Biological Anthropology And Prehistory

Written specifically for courses that cover biological anthropology and archaeology, this superbly illustrated new text offers the most balanced and up-to-date introduction to our human past. Devoting equal time to biological anthropology and prehistory, this text exposes students to the many sides of major controversial issues, involving students in the scientific thought process by allowing them to draw their own conclusions. Amidst discussions of bones and artifacts, the text maintains a focus on people, demonstrating to students how biological anthropology and archaeology apply to their lives today. Featuring the latest research and findings pulled from the original sources, this new text is far and away the most up-to-date text available. In addition, the superior art program features hundreds of photographs and figures, and the multimedia presentation options include documentary film clips and lecture launcher videos. Pat Rice, a recipient of AAA’s Outstanding Teacher Award and past-president of the General Anthropology Division of AAA, and Norah Moloney, an experienced professor and active archaeologist, present the material in a clear, refreshing, and straightforward writing style.

In a writing style that will captivate those new to the subject, Boulanger presents an understanding of human biological and cultural evolution that is both scientific and humanistic, in keeping with classic anthropological ideals. The aim of this reasonably priced text is to help students think critically about what being human has been, what it is at present, and what it may be in the future. While the book focuses on the anthropological subfields of biological anthropology and archaeology, information and insights are also drawn from cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. Boulangers absorbing treatment, in contrast to other texts on human evolution, features an opening chapter that seeks to negotiate fairly, without defensiveness or condescension, a pathway for creationists to follow into the topic. The next three chapters provide background on the history of evolutionary science, the biology of inheritance and population change, and primatology. Chapters 5 through 9 focus on human biocultural evolution from the time of the ancestor we share with chimpanzees through the development of agriculture and the founding of states. The last chapter deals with the issue of racehow it has affected our interpretation of the past and how it continues to influence the present. In addition to an extensive glossary, the fully illustrated textbook features numerous topic-enhancing sidebars, questions for discussion and review, and student exercises.

This is the first volume of its kind on prehistoric cultures of South Asia. The book brings together archaeologists, biological anthropologists, geneticists and linguists in order to provide a comprehensive account of the history and evolution of human populations residing in the subcontinent. New theories and methodologies presented provide new interpretations about the cultural history and evolution of populations in South Asia.

Where did we come from? To answer this question, anthropologists reconstruct the human past and study the human present from both biological and cultural perspectives. "Human Antiquity" offers an absorbing, straightforward explanation of human origins and evolution by thoroughly integrating physical anthropology and archaeology. Co-authors Kenneth Feder and Michael Park combine the ideas, methods, and knowledge from both biological anthropology and archaeology into a unified effort: Feder is an archeologist who conducts surveys, excavations, and analyses to understand the native inhabitants of New England; Park is a biological anthropologist interested in the application of evolutionary theory to the biological history of our species. .

This text is intended for the introductory courses that concentrate on physical anthropology and prehistoric archaeology. This book offers a comprehensive and balanced presentation on views of the human evolution and prehistory. It focuses on selected aspects of physical anthropology and prehistoric archaeology as they relate to the origin of humanity, the origin of culture, and the development of human biological and cultural diversity.

Human Evolution and Pre-History, first Canadian edition, is brief text that offers a straightforward, balanced presentation on views of human evolution, adaptation, and prehistory. It focuses on selected aspects of physical anthropology and prehistoric archaeology as they relate to the origin of humanity, the origin of culture, and the development of human biological and cultural diversity.

Much of what we are comes from our ancestors. Through cultural and biological inheritance mechanisms, our genetic composition, instructions for constructing artifacts, the structure and content of languages, and rules for behavior are passed from parents to children and from individual to individual. Mapping Our Ancestors demonstrates how various genealogical or "phylogenetic" methods can be used both to answer questions about human history and to build evolutionary explanations for the shape of history. Anthropologists are increasingly turning to quantitative phylogenetic methods. These methods depend on the transmission of information regardless of mode and as such are applicable to many anthropological questions. In this way, phylogenetic approaches have the potential for building bridges among the various subdisciplines of anthropology; an exciting prospect indeed. The structure of Mapping Our Ancestors reflects the editors' goal of developing a common understanding of the methods and conditions under which ancestral relations can be derived in a range of data classes of interest to anthropologists. Specifically, this volume explores the degree to which patterns of ancestry can be determined from artifactual, genetic, linguistic, and behavioral data and how processes such as selection, transmission, and geography impact the results of phylogenetic analyses. Mapping Our Ancestors provides a solid demonstration of the potential of phylogenetic methods for studying the evolutionary history of human populations using a variety of data sources and thus helps explain how cultural material, language, and biology came to be as they are.

Compiled in honor and celebration of veteran anthropologist Harold C. Fleming, this book contains 23 articles by anthropologists (in the general sense) from the four main disciplines of prehistory: archaeology, biogenetics, paleoanthropology, and genetic (historical) linguistics. Because of Professor Fleming's major focus on language — he founded the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory and the journal Mother Tongue — the content of the book is heavily tilted toward the study of human language, its origins, historical development, and taxonomy. Because of Fleming's extensive field experience in Africa some of the articles deal with African topics. This volume is intended to exemplify the principle, in the words of Fleming himself, that each of the four disciplines is enriched when it combines with any one of the other four. The authors are representative of the cutting edge of their respective fields, and this book is unusual in including contributions from a wide range of anthropological fields rather than concentrating in any one of them.