This volume completes the publication of all identified Old Babylonian tablets in the Ashmolean Museum accessed before 1966. Although many of them were acquired from dealers in the 1920s and 1930s, most can be assigned to sites and connected with similar holdings in other museums. The combination of full catalogue, indices, and copies provides an invaluable tool for further research on three of the most important cities of the 18th century BC. Links with Mycenaean administrative practices, and information about the hitherto dubious Sealand dynasty, are two interesting aspects highlighted in...

The European Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 750 BC, was the last fully prehistoric period and crucial to the formation of the Europe emerging in the later first millennium BC. This book provides a detailed account of its material culture, comparing and contrasting evidence from different geographical zones, and drawing out the essential characteristics of the period. It looks at settlement, burial, economy, technology, trade and transport, warfare, and social and religious life. The result is a comprehensive study that will interest specialists and students, and be accessible to nonspecialists.

This uniquely broad and challenging book reviews the latest archaeological evidence on Neolithic Europe from 7,000-2,500 BC. Describing important areas, sites and problems, Dr. Whittle addresses the major themes that have engaged the attention of scholars: the transition from a forager lifestyle; the rate and dynamics of change; and the nature of Neolithic society. A revised version of Whittle's Neolithic Europe: A Survey (CUP, 1985), the book reflects radical changes in evidence and in interpretive approaches over the past decade.

Since the l960s, archaeology has become increasingly taught in universities and practiced on a growing scale by national and local heritage agencies throughout the world. This book addresses the criticisms of postmodernist writers about archaeology's social role, and asserts its intellectual importance and achievements in discovering real facts about the human past. It looks forward to the creation of a truly global consciousness of the origins of human societies and civilizations.

Southern Africa has one of the longest histories of occupation by modern humans and their ancestors anywhere in the world: over three million years. Research in Southern Africa is central to many key debates in contemporary archaeology, including hominid origins, the origins of anatomically modern humans and modern forms of behavior, and the development of ethnographically informed perspectives for understanding its rich heritage of rock art. This is the first attempt at a synthesis of the sub-continent's past in over forty years.

Drawing on a wide range of archaeological, anthropological and historical sources, Paul Rainbird surveys the development of Micronesia, from the earliest process of human colonization, within the broader context of Pacific Island studies. Addressing contemporary debates around processes of colonization, social organization, environmental change and the interpretation of material culture, this book will be essential reading for any scholar with an interest in the archaeology of the Pacific.

Palaeolithic societies have been a neglected topic in the discussion of human origins. But in the past forty years archaeologists have recovered a wealth of information from Palaeolithic sites throughout the European continent that reveal many illuminating facets of social life over this 500,000-year period. Clive Gamble, introducing a new approach to this material, interrogates the data for information on the scale of social interaction, and the forms of social existence. The result is a reconstruction of ancient human societies, and a fresh perspective on the unique experience of human...

Ethnoarchaeology in Action is the first and only comprehensive study of ethnoarchaeology, the ethnographic study of living cultures from archaeological perspectives, and is designed for senior undergraduates and above in archaeology and anthropology. Its geographical coverage is global and the book includes relevant theory, practical advice regarding fieldwork, and complete topical coverage of the discipline. Critical discussions of varied case studies make this a very readable book. It is illustrated with numerous figures and photographs of many leading ethnoarchaeologists in action.

This is an excellent collection of essays on the collapse of ancient states and civilizations by historians, archaeologists. . . . excellent overviews of the relevant research.--Contemporary Sociology

Questioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies - past and present - collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from...