Author : Jeanne E. Arnold
Publisher :
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 22,87 MB
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN :
Annotation A new series of reprints, monographs, and edited volumes on the anthropology and prehistory of Pacific North America. The series will include works from the coastal and riverine regions of Alaska to California.
Author : Jeanne E. Arnold
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 42,74 MB
Release : 2005-12-31
Category : History
ISBN : 1938770196
This volume highlights the latest research on the foundations of sociopolitical complexity in coastal California. The populous maritime societies of southern California, particularly the groups known collectively as the Chumash, have gone largely unrecognized as prototypical complex hunter-gatherers, only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of their more celebrated counterparts on the Northwest Coast of North America. While Northwest cultures are renowned for such complex institutions as ceremonial potlatches, slavery, cedar plank-house villages, and rich artistic traditions, the Chumash are increasingly recognized as complex hunter-gatherers with a different set of organizational characteristics: ascribed chiefly leadership, a strong maritime economy based on oceangoing canoes, an integrative ceremonial system, and intensive and highly specialized craft production activities. Chumash sites provide some of the most robust data on these subjects available in the Americas. Contributors present stimulating new analyses of household and village organization, ceremonial specialists, craft specializations and settlement data, cultural transmission processes, bead manufacturing practices, watercraft, and the acquisition of prized marine species.
Author : Torben C. Rick
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 20,73 MB
Release : 2007-12-31
Category : History
ISBN : 1938770315
California's northern Channel Islands have one of the longest and best-preserved archaeological records in the Americas, spanning some 13,000 calendar years. When European explorers first travelled to the area, these islands were inhabited by the Chumash, some of the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers known. Chumash society was characterised by hereditary leaders, sophisticated exchange networks and interaction spheres, and diverse maritime economies. Focusing on the archaeology of five sites dated to the last 3,000 years, this book examines the archaeology and historical ecology of San Miguel Island, the westernmost and most isolated of the northern Channel Islands. Detailed faunal, artefact, and other data are woven together in a diachronic analysis that investigates the interplay of social and ecological developments on this unique island. The first to focus solely on San Miguel Island archaeology, this book examines issues ranging from coastal adaptations to emergent cultural complexity to historical ecology and human impacts on ancient environments.
Author : Jeanne E. Arnold
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 12,77 MB
Release : 2010-05-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 164642512X
“California’s Ancient Past is an excellent introduction and overview of the archaeology and ancient peoples of this diverse and dynamic part of North America. Written in a concise and approachable format, the book provides an excellent foundation for students, the general public, and scholars working in other regions around the world. This book will be an important source of information on California’s ancient past for years to come.” —Torben C. Rick, Smithsonian Institution "California's Ancient Past is a well written, highly informative, and thought-provoking book; it will make a significant contribution to California archaeology. It is highly readable—the text and materials covered are suitable for both scholars and interested lay people. The book is well organized...with discussions about the culture history and theoretical perspectives of California archaeology and . . . the latest and most relevant references." —Kent Lightfoot, University of California, Berkeley “With California’s Ancient Past, Arnold and Walsh [offer] a well-written, interesting, and succinct archaeological summary of California from the terminal Pleistocene to historic contact.” —David S. Whitley, Journal of Anthropological Research
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 19,20 MB
Release : 2009
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Terry L. Jones
Publisher : Rowman Altamira
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 44,28 MB
Release : 2007-07-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0759113742
Some forty scholars examine California's prehistory and archaeology, looking at marine and terrestrial palaeoenvironments, initial human colonization, linguistic prehistory, early forms of exchange, mitochondrial DNA studies, and rock art. This work is the most extensive study of California's prehistory undertaken in the past 20 years. An essential resource for any scholar of California prehistory and archaeology!
Author : Mikael Fauvelle
Publisher :
Page : 86 pages
File Size : 42,94 MB
Release : 2024-03-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1009263374
Where, when, and under what circumstances did money first emerge? This Element examines this question through a comparative study of the use of shells to facilitate trade and exchange in ancient societies around the world. It argues that shell money was a form of social technology that expanded political-economic capacities by enabling long-distance trade across boundaries and between strangers. The Element examines several cases in which shells and shell beads permeated throughout daily life and became central to the economic functioning of the societies that used them. In several of these cases, it argues that shells were used in ways that meet all the standard definitions of modern money. By examining the wide range of uses of shell money in ancient economic systems around the world, this Element explores the diversity of forms that money has taken throughout human history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Author : Sheila Kohring
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 40,63 MB
Release : 2007-11-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1785705040
Socialising Complexity introduces the concept of complexity as a tool, rather than a category, for understanding social formations. This new take on complexity moves beyond the traditional concern with what constitutes a complex society and focuses on the complexity inherent in various social forms through the structuring principles created within each society. The aims and themes of the book can thus be summarized as follows: to introduce the idea of complexity as a tool, which is pertinent to the understanding of all types of society, rather than an exclusionary type of society in its own right; to examine concepts that can enhance our interpretation of societal complexity, such as heterarchy, materialization and contextualization. These concepts are applied at different scales and in different ways, illustrating their utility in a variety of different cases; to reestablish social structure as a topic of study within archaeology, which can be profitably studied by proponents of both processual and post-processual methodologies.
Author : Lynn H. Gamble
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 15,19 MB
Release : 2008-08-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 052094268X
When Spanish explorers and missionaries came onto Southern California's shores in 1769, they encountered the large towns and villages of the Chumash, a people who at that time were among the most advanced hunter-gatherer societies in the world. The Spanish were entertained and fed at lavish feasts hosted by chiefs who ruled over the settlements and who participated in extensive social and economic networks. In this first modern synthesis of data from the Chumash heartland, Lynn H. Gamble weaves together multiple sources of evidence to re-create the rich tapestry of Chumash society. Drawing from archaeology, historical documents, ethnography, and ecology, she describes daily life in the large mainland towns, focusing on Chumash culture, household organization, politics, economy, warfare, and more.
Author : Eugene L Mendonsa, Ph.D.
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 614 pages
File Size : 14,77 MB
Release : 2016-02-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1483445933
The first volume of Greed Unbound is about the ways elites siphoned off value from workers in the early Neolithic farming and herding societies. In the broadest terms, it highlights the consequences of greed in officialdom, the offices of kin groups, cults, secret societies, and chiefdoms. Greed in all of these groups has consistently led to severe inequality. Prior to the Agricultural Revolution inequality had been held in check, being restricted to such things as respect for the elderly and male chauvinism. In the mild inequality of the Long Paleolithic, no one person or faction could siphon value from the labor of others. But all that changed once food was stored in farming societies, allowing greedy chiefs to exploit the common people-in stark contrast to the egalitarian nature of life before the development of stored wealth. With the change, exploitation flourished, as did warfare and mystical institutions that functioned to mislead and appease the masses.
