as African Studies, African History, and World Archaeology through its emphasis on developing synergies between local ways of knowing and the archaeology.

Urban Life in the Distant Past

Urban Life in the Distant Past PDF Author: Michael Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009249045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The book describes a novel approach to early cities that is transdisciplinary, scientific, historical, and based on social-science knowledge.

Trade before Civilization

Trade before Civilization PDF Author: Johan Ling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514684
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship between long-distance trade and the rise of inequality. The volume illustrates how elites used exotic prestige goods to enhance and maintain their elevated social positions in society. Global in scope, it offers case studies of early societies and sites in Europe, Asia, Oceania, North America, and Mesoamerica. Deploying a range of inter-disciplinary and cutting-edge theoretical approaches from a cross-cultural framework, the volume offers new insights and enhances our understanding of socio-political evolution. It will appeal to archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, conflict theorists, and ethnohistorians, as well as economists seeking to understand the nexus between imported luxury items and cultural evolution.

Forgotten Vikings

Forgotten Vikings PDF Author: Alex Harvey
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1398122106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
A reappraisal of the Vikings. The ultimate goal of Forgotten Vikings is to add to the corpus of popular history/overview books of the Viking Age.

Rethinking Global Governance

Rethinking Global Governance PDF Author: Justin Jennings
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000872424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book argues that long-ignored, non-western political systems from the distant and more recent past can provide critical insights into improving global governance. These societies show how successful collection action can occur by dividing sovereignty, consensus building, power from below, and other mechanisms. For a better tomorrow, we need to free ourselves of the colonial constraints on our political imagination. A pandemic, war in Europe, and another year of climatic anomalies are among the many indications of the limits of global governance today. To meet these challenges, we must look far beyond the status quo to the thousands of successful mechanisms for collective action that have been cast aside a priori because they do not fit into Western traditions of how people should be organized. Coming from long past or still enduring societies often dismissed as “savages” and “primitives” until well into the twentieth century, the political systems in this book were often seen as too acephalous, compartmentalized, heterarchical, or anarchic to be of use. Yet as globalization makes international relations more chaotic, long-ignored governance alternatives may be better suited to today’s changing realities. Understanding how the Zulu, Trypillian, Alur, and other collectives worked might be humanity’s best hope for survival. This book will be of interest both to those seeking to apply archaeological and ethnographic data to issues of broad contemporary concern and to academics, politicians, policy makers, students, and the general public seeking possible alternatives to conventional thinking in global governance.

China and East Africa

China and East Africa PDF Author: Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149857615X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
China and East Africa: Ancient Ties and Contemporary Flows marks the culmination of a new round of archaeological and historical research on the relations between China and Africa, from the origins to the present. Africa and Asia have always been in constant contact, through land and seas. The contributors to this volume debate and present the results of their research on the very complex and intricate networks of connections that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean and surrounding lands linking Africa to East Asia. A growing number of speakers of Austronesian languages returned to Africa, reaching Madagascar in the early centuries of the Common Era. The diffusion of domesticated plants, like bananas, from New Guinea to South Asia and Africa where phytoliths are dated to the mid-fourth millennium in Uganda and mid-first millennium BCE in southern Cameroon, provide additional evidence on early interactions between Africa and Asia. Africa and Asia have always been in constant contact, through land and seas. Edited by Chapurukha Kusimba, Tiequan Zhu, and Purity Wakabari Kiura, this collection explores different facets of the interaction between China and Africa, from their earliest manifestations to the present and with an eye to the future.

The Cambridge History of War: Volume 2, War and the Medieval World

The Cambridge History of War: Volume 2, War and the Medieval World PDF Author: David A. Graff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108901190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 865

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Book Description
Volume II of The Cambridge History of War covers what in Europe is commonly called 'the Middle Ages'. It includes all of the well-known themes of European warfare, from the migrations of the Germanic peoples and the Vikings through the Reconquista, the Crusades and the age of chivalry, to the development of state-controlled gunpowder-wielding armies and the urban militias of the later middle ages; yet its scope is world-wide, ranging across Eurasia and the Americas to trace the interregional connections formed by the great Arab conquests and the expansion of Islam, the migrations of horse nomads such as the Avars and the Turks, the formation of the vast Mongol Empire, and the spread of new technologies – including gunpowder and the earliest firearms – by land and sea.

Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology

Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology PDF Author: Dries Daems
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000344673
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.