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Showing 81 - 100 of 3174 items
By Charles French. 2002
Geoarchaeology in Action provides much-needed 'hands on' methodologies to assist anyone conducting or studying geoarchaeological investigations on sites and in…
landscapes, irrespective of date, place and environment.The book sets out the essential features of geoarchaeological practice and geomorphological processes, and is deliberately aimed at the archaeologist as practitioner in the field. It explains the basics - what can be expected, what approaches may be taken, and what outcomes might be forthcoming, and asks what we can reasonably expect a micromorphological approach to archaeological contexts, data and problems to tell us.The twelve case studies are taken from Britain, Europe and the Near East. They illustrate how past landscape change can be discovered and deciphered whether you are primarily a digger, environmentalist or soil micromorphologist.Based on the author's extensive experience of investigating buried and eroded landscapes, the book develops new ways of looking at conventional models of landscape change. With an extensive glossary, bibliography and more than 100 illustrations it will be an essential text and reference tool for students, academics and professionals.By Antonio Sagona, Paul Zimansky. 2009
Students of antiquity often see ancient Turkey as a bewildering array of cultural complexes. Ancient Turkey brings together in a…
coherent account the diverse and often fragmented evidence, both archaeological and textual, that forms the basis of our knowledge of the development of Anatolia from the earliest arrivals to the end of the Iron Age. Much new material has recently been excavated and unlike Greece, Mesopotamia, and its other neighbours, Turkey has been poorly served in terms of comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible discussions of its ancient past. Ancient Turkey is a much needed resource for students and scholars, providing an up-to-date account of the widespread and extensive archaeological activity in Turkey. Covering the entire span before the Classical period, fully illustrated with over 160 images and written in lively prose, this text will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the archaeology and early history of Turkey and the ancient Near East.By Philip Howard. 2004
A comprehensive and practical guide to surveying for archaeologists, with clear instructions in archaeological mapping, recording field work and detailed…
case studies from the UK, Europe and the US. Philip Howard provides a user’s guide to methods and instruments of surveying to enable archaeologists to represent their own fieldwork confidently and independently. Archaeological Surveying is an invaluable resource which: provides beginner’s instructions to software used in computerised surveying, including IntelliCAD 2000, Terrain Tools, Christine GIS and Global Mapper introduces the archaeologist to a range of surveying instruments such as GPS, electronic distance measures, theodolites and magnetic compasses includes low-cost software. This textbook is an essential read for any field archaeologists who are in need of an introduction to surveying, or simply wish to update their techniques.By Chris Fowler. 2004
Bringing together a wealth of research in social and cultural anthropology, philosophy and related fields, this is the first book…
to address the contribution that an understanding of personhood can make to our interpretations of the past Applying an anthropological approach to detailed case studies from European prehistoric archaeology, the book explores the connection between people, animals, objects, their societies and environments and investigates the relationship that jointly produces bodies, persons, communities and artefacts. The Archaeology of Personhood examines the characteristics that define a person as a category of being, highlights how definitions of personhood are culturally variable and explores how that variation is connected to human uses of material culture.By Peter Hiscock. 2008
This book is an introduction to the archaeology of Australia from prehistoric times to the eighteenth century AD. It is…
the only up-to-date textbook on the subject and is designed for undergraduate courses, based on the author's considerable experience of teaching at the Australian National University. Lucidly written, it shows the diversity and colourfulness of the history of humanity in the southern continent. The Archaeology of Ancient Australia demonstrates with an array of illustrations and clear descriptions of key archaeological evidence from Australia a thorough evaluation of Australian prehistory. Readers are shown how this human past can be reconstructed from archaeological evidence, supplemented by information from genetics, environmental sciences, anthropology, and history. The result is a challenging view about how varied human life in the ancient past has been.By Joss Van Dijk, Nico Dejonge. 1995
This beautiful book contains over 170 unique photographs and pictures of one of the most interesting but least well known…
cultures in the Indonesian Archipelago.The traditional art of Maluku Tenggara, the Southeast Moluccas, is among the most sophisticated and expressive in the world. Simple tools were used to create masterpieces in wood, stone, textiles and precious metals, while the plaited work and earthenware of these islands are also of the very highest quality.the colonial period plunged the region into hopeless isolation. During the harsh rule of the Dutch many traditional woks of art, especially ancestor statues, were destroyed. Later, collectors stripped the islands of their masterpieces and the culture of Maluka Tenggara was forgotten.Forgotten Islands of Indonesia presents a unique survey of the finest examples of Southeast Moluccan art. This volume contains many photographs and descriptions which have never before been published. Set against the cultural background and supplemented by rare photographs taken in the field, the material culture of Maluku Tenggara, which is regarded as one of the most fascinating areas of Indonesia, is presented here comprehensively for the first time.By Joss Van Dijk, Nico Dejonge. 1995
This beautiful book contains over 170 unique photographs and pictures of one of the most interesting but least well known…
cultures in the Indonesian Archipelago.The traditional art of Maluku Tenggara, the Southeast Moluccas, is among the most sophisticated and expressive in the world. Simple tools were used to create masterpieces in wood, stone, textiles and precious metals, while the plaited work and earthenware of these islands are also of the very highest quality.the colonial period plunged the region into hopeless isolation. During the harsh rule of the Dutch many traditional woks of art, especially ancestor statues, were destroyed. Later, collectors stripped the islands of their masterpieces and the culture of Maluka Tenggara was forgotten.Forgotten Islands of Indonesia presents a unique survey of the finest examples of Southeast Moluccan art. This volume contains many photographs and descriptions which have never before been published. Set against the cultural background and supplemented by rare photographs taken in the field, the material culture of Maluku Tenggara, which is regarded as one of the most fascinating areas of Indonesia, is presented here comprehensively for the first time.By Christopher Wood. 2008
Today we often identify artifacts with the period when they were made. In more traditional cultures, however, such objects as…
pictures, effigies, and buildings were valued not as much for their chronological age as for their perceived links to the remote origins of religions, nations, monasteries, and families. As a result, Christopher Wood argues, pre-modern Germans tended not to distinguish between older buildings and their newer replacements, or between ancient icons and more recent forgeries. But Wood shows that over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, emerging replication technologies-- such as woodcut, copper engraving, and movable type-- altered the relationship between artifacts and time. Mechanization highlighted the artifice, materials, and individual authorship necessary to create an object, calling into question the replica's ability to represent a history that was not its own. Meanwhile, print catalyzed the new discipline of archaeological scholarship, which began to draw sharp distinctions between true and false claims about the past. Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.By Paul Turnbull. 2017
This book draws on over twenty years' investigation of scientific archives in Europe, Australia, and other former British settler colonies.…
It explains how and why skulls and other bodily structures of Indigenous Australians became the focus of scientific curiosity about the nature and origins of human diversity from the early years of colonisation in the late eighteenth century to Australia achieving nationhood at the turn of the twentieth century. The last thirty years have seen the world's indigenous peoples seek the return of their ancestors' bodily remains from museums and medical schools throughout the western world. Turnbull reveals how the remains of the continent's first inhabitants were collected during the long nineteenth century by the plundering of their traditional burial places. He also explores the question of whether museums also acquired the bones of men and women who were killed in Australian frontier regions by military, armed police and settlers.By John J. Shea. 2013
Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide surveys the lithic record for the East Mediterranean Levant…
(Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and adjacent territories) from the earliest times to 6,500 years ago. It is intended both as an introduction to this lithic evidence for students and as a resource for researchers working with Paleolithic and Neolithic stone tool evidence. Written by a lithic analyst and professional flintknapper, this book systematically examines variation in technology, typology, and industries for the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic; the Epipaleolithic; and Neolithic periods in the Near East. It is extensively illustrated with drawings of stone tools. In addition to surveying the lithic evidence, the book also considers ways in which archaeological treatment of this evidence could be changed to make it more relevant to major issues in human origins research. A final chapter shows how change in stone tool designs point to increasing human dependence on stone tools across the long sweep of Stone Age prehistory.By R. Tripp Evans. 2004
During Mexico's first century of independence, European and American explorers rediscovered its pre-Hispanic past. Finding the jungle-covered ruins of lost…
cities and artifacts inscribed with unintelligible hieroglyphs--and having no idea of the age, authorship, or purpose of these antiquities--amateur archaeologists, artists, photographers, and religious writers set about claiming Mexico's pre-Hispanic patrimony as a rightful part of the United States' cultural heritage.In this insightful work, Tripp Evans explores why nineteenth-century Americans felt entitled to appropriate Mexico's cultural heritage as the United States' own. He focuses in particular on five well-known figures--American writer and amateur archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens, British architect Frederick Catherwood, Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the French émigré photographers Désiré Charnay and Augustus Le Plongeon. Setting these figures in historical and cultural context, Evans uncovers their varying motives, including the Manifest Destiny-inspired desire to create a national museum of American antiquities in New York City, the attempt to identify the ancient Maya as part of the Lost Tribes of Israel (and so substantiate the Book of Mormon), and the hope of proving that ancient Mesoamerica was the cradle of North American and even Northern European civilization. Fascinating stories in themselves, these accounts of the first explorers also add an important new chapter to the early history of Mesoamerican archaeology.By Corrie C. Bakels. 2009
This book deals with the early history of agriculture in a defined part of Western Europe: the loess belt west…
of the river Rhine. It is a well-illustrated book that integrates existing and new information, starting with the first farmers and ending when food production was no longer the chief source of livelihood for the entire population. The loess belt was chosen because it is a region with only one type of soil and climate as these are all-important factors where farming is concerned. Subjects covered are crops, crop cultivation, livestock and livestock handling, the farm and its yard, and the farm in connection with other farms. Crop plants and animals are described, together with their origin. New tools such as the plough, wheen, wagon and scythe are introduced. Groundplans of farm buildings, the history of the outhouse and the presence or absence of hamlets are presented as well, and the impact of farming on the landscape is not forgotten. The loess belt was not an island and the world beyond its boundaries was important for new ideas, new materials and new people. Summarising six millennia of agriculture, the thinking in terms of the Western European loess belt as one agricultural-cultural unit seems justified.By Yoshinori Yasuda. 2012
The book is comprised of three parts: 1) Discovery of the origin of rice agriculture and Yangtze River civilization in…
southern China was mainly based on the investigation of the Chentoushan archaeological site which is the earliest urban settlement in East Asia. The origin of rice cultivation can be traced back to 10000 BCE and the urban settlement starts at 6000 BP; 2) Collapse of the Yangtze River civilization at 4200 BP. Palaeoenvironmental studies including the analyses of annually laminated sediments in East and Southeast Asia indicate the close relationship between climate change and the rise and fall of the rice cultivating and fishing civilization ; and 3) Migration of the people from southern China to Southeast Asia after 4200 BP. Archaeological investigation of the Phum Snay site in Cambodia, including the analyses of DNA and human skeletal remains, reveal the close relationship with that of southern China indicating the migration of the people from southern China to Southeast Asia. This publication is an important contribution for understanding the environmental history of China and Cambodia in relation to the rise and fall of rice cultivating and fishing civilization which we call water civilization.By Francisco J. Prevosti, Analía M. Forasiepi. 2017
This book summarizes the evolution of carnivorous mammals in the Cenozoic of South America. It presents paleontological information on the…
two main mammalian carnivorous groups in South America; Metatheria and Eutheria. The topics include the origin, systematics, phylogeny, paleoecology and evolution of the Sparassodonta and Carnivora. The book is based on a wide variety of published sources from the last few decades.By John Staller. 2010
Our perceptions and conceptions regarding the roles and importance of maize to ancient economies is largely a product of scientific…
research on the plant itself, developed for the most part out of botanical research, and its recent role as one of the most important economic staples in the world. Anthropological research in the early part of the last century based largely upon the historical particularistic approach of the Boasian tradition provided the first evidence that challenged the assumptions about the economic importance of maize to sociocultural developments for scholars of prehistory. Subsequent ethnobotanic and archaeological studies showed that the role of maize among Native American cultures was much more complex than just as a food staple. In Maize Cobs and Cultures, John Staller provides a survey of the ethnohistory and the scientific, botanical and biological research of maize, complemented by reviews on the ethnobotanic, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary methodologies.By James Deetz. 1993
Archaeological excavations began in the 1970s to reconstruct some 250 years of life at the 1,000 acre plantation that Virginia's…
first governor established roughly halfway between present-day Richmond and Williamsburg. Deetz (anthropology, U. of Virginia) presents some of the findings and pays particular attention to archaeology's value in fleshing out the stories of people omitted from written records, or included in only minimal or biased ways. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.By Alfred H. Siemens. 1998
I doubt there is a wetland environment anywhere in the Americas inhabited, used, and modified as long as San Juan…
Basin, and by as many cultures with different technologies. This story needs to be told. --William E. Doolittle, Professor of Geography, University of Texas at Austin The wetlands of the San Juan Basin in Central Veracruz, Mexico, have been a favored place since the fifth century A. D. , when Prehispanic people built an extensive network of canals and raised fields that allowed for almost year-round agriculture. Alfred Siemens' discovery of the remains of this network in the 1970s led him to uncover fifteen centuries of land-use history in the region. This book contains a full record of his findings. Siemens organizes his history of the San Juan Basin around the question: What relationships exist between Prehispanic agriculture and the production systems of the tropical lowlands in our own time? This focus allows him to chart the changes in human perceptions and uses of the landscape, from the Prehispanic wetland agricultural system to the drained pastures of today's cattle ranches. Amplified with air oblique photography, maps, and tables, and enriched with data from archaeology and colonial archives, this is an authoritative historical geography of a wetland landscape. Or, in the author's more modest words, It seems to me that what I have here is a biography of a swamp.By Jade D'Alpoim Guedes, John M. Marston, Christina Warinner. 2014
Paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, is poised at the intersection of the study of the past and concerns…
of the present, including agricultural decision making, biodiversity, and global environmental change, and has much to offer to archaeology, anthropology, and the interdisciplinary study of human relationships with the natural world. Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany demonstrates those connections and highlights the increasing relevance of the study of past human-plant interactions for understanding the present and future.A diverse and highly regarded group of scholars reference a broad array of literature from around the world as they cover their areas of expertise in the practice and theory of paleoethnobotany--starch grain analysis, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, digital data management, and ecological and postprocessual theory.The only comprehensive edited volume focusing on method and theory to appear in the last twenty-five years, Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany addresses the new areas of inquiry that have become central to contemporary archaeological debates, as well as the current state of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work in paleoethnobotany.By Douglas C. Comer, Michael J. Harrower. 2013
Given the rising awareness and interest in aerial and satellite remote sensing, there is a need to familiarize archaeologists with…
the basic principles and applications of what have become the most useful technologies. This volume, in the Springerbriefs Archaeologial Heritage Management series, accomplishes this. Contributions to the volume come from those who have been active in developing key technologies as well as those who have been most successful in applying them. Leading experts, most of them from NASA, concisely describe what needs to be understood in order to utilize images produced from data collected by the most important airborne and satellite sensing devices.. Exemplary applications of these technologies are presented in brief by archaeologists who have made notable discoveries using them or have contributed to archaeological resource preservation. Among the technologies examined are those that are undergoing rapid refinement and will be carried by an increasing number of aerial and satellite platforms, such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Lidar, and multispectral/hyperspectral sensors, as well as older space technologies now made more useful by the availability of increasingly sophisticated computer hardware and software. Of particular importance is the ability to model how development in and around archaeological sites and landscapes can damage or destroy archaeological materials. Nurturing the development and application of space and aerial technologies in archaeology is therefore a matter of the greatest urgency, an appropriate goal to adopt by governments and universities at the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention. Researchers gain a sense of what is possible by the use of these technologies, and why they should be used.By Brian S. Bauer. 1998
The ceque system of Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, was perhaps the most complex indigenous ritual system…
in the pre-Columbian Americas. From a center known as the Coricancha (Golden Enclosure) or the Temple of the Sun, a system of 328 huacas (shrines) arranged along 42 ceques (lines) radiated out toward the mountains surrounding the city. This elaborate network, maintained by ayllus (kin groups) that made offerings to the shrines in their area, organized the city both temporally and spiritually. From 1990 to 1995, Brian Bauer directed a major project to document the ceque system of Cusco. In this book, he synthesizes extensive archaeological survey work with archival research into the Inca social groups of the Cusco region, their land holdings, and the positions of the shrines to offer a comprehensive, empirical description of the ceque system. Moving well beyond previous interpretations, Bauer constructs a convincing model of the system's physical form and its relation to the social, political, and territorial organization of Cusco.