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Showing 2021 - 2040 of 4125 items
By Mary-Ann Ochota. 2013
For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors have walked these isles burying, dropping and throwing away their belongings, and…
now these treaures lie waiting for us, keeping their secrets until we uncover them once more.Every year, hundreds of vaulable artefacts are discovered by ordinary members of the British public. Here in Britain's Secret Treasures, which accompanies the ITV series, the British Museum chooses eighty of the most fascinating finds ever reported and Mary-Ann Ochota shares with us the moving histories that bring each piece to life. There is also a detailed chapter showing you how you can get involved in archaeology too.From hoards of Roman gold and Bronze Age drinking vessels to tiny Viking spindle whorls and weapons from dozens of wars, all manner of treausres are described here. Some help prove that our ancestors were alive over half a million years ago, some saw their modern-day finders receive a generous reward, all provide an insight into the wodnerful, dynamic, colourful history of our nation.By Tanya M. Peres, Aaron Deter-Wolf. 2021
Was Nashville once home to a giant race of humans? No, but in 1845, you could have paid a quarter…
to see the remains of one who allegedly lived here before The Flood. That summer, Middle Tennessee well diggers had unearthed the skeleton of an American mastodon. Before it went on display, it was modified and augmented with wooden &“bones&” to make it look more like a human being and passed off as an antediluvian giant. Then, like so many Nashvillians, after a little success here, it went on tour and disappeared from history. But this fake history of a race of Pre-Nashville Giants isn&’t the only bad history of what, and who, was here before Nashville. Sources written for schoolchildren and the public lead us to believe that the first Euro-Americans arrived in Nashville to find a pristine landscape inhabited only by the buffalo and boundless nature, entirely untouched by human hands. Instead, the roots of our city extend some 14,000 years before Illinois lieutenant-governor-turned-fur-trader Timothy Demonbreun set foot at Sulphur Dell. During the period between about AD 1000 and 1425, a thriving Native American culture known to archaeologists as the Middle Cumberland Mississippian lived along the Cumberland River and its tributaries in today&’s Davidson County. Earthen mounds built to hold the houses or burials of the upper class overlooked both banks of the Cumberland near what is now downtown Nashville. Surrounding densely packed village areas including family homes, cemeteries, and public spaces stretched for several miles through Shelby Bottoms, and the McFerrin Park, Bicentennial Mall, and Germantown neighborhoods. Other villages were scattered across the Nashville landscape, including in the modern neighborhoods of Richland, Sylvan Park, Lipscomb, Duncan Wood, Centennial Park, Belle Meade, White Bridge, and Cherokee Park. This book is the first public-facing effort by legitimate archaeologists to articulate the history of what happened here before Nashville happened.By Roberta Edwards. 2006
Ever since Howard Carter uncovered King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, the young pharaoh has become a symbol of the wealth…
and mystery of ancient Egypt. Pharaoh fever strikes again and this book explains the life and time of this ancient Egyptian ruler, covering the story of the tomb's discovery, as well as myths and so-called mummy curses.By Lila Perl. 1987
From the back cover: " What happens to people after they die? The Egyptians thought if they mummified a dead…
person, his spirit would live forever. At first nature did the job; the desert sun dried and preserved bodies buried in shallow sand-pit graves. Mummifying methods became more elaborate with time, as did after-life dwelling places. Eventually, the Egyptians built the largest known tombs--the pyramids--in which wealthy Egyptians were buried with food, household items, and treasure. The ancient Egyptian way of death has left us a rich legacy of information about a way of life of which there is no other record. Lila Perl's thoroughly documented account is as fascinating as it is revealing." The information in this book is very helpful in explaining the background of fictional books about Egypt like The Mummy Chronicles, Mummy's Mother, and the Amelia Peabody mystery books which are all available from Bookshare.By Caroline Moorehead. 1994
In this book, journalist and biographer Caroline Moore Head explores Schliemann's extraordinary life and tells how he contrived to smuggle…
part of the treasure from his dig in Asia Minor to his government in Berlin.By Cornelius Holtorf. 2007
Holtorf (archaeology, U. of Lund) is objective in his examinations of how the trendiness of archaeology gets in its own…
way in the media. He examines television shows from Germany, Sweden and Great Britain (with a sideswipe at the newspapers), common perceptions such as "archaeologists dig up things" and the pleasure amateurs take in the discipline, the role of the archaeologist in the mass media (adventurer, detective, maker of profound revelations, and caregiver of ancient sites and finds), the archaeologist's clothes, strategies of engagement with the public (education, public relations and democratic), and the benefits of reconsidering public-view archaeology. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)By John H Falk, Lynn D Dierking. 2013
The first book to take a "visitor's eye view" of the museum visit when it was first published in 1992,…
The Museum Experience revolutionized the way museum professionals understand their constituents. Falk and Dierking have updated this essential reference, incorporating advances in research, theory, and practice in the museum field over the last twenty years. Written in clear, non-technical style, The Museum Experience Revisited paints a thorough picture of why people go to museums, what they do there, how they learn, and what museum practitioners can do to enhance these experiences.By Torgeir Rinke Bangstad; Þóra Pétursdóttir. 2021
Heritage Ecologies presents an ecological understanding of heritage that furthers a concern for how its making and unmaking always involves a…
wide range of human and other-than-human actors. Recognizing the entangled nature-cultures of heritage is essential in the Anthropocene era, where uncertainty and rapid environmental change force us to recast common conceptions of inheritance and to envision new strategies for preservation. Heritage sites are meant to be open and shared spaces, and a recurring argument in the cases presented here is that this openness inevitably also overrides our selections, orders and appreciations. Through a diverse range of case studies, the chapters collected in this book aim to explore the affects and memories engendered by diverse heritage ecologies where humans are neither the sole makers nor the only inheritors. The common call is that the experiential, perceptive and informational plenitude enabled through contributions of other-than-human actors is key to an ecological rethinking of heritage in the twenty-first century. Heritage Ecologies is unique in bringing heritage studies into closer proximity with a wide variety of non-representational and object-oriented theories and is an important volume for students and researchers in archaeology and heritage studies.By Giuseppe Leonardi, Ismar de Souza Carvalho. 2021
Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is the first full-length study of dinosaurs in Brazil. Some 500 dinosaur trackways from the Cretaceous…
period still remain in the Rio do Peixe basins of Brazil, making it one of the largest trackways in the world. Veteran paleontologists Giuseppe Leonardi and Ismar de Souza Carvalho painstakingly document and analyze each track found at 37 individual sites and at approximately 96 stratigraphic levels. Richly illustrated and containing a wealth of data, Leonardi and de Souza Carvalho brilliantly reconstruct the taxonomic groups of the dinosaurs from the area and show how they moved across the alluvial fans, meandering rivers, and shallow lakes of ancient Gondwana. Dinosaur Tracks from Brazil is essential reading for paleontologists.By John Bodel, Stephen Houston. 2021
A common belief is that systems of writing are committed to transparency and precise records of sound. The target is…
the language behind such marks. Readers, not viewers, matter most, and the most effective graphs largely record sound, not meaning. But what if embellishments mattered deeply - if hidden writing, slow to produce, slow to read, played as enduring a role as more accessible graphs? What if meaningful marks did service alongside records of spoken language? This book, a compilation of essays by global authorities on these subjects, zeroes in on hidden writing and alternative systems of graphic notation. Essays by leading scholars explore forms of writing that, by their formal intricacy, deflect attention from language. The volume also examines graphs that target meaning directly, without passing through the filter of words and the medium of sound. The many examples here testify to human ingenuity and future possibilities for exploring enriched graphic communication.By Kate Clark. 2019
Heritage is all around us, not just in monuments and museums, but in places that matter, in the countryside and…
in collections and stories. It touches all of us. How do we decide what to preserve? How do we make the case for heritage when there are so many other priorities? Playing with the Past is the first ever action-learning book about heritage. Over eighty creative activities and games encompass the basics of heritage practice, from management and decisionmaking to community engagement and leadership. Although designed to ‘train the trainers’, the activities in the book are relevant to anyone involved in caring for heritage.This is the first book devoted to the topic of Manila galleon shipwrecks in North America; previous research on Manila…
galleons either has focused on the economics of the Manila galleon trade or has been limited to reports of the galleon wreck sites in the western Pacific salvaged for their cargoes. All three North American shipwrecks are protected under the historic preservation laws of the United States or Mexico, and each shipwreck site has been investigated by professional archaeologists seeking to answer research questions posed in peer-reviewed research designs. The majority of Manila galleon wrecks are found in the western Pacific and were salvaged by treasure hunters rather than recovered by archaeologists. The three North American shipwrecks represent the most protected Manila galleon archaeological sites, so their potential for future archaeological research is higher than for many of the extant shipwrecks of the western Pacific.By Graham Hancock. 1995
By Caitlin Donahue Wylie. 2021
An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which…
scientists rely.Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers.Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials. The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.By Anne Gustavsson. 2021
In the past decades cultural heritage stored at museums and archives has been returned to source communities in various forms…
and under diverse circumstances. This contribution to the Elements series explores and discusses specifically the return of digital 'ethnographic' images to indigenous and non indigenous people that share a common recent history of coexistence and dispute over the same territory that is to be understood in the light of the consolidation of a Nation State with a settler colonial logic. The author argues that the affective reception of what a given archive labels as tangible and intangible heritage varies according to each audience´s particular memory practices, historical experience and way of relating to shared hegemonic notions of 'whiteness' and 'indigeneity'.This book explores the potential and challenges of implementing evolutionary phylogenetic methods in archaeological research by discussing key concepts…
and presenting concrete applications of these approaches The volume is divided into two parts The first covers the theoretical and conceptual implications of using evolution-based models in the sociocultural domain illustrates the sorts of questions that these methods can help answer and invites the reader to reflect on the opportunities and limitations of these perspectives The second part comprises case studies that address relevant empirical issues such as inferring patterns and rates of cultural transmission detecting selective pressures in cultural evolution and explaining the nature of cultural variation This book will appeal to archaeologists interested in applying evolutionary thinking and inferential methods to their field and to anyone interested in cultural evolution studiesBy Dr Dean Lomax. 2021
'A warp-speed tour of dinosaurs, with an expert guide' PROF. STEVE BRUSATTE, bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of…
Dinosaurs'A fun, speedy read for grown-ups who love dinosaurs - a great way to get into the subject' PROF. MICHAEL BENTON, author of The Dinosaurs Rediscovered---------Travel back to the prehistoric world and discover the most fascinating parts of the lives of Earth's most awe-inspiring creatures - the dinosaurs. Dr Dean Lomax brings these prehistoric creatures to life in ten bite-sized essays, written for people short on time but not curiosity. Making big ideas simple, Dean takes readers on a journey to uncover what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur, what dinosaurs ate, how they evolved, what caused them to go extinct, and more! Perfect for anyone fascinated by the dinosaur exhibits at museums, palaeontology and fans of Jurassic Park.By Santanu Banerjee, Subir Sarkar. 2021
This book envisages a multi-proxy approach using stable isotopes, geochemical proxies, magnetic susceptibility and associated biotic events for paleoclimatic and…
paleoenvironmental interpretations of the Mesozoic sedimentary record of India. Mesozoic rocks of India record abnormal sea level rise, greenhouse climate, intensified volcanism, hypoxia in seawater, extensive black shale deposition, and hydrocarbon occurrence. The Mesozoic has also witnessed mass extinction events, evolution of dinosaurs, and breakdown of the supercontinent Pangea and the formation of Gondwana. Although the Mesozoic geology of India has witnessed significant progress in the last century, literature survey reveals a huge gap in knowledge regarding sequence stratigraphy, chemostratigraphy and key geological events. A synthesis of sedimentological, paleontological and chemical data is included to presenting a comprehensive understanding of the Indian Mesozoic record to students, researchers and professionals.By Francesca Manclossi, Steven A Rosen. 2022
Flint Trade in the Protohistoric Levant offers an in-depth case study of the production and exchange of tabular scrapers. Crossing…
cultural and ecological boundaries and traded from the desert to the settled zone, these tools encompassed both ritual and quotidian functions over the course of well over the two millennia of the existence of the exchange system. Analyses focus on the changing nature of the production systems, dynamics of value in changing contexts of production and use, ritual contexts and meaning. Extending throughout the Levant, the tabular scraper complex is compared and contrasted to other contemporary production and exchange systems (ceramics, chipped stone, ground stone, copper, beads), offering a rich picture of the complexities of late prehistoric trade, transcending linear evolutionary frameworks, and simple models. Adopting a chaîne opératoire approach to the use-life of the artifacts, the artifacts can be seen to transform over time and place, made, used, recycled, and ultimately discarded, each stage in its own cultural contexts. The rise and decline of this exchange complex reflects both the geo-political history of the region and the general role of lithic industries in these societies. Focusing on late prehistoric times in the Near East, the discussions will of relevance to all researchers interested in the role of exchange in the evolution of complex economies. It offers an analysis of exchange systems based on a matrix of factors which should be of interest to all researchers interested in the evolution of trade.By Xin Wu, Xiang Ji, Shu Song. 2021
This book summarizes the latest archeological findings on Liangzhu culture and outlines the rise and fall of Liangzhu society in…
terms of its environment, flora and fauna. In addition, it seeks to analyze the characteristics of animal breeding and agricultural cultivation in Liangzhu from the perspectives of archeobotany and archeozoology. In turn, it explores the dietary structure and population density, reaching the bold conclusion that the dramatic increase in population gave rise to environmental deterioration and to natural disasters that eventually destroyed the Liangzhu culture.