Early Mesolithic Technical Systems Of Southern France And Northern Italy

A technological analysis of lithic assemblages from southern France and Northern Italy, this work aims to reconstruct the entire reduction sequence, from the procurement of lithic raw materials to the use and discard of tools.

A technological analysis of lithic assemblages from southern France and Northern Italy, this work aims to reconstruct the entire reduction sequence, from the procurement of lithic raw materials to the use and discard of tools.

Essays by leading specialists on a central issue of European history: the transition to farming.

Human development is a long and steady process that began with stone tool making. Because of this skill, humans were able to adapt to climate changes, discover new territories, and invent new technologies. "Pressure knapping" is the common term for one method of creating stone tools, where a larger device or blade specifically made for this purpose is use to press out the stone tool. Pressure knapping was invented in different locations and at different points in time, representing the adoption of the Neolithic way of life in the Old world. Recent research on pressure knapping has led for the first time to a global thesis on this technique. The contributors to this seminal work combine research findings on pressure knapping from different cultures around the globe to develope a cohesive theory. This contributions to this volume represents a significant development to research on pressure knapping, as well as the field of lithic studies in general. This work will be an important reference for anyone studying the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, lithic studies, technologies, and more generally, cultural transmission.

This volume provides the reader with a multifaceted overview of the study of stone tools used by humans in the past. Including case studies from various geographic regions and different continents, and covering a wide range of chronologies, the contributions here are centred on the study of human communities based on a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. A number of essays in this volume focus on tool production and use, and address major paleoanthropological questions related to past human economic and social behaviour. The book also includes detailed and careful studies of human technology during Prehistory.

Originally published in 1975, this book traces the subsistence methods of Mediterranean country dwellers from the mid-seventh millennium B. C. (in radio-carbon year) to the beginning of the Bronze Age. It illustrates the change from Mesolithic to Neolithic cultures over a wide area: (South of France, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Spain). The book explores the human societies that lived through this important period of change and adaptation. From their density of settlement, site locations and material culture, hypotheses can be made as to population size and structure. There are sufficient clues in the archaeological record to make possible very cogent comparisons between the hunter-gatherers of the pre-pottery era in West Mediterranean Europe and their distant descendants on the eve of the Bronze Age. How these changes came about, and their effect on Neolithic people as individuals and members of human society form the central part of the book.

This innovative volume is the first collective effort by archaeologists and ethnographers to use concepts and models from human behavioral ecology to explore one of the most consequential transitions in human history: the origins of agriculture. Carefully balancing theory and detailed empirical study, and drawing from a series of ethnographic and archaeological case studies from eleven locations—including North and South America, Mesoamerica, Europe, the Near East, Africa, and the Pacific—the contributors to this volume examine the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding using a broad set of analytical models and concepts. These include diet breadth, central place foraging, ideal free distribution, discounting, risk sensitivity, population ecology, and costly signaling. An introductory chapter both charts the basics of the theory and notes areas of rapid advance in our understanding of how human subsistence systems evolve. Two concluding chapters by senior archaeologists reflect on the potential for human behavioral ecology to explain domestication and the transition from foraging to farming.