Author: Francesco Menotti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199571015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 563
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Book Description
Wetland Archaeology and Beyond offers an appreciative study of the people, and their artefacts, who occupied a large variety of worldwide wetland archaeological sites. The volume also includes a comprehensive explanation of the processes involved in archaeological practice and theory.
Author: Francesco Menotti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199573492
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 970
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Book Description
This Handbook sets out the key issues and debates in the theory and practice of wetland archaeology which has played a crucial role in studies of our past. Due to the high quantity of preserved organic materials found in humid environments, the study of wetlands has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct people's everyday lives in great detail.
Author: Gary R. Lock
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 9781586030216
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
This set of papers by European and North American archaeologists explore the interface between new spatial technologies and areas of theoretical concern in spatial archaeology. Differing aspects of landscape, such as vision, perception and movement, are explored through a series of case studies that focus on how spatial technologies can influence archaeological interpretation and to what extent these new technologies can be manipulated to take us beyond 2-dimensional maps. Individual site-based analyses and new applications of predictive modelling are also presented and assessed together with the wider questions of spatial technologies within heritage management.
Author: David R. Fontijn
Publisher: Sidestone Press
ISBN: 9088901082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Europe is dotted with tens of thousands of prehistoric barrows. In spite of their ubiquity, little is known on the role they had in pre- and protohistoric landscapes. In 2010, an international group of archaeologists came together at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in The Hague to discuss and review current research on this topic. This book presents the proceedings of that session. The focus is on the prehistory of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, but also includes an excursion to huge prehistoric mounds in the southeast of North America. One contribution presents new evidence on how the immediate environment of Neolithic Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture megaliths was ordered, another one discusses the role of remarkable single and double post alignments around Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds. Zooming out, several chapters deal with the place of barrows in the broader landscape. The significance of humanly-managed heath in relation to barrow groups is discussed, and one contribution emphasizes how barrow orderings not only reflect spatial organization, but are also important as conceptual anchors structuring prehistoric perception. Other authors, dealing with Early Neolithic persistent places and with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age urnfields, argue that we should also look beyond monumentality in order to understand long-term use of "ritual landscapes". The book contains an important contribution by the well-known Swedish archaeologist Tore Artelius on how Bronze Age barrows were structurally re-used by pre-Christian Vikings. This is his last article, written briefly before his death. This book is dedicated to his memory. This publication is part of the Ancestral Mounds Research Project of the University of Leiden.
Author: Carrie Ann Murray
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438459963
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
The term "sacrifice" belies what is a complex and varied transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. Bringing together scholars from such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, literature, and theology, Diversity of Sacrifice explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. Incorporating theory, material culture, and textual evidence, the volume seeks to consider new and divergent data related to contexts of sacrifice that can help broaden our field of vision while raising new questions. The essays contributed here move beyond reductive and simple explanations to explore complex areas of social interaction. Sacrifice plays a key role in the overlapping sacred and secular spheres for a number of societies in the past and present. How religious beliefs and practices can be integral parts of life on individual and community levels is of fundamental importance to understanding the past and present. In addition to aiding scholarly research, Diversity of Sacrifice enables students to explore this rich theme across Europe and the Mediterranean with clear discussions of theory and data.
Author: Martin Bell
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789254051
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
The book draws on the evidence of landscape archaeology, palaeoenvironmental studies, ethnohistory and animal tracking to address the neglected topic of how we identify and interpret past patterns of movement in the landscape. It challenges the pessimism of previous generations which regarded prehistoric routes such as hollow ways as generally undatable. The premise is that archaeologists tend to focus on ‘sites’ while neglecting the patterns of habitual movement that made them part of living landscapes. Evidence of past movement is considered in a multi-scalar way from the individual footprint to the long distance path including the traces created in vegetation by animal and human movement. It is argued that routes may be perpetuated over long timescales creating landscape structures which influence the activities of subsequent generations. In other instances radical changes of axes of communication and landscape structures provide evidence of upheaval and social change. Palaeoenvironmental and ethnohistorical evidence from the American North West coast sets the scene with evidence for the effects of burning, animal movement, faeces deposition and transplantation which can create readable routes along which are favoured resources. Evidence from European hunter-gatherer sites hints at similar practices of niche construction on a range of spatial scales. On a local scale, footprints help to establish axes of movement, the locations of lost settlements and activity areas. Wood trackways likewise provide evidence of favoured patterns of movement and past settlement location. Among early farming communities alignments of burial mounds, enclosure entrances and other monuments indicate axes of communication. From the middle Bronze Age in Europe there is more clearly defined evidence of trackways flanked by ditches and fields. Landscape scale survey and excavation enables the dating of trackways using spatial relationships with dated features and many examples indicate long-term continuity of routeways. Where fields flank routeways a range of methods, including scientific approaches, provide dates. Prehistorians have often assumed that Ridgeways provided the main axes of early movement but there is little evidence for their early origins and rather better evidence for early routes crossing topography and providing connections between different environmental zones. The book concludes with a case study of the Weald of South East England which demonstrates that some axes of cross topographic movement used as droveways, and generally considered as early medieval, can be shown to be of prehistoric origin. One reason that dryland routes have proved difficult to recognise is that insufficient attention has been paid to the parts played by riverine and maritime longer distance communication. It is argued that understanding the origins of the paths we use today contributes to appreciation of the distinctive qualities of landscapes. Appreciation will help to bring about effective strategies for conservation of mutual benefit to people and wildlife by maintaining and enhancing corridors of connectivity between different landscape zones including fragmented nature reserves and valued places. In these ways an understanding of past routeways can contribute to sustainable landscapes, communities and quality of life
Author: Andrew S. Fairbairn
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785703706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Plant-centred issues are fundamental in the definitions and explanations of the Neolithic as a phenomenon.The meeting of the Neolithic Studies Group from which this volume developed aimed to provide a forum for the wide range of approaches now applied to Neolithic archaeobotany at site and landscape scales of resolution.
Author: Kevin Walsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052185301X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
Reviews the palaeoenvironmental evidence and its incorporation with landscape archaeology across the Mediterranean, from the Early Neolithic to the end of the Roman period.
Author: Stephen Rippon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199203822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
The varied character of Britain's countryside and towns provides communities with a strong sense of local identity. One of the most significant features of the southern British landscape is the way that its character differs from region to region, with compact villages in the Midlands contrasting with the sprawling hamlets of East Anglia and isolated farmsteads of Devon. Even more remarkable is the very 'English' feel of the landscape in southern Pembrokeshire, in the far south west of Wales. Hoskins described the English landscape as 'the richest historical record we possess', and in this book Stephen Rippon explores the origins of regional variations in landscape character, arguing that while some landscapes date back to the centuries either side of the Norman Conquest, other areas across southern Britain underwent a profound change around the 8th century AD.
Author: Samuel Seuru
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031343360
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
This book offers insight into the relationship between prehistoric and protohistoric human populations and the world around them. It reconstructs key aspects of the palaeoenvironment – from large-scale drivers of environmental conditions, such as climate, to more regional variables such as vegetation cover and faunal communities. The volume underscores how computational archaeology is leading the way in the study of past human-environment interactions across spatial and chronological scales. With the increased availability of high-resolution climate models, agent-based modelling, palaeoecological proxies and the mature use of Geographic Information System in ecological modelling, archaeologists working in interdisciplinary settings are well-positioned to explore the intersection of human systems and environmental affordances and constraints. These methodological advancements provide a better understanding of the role humans played in past ecosystems – both in terms of their impact upon the environment and, in return, the impact of environmental conditions on human systems. They may also allow us to infer past ecological knowledge and land-use patterns that are historically contingent, rather than environmentally determined. This volume gathers contributions that combine reconstructions of past environments and archeological data with a view to exploring their complex interactions at different scales and invites scholars from varying disciplines and backgrounds to present and compare different modelling approaches.
