The Missing Woodland Resources

Woodlands are a key source of raw materials for many purposes since early Prehistory. Wood, bark, resin, leaves, fibres, fungi, moss, or tubers have been gathered to fulfill almost every human need. That led societies to develop specific technologies to acquire, manage, transform, elaborate, use, and consume these resources. The materials provided by woodlands covered a wide range of necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, or tool production, but they also provided resources employed for waterproofing, dying, medicine, and adhesives, among many others. All these technological processes and uses are commonly difficult to identify through the archaeological record. Some materials are exclusively preserved by charring or in anaerobic conditions at very exceptional sites or leave only a very slight trace behind them (e.g., containers). Consequently, they have received far less attention in archaeobotanical studies compared to other kind of plant materials consumed as food or firewood. This book provides an overview of technological uses of plants from the Palaeolithic to the Post-Medieval period. This collection of papers presents different archaeobotanical and archaeological studies dealing with the use of a wide range of woodland resources, most of them among the less visible for archaeology, such as bast, fibres and fungi. These papers present different approaches for their study combining archaeology, archaeobotany and ethnoarchaeology.

Woodlands are a key source of raw materials for many purposes since early Prehistory. Wood, bark, resin, leaves, fibers, fungi, moss, or tubers have been gathered to fulfill almost every human need. That led societies to develop specific technologies to acquire, manage, transform, elaborate, use, and consume these resources. The materials provided by woodlands covered a wide range of necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, or tool production, but they also provided resources employed for waterproofing, dying, medicine, and adhesives, among many others. All these technological processes and uses are commonly difficult to identify through the archaeological record. Some materials are exclusively preserved by charring or in anaerobic conditions at very exceptional sites or leave only a very slight trace behind them (e.g., containers). Consequently, they have received far less attention in archaeobotanical studies compared to other kind of plant materials consumed as food or firewood. This book provides an overview of technological uses of plants from the Palaeolithic to the Post-Medieval period. This collection of papers presents different archaeobotanical and archaeological studies dealing with the use of a wide range of woodland resources, most of them among the less visible for archaeology, such as bast, fibers, and fungi. These papers present different approaches for their study combining archaeology, archaeobotany, and ethnoarchaeology.

Cognitive Archaeology is a relatively young though fast growing discipline. The intellectual heart of cognitive archaeology is archaeology, the discipline that investigates the only direct evidence of the actions and decisions of prehistoric people. Its theories and methods are an eclectic mix of psychological, neuroscientific, paleoneurological, philosophical, anthropological, ethnographic, comparative, aesthetic, and experimental theories, methods, and models, united only by their focus on cognition. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology is a landmark publication, showcasing the theories, methods, and accomplishments of archaeologists who investigate the human mind, including its evolutionary development, its ideation (thoughts and beliefs), and its very nature-through material forms. The volume encompasses the wide spectrum of the discipline, showcasing contributions from more than 50 established and emerging scholars from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Prominent among these are contributions that discuss the epistemological frameworks of both the evolutionary and ideational approaches and the leading theories that ground interpretations. Significantly, the majority of chapters deliver substantive contributions that analyze specific examples of material culture, from the oldest known stone tools to ceramic and rock art traditions of the recent millennium. These examples include the gamut of methods and techniques, including typology, replication studies, cha?nes operatoires, neuroarchaeology, ethnographic comparison, and the direct historical approach. In addition, the book begins with retrospective essays by several of the pioneers of cognitive archaeology, presenting a broad range of state-of-the-art investigations into cognitive abilities, tackling thorny issues like the cognitive status of Neandertals, and concluding with speculative essays about the future of an archaeology of mind, and of the mind itself.

What do we mean when we say that cities have altered humanity’s interaction with nature? The more people are living in cities, the more nature is said to be "urbanizing": turned into a resource, mobilized over long distances, controlled, transformed and then striking back with a vengeance as "natural disaster". Confronting insights derived from Environmental History, Science and Technology Studies or Political Ecology, Urbanizing Nature aims to counter teleological perspectives on the birth of modern "urban nature" as a uniform and linear process, showing how new technological schemes, new actors and new definitions of nature emerged in cities from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

The accompanying CD-ROM contains the management plan and related documents in PDF format.