Prehistoric Societies

This book explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts.

The idea of prehistory dates from the nineteenth century, but Richard Bradley contends that it is still a vital area for research. He argues that it is only through a combination of oral tradition and the experience of encountering ancient material culture that people were able to formulate a sense of their own pasts without written records. The Past in Prehistoric Societies presents case studies which extend from the Palaeolithic to the early Middle Ages and from the Alps to Scandinavia. It examines how archaeologists might study the origin of myths and the different ways in which prehistoric people would have inherited artefacts from the past. It also investigates the ways in which ancient remains might have been invested with new meanings long after their original significance had been forgotten. Finally, the author compares the procedures of excavation and field survey in the light of these examples. The work includes a large number of detailed case studies, is fully illustrated and has been written in an extremely accessible style.

This volume is dedicated to examining the role and impact of gender relations during socio-environmental transformation processes as well as matters of gender equality in archaeological academia across the globe.

The northern borders of China - known as the Northern zone - were a key area of interaction between sedentary and nomadic people during the late second and early first millennium BCE. During this period the region's unique economy, socio-political systems, local cultures and identities took shape. 'Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of China' analyses the archaeological record to examine the changes that took place in Northern China in the first millennium. Drawing on field work in the Chifeng area of Inner Mongolia, the book explores dramatic changes in the construction of identities alongside more gradual changes in subsistence strategies and political organization. The book is unique in integrating the archaeological data and historical records of this period with anthropological theory to examine the role of identity construction and the use of symbol in the shaping of East Asian society.

The idea of prehistory dates from the nineteenth century, but Richard Bradley contends that it is still a vital area for research. He argues that it is only through a combination of oral tradition and the experience of encountering ancient material culture that people were able to formulate a sense of their own pasts without written records. The Past in Prehistoric Societies presents case studies which extend from the Palaeolithic to the early Middle Ages and from the Alps to Scandinavia. It examines how archaeologists might study the origin of myths and the different ways in which prehistoric people would have inherited artefacts from the past. It also investigates the ways in which ancient remains might have been invested with new meanings long after their original significance had been forgotten. Finally, the author compares the procedures of excavation and field survey in the light of these examples. The work includes a large number of detailed case studies, is fully illustrated and has been written in an extremely accessible style.

The diet or food resource of the prehistoric societies in Semporna was investigated from an archaeozoological perspective. Data in this book was the latest data collected from archaeological evidence especially the remains of vertebrate fauna from the prehistoric sites of Bukit Tengkorak, Bukit Kamiri and Melanta Tutup in Semporna, Sabah. These vertebrate fauna remains were prehistoric animals that existed during the Holocene epoch, which were hunted by the prehistoric societies in Semporna as food resource. This book also explores the past human behaviour, way of life, way of thinking, skill and creativity of the Neolithic societies in Semporna.

New England archaeology has not always been everyone's cup of tea; only late in the Golden of nineteenth-century archaeology, as archaeology's focus turned westward, did a few pioneers look northward as well, causing a brief flurry of investigation and excavation. Between 1892 and 1894, Charles C. Willoughby did some exemplary excavations at three small burial sites in Bucksport, Orland, and Ellsworth, Maine, and made some models of that activity for exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair. These activities were encouraged by E Putnam, director of the Harvard Peabody Museum and head of anthropology at the "Columbian" Exposition. Even earlier, another director of the Peabody, Jeffries Wyman, spawned some real interest in the shellheaps of the Maine coast, but that did not last very long. Twentieth-century New England archaeology, specifically in Maine, was--for its first fifty years--rather low key too, with short-lived but important activity by Arlo and Oric (a Bates Harvard student) prior to World War Later, I. another Massachusetts institution, the Peabody Foundation at Andover, took some minor but responsible steps toward further understanding of the area's prehistoric past.