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Author: Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521321181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
This book, a comparative study of specialised production in prehistoric societies, examines approaches to specialization and exchange.
Author: Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521321181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
This book, a comparative study of specialised production in prehistoric societies, examines approaches to specialization and exchange.
Author: Joseph Tainter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521386739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.
Author: Jennifer C. Ross
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315305623
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Ancient Complex Societies examines the archaeological evidence for the rise and functioning of politically and socially “complex” cultures in antiquity. Particular focus is given to civilizations exhibiting positions of leadership, social and administrative hierarchies, emerging and already developed complex religious systems, and economic differentiation. Case studies are drawn from around the globe, including Asia, the Mediterranean region, and the American continents. Using case studies from Africa, Polynesia, and North America, discussion is dedicated to identifying what “complex” means and when it should be applied to ancient systems. Each chapter attempts to not only explore the sociopolitical and economic elements of ancient civilizations, but to also present an overview of what life was like for the later population within each system, sometimes drilling down to individual people living their daily lives. Throughout the chapters, the authors address problems with the idea of complexity, the incomparability of cultures, and the inconsistency of archaeological and historical evidence in reconstructing ancient cultures.
Author: William R. Fowler, Jr.
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9780849388316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
This book presents discussions on the formation of complex society of Southeastern Mesoamerica throughout pre-Columbian times. These societies include ones from the Early Preclassic or Formative period to those encountered by the Spaniards when they arrived in the early 16th century. Diverse classes of data from archaeology, ethnography, and ethnohistory are utilized. The book provides wide spatial and temporal coverage, as well as a wide diversity of theoretical perspectives. Anyone interested in archeology or the evolution of prehistoric complex societies will find this book fascinating.
Author: Benjamin W. Porter
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816599149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
Complex Communities explores how sedentary settlements developed and flourished in the Middle East during the Early Iron Age nearly four thousand years ago. Using archaeological evidence, Benjamin Porter reconstructs how residents maintained their communities despite environmental uncertainties. Living in a semi-arid area in the present-day country of Jordan, villagers faced a harsh and unpredictable ecosystem. Communities fostered resilience by creating flexible production routines and leadership strategies. Settlements developed what archaeologists call “communal complexity,” a condition through which small-scale societies shift between egalitarian and hierarchical arrangements. Complex Communities provides detailed, scientifically grounded reconstructions of how this communal complexity functioned in the region. These settlements emerged during a period of recovery following the political and economic collapse of Bronze Age Mediterranean societies. Scholars have characterized west-central Jordan’s political organization during this time as an incipient Moabite state. Complex Communities argues instead that the settlements were a collection of independent, self-organizing entities. Each community constructed substantial villages with fortifications, practiced both agriculture and pastoralism, and built and stocked storage facilities. From these efforts to produce and store resources, especially food, wealth was generated and wealthier households gained power over their neighbors. However, power was limited by the fact that residents could—and did—leave communities and establish new ones. Complex Communities reveals that these settlements moved through adaptive cycles as they adjusted to a changing socionatural system. These sustainability-seeking communities have lessons to offer not only the archaeologists studying similar struggles in other locales, but also to contemporary communities facing negative climate change. Readers interested in resilience studies, Near Eastern archaeology, historical ecology, and the archaeology of communities will welcome this volume.
Author: Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199875006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1000
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.
Author: Timothy G. Baugh
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475762313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
In this unique volume, archaeologists examine the changing economic structure of trade in North America over a period of 6,000 years. Organined by geographical and chronological divisions, each chapter focuses on trade in one of nine regions from the Arachiac through the late prehistoric period. Each contribution explores neighboring areas to llustrate the complexity of North American exchange. By charting the econmic structure of these regions, archaeologists, economic anthropologists, and economic geographers gain greater insight into the dynamics of North American trade and exchange on a continental wide basis.
Author: Jeanne E. Arnold
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 1938770196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
This volume highlights the latest research on the foundations of sociopolitical complexity in coastal California. The populous maritime societies of southern California, particularly the groups known collectively as the Chumash, have gone largely unrecognized as prototypical complex hunter-gatherers, only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of their more celebrated counterparts on the Northwest Coast of North America. While Northwest cultures are renowned for such complex institutions as ceremonial potlatches, slavery, cedar plank-house villages, and rich artistic traditions, the Chumash are increasingly recognized as complex hunter-gatherers with a different set of organizational characteristics: ascribed chiefly leadership, a strong maritime economy based on oceangoing canoes, an integrative ceremonial system, and intensive and highly specialized craft production activities. Chumash sites provide some of the most robust data on these subjects available in the Americas. Contributors present stimulating new analyses of household and village organization, ceremonial specialists, craft specializations and settlement data, cultural transmission processes, bead manufacturing practices, watercraft, and the acquisition of prized marine species.
Author: Kazuo Aoyama
Publisher: Center for Comparative Arch
ISBN: 9781877812545
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
An exhaustive analysis of political and economic change right through the sequence of Maya civilization, based on the direct evidence of chipped stone assemblages from a wide variety of contexts in two regions. The acquisition of raw materials, the production of tools, and the use of tools are all fully considered for what they can tell us about long-distance political and economic relations and local economic organization. An unexpected bonus of the study was information on the use of chipped stone in warfare. The full dataset is provided electronically. Complete text in English and Spanish.
Author: Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190634162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, the first of its kind, provides a current overview of recent research on the Aztec empire, the best documented prehispanic society in the Americas. Chapters span from the establishment of Aztec city-states to the encounter with the Spanish empire and the Colonial period that shaped the modern world. Articles in the Handbook take up new research trends and methodologies and current debates. The Handbook articles are divided into seven parts. Part I, Archaeology of the Aztecs, introduces the Aztecs, as well as Aztec studies today, including the recent practice of archaeology, ethnohistory, museum studies, and conservation. The articles in Part II, Historical Change, provide a long-term view of the Aztecs starting with important predecessors, the development of Aztec city-states and imperialism, and ending with a discussion of the encounter of the Aztec and Spanish empires. Articles also discuss Aztec notions of history, writing, and time. Part III, Landscapes and Places, describes the Aztec world in terms of its geography, ecology, and demography at varying scales from households to cities. Part IV, Economic and Social Relations in the Aztec Empire, discusses the ethnic complexity of the Aztec world and social and economic relations that have been a major focus of archaeology. Articles in Part V, Aztec Provinces, Friends, and Foes, focuses on the Aztec's dynamic relations with distant provinces, and empires and groups that resisted conquest, and even allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztec king. This is followed by Part VI, Ritual, Belief, and Religion, which examines the different beliefs and rituals that formed Aztec religion and their worldview, as well as the material culture of religious practice. The final section of the volume, Aztecs after the Conquest, carries the Aztecs through the post-conquest period, an increasingly important area of archaeological work, and considers the place of the Aztecs in the modern world.
