Deep History


Book Description

This breakthrough book brings science into history to offer a dazzling new vision of humanity across time. Team-written by leading experts in a variety of fields, it maps events, cultures, and eras across millions of years to present a new scale for understanding the human body, energy and ecosystems, language, food, kinship, migration, and more.




Interpreting the Late Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia


Book Description

The times between the Neolithic and Urban revolutions in Mesopotamia have for a long time been interpreted as a period of stagnation. This volume is part of an emerging discourse that challenges such assumptions. Focussing upon the northern parts of ancient Western Asia, where most recent research has concentrated, an international group of researchers demonstrates that Upper Mesopotamia underwent complex historical changes that we just begin to grasp fully. The Late Neolithic was a critical phase of the history of the ancient Middle East. Authors investigate settlement patterns, practices of painting pottery, distributions of various raw materials, the role of craft industries, the emergence of seals and other issues from a variety of theoretical and practical questions. The book is a must-have for prehistorians working in the Near East, and a rich source of information for archaeologists working in other parts of the world. Olivier Nieuwenhuyse is a Research Fellow at Leiden University and at the DAI-Berlin. His research focuses on reconstructions of landscape and prehistoric settlement and the meanings of material culture. Reinhard Bernbeck is professor at the Freie Universitat Berlin and Binghamton University, New York. His research focuses on critical assessments of ancient Western Asian prehistory and historical periods. Peter Akkermans is professor at Leiden University. He is the director of the excavatons at Tell Sabi Abyad and had published widely on the prehistory of the ancient Near East.




The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe


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, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries 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 appearance of 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 Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies


Book Description

Provides comprehensive coverage of major topics in urban and regional studies Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Anthony Orum, this definitive reference work covers central and emergent topics in the field, through an examination of urban and regional conditions and variation across the world. It also provides authoritative entries on the main conceptual tools used by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political scientists in the study of cities and regions. Among such concepts are those of place and space; geographical regions; the nature of power and politics in cities; urban culture; and many others. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies captures the character of complex urban and regional dynamics across the globe, including timely entries on Latin America, Africa, India and China. At the same time, it contains illuminating entries on some of the current concepts that seek to grasp the essence of the global world today, such as those of Friedmann and Sassen on ‘global cities’. It also includes discussions of recent economic writings on cities and regions such as those of Richard Florida. Comprised of over 450 entries on the most important topics and from a range of theoretical perspectives Features authoritative entries on topics ranging from gender and the city to biographical profiles of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright Takes a global perspective with entries providing coverage of Latin America and Africa, India and China, and, the US and Europe Includes biographies of central figures in urban and regional studies, such as Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Neil Smith, and Henri Lefebvre The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies is an indispensable reference for students and researchers in urban and regional studies, urban sociology, urban geography, and urban anthropology.




What Happened in History


Book Description




Encyclopedia of Urban Studies


Book Description

An encyclopedia about various topics relating to urban studies.




The Evolution of the Ancient City


Book Description

The Evolution of the Ancient City is an interdisciplinary look at how cities developed from Hunter-Gatherer societies to centers of vast empires in the Fertile Crescent between 21,500 BCE and 1,200 BCE. The reader is guided through each stage of social evolution and its consequences for our understanding of modern cities. As a result, urban theory must adapt to this long-range view of the city.




Emergence and Change in Early Urban Societies


Book Description

This book gives an overview of different factors involved in the emergence and change in early urban societies in fourth-millennium Mesopotamia and Egypt; pre-Shang China; Classie horizon Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya Area; and Middle Horizon societies in the Andean Region. These factors range from centralized storage and redistributive econo mies, agromanagerial models, mercantile network control, confliet and conquest, conversion of military commanders into administrators, political power through monumental cosmic reproduction, and elite power through ideological change. It discusses specific archaeological data useful in theoretieal construction. In the Introduction, a discussion of different developmental processes of urban societies is made. The Eastern Anatolian example emphasizes the role played by interregional exchange networks linking the Mesopotamian plains with the Syro-Anatolian regions. The emergence of an elite is related with the control of the movement of craft goods and raw materials, more than with the appropriation of subsistence goods. The Chinese example stresses the importance of conflict provoked by demographie pressures on resources. The Mesoamerican cases relate to vast urban developments and manu facturing centers, ideological importance of monumental planning, and changing behavior of elites. The Andean cases are related either to the transformation of theocratie leadership into military administrators oe to the agricultural intensification model.