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Transitions in Prehistory
This collection of papers celebrates the career of Ofer Bar-Yosef and his contribution to the study of prehistory. As professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University (1970-1988) and as MacCurdy Professor at Harvard University (1989-present), Ofer has had a huge impact on prehistoric archaeology, fostering multi-national research projects worldwide. With such wide-ranging research interests spanning his career, the editors of this book needed to find a theme which could somehow reflect the entirety of his career so far. The theme they chose was transitions in prehistory a topic that Ofer has written on from the early phases of his career to the present day. They have called upon students and long-term collaborators to address questions about important transitions in prehistory, dividing the papers into three groups: transitions in the Pleistocene; transitions in the Holocene; and methodological and theoretical transitions, changes in the way archaeologists view the nature of the evidence and our explanations of the archaeological record.
The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East
One of humanity's most important milestones was the transition from hunting and gathering to food production and permanent village life. This Neolithic Revolution first occurred in the Near East, changing the way humans interacted with their environment and each other, setting the stage, ultimately, for the modern world.ÊÊÊ Ê Based on more than thirty years of fieldwork, this timely volume examines the Neolithic Revolution in the Levantine Near East and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Alan H. Simmons explores recent research regarding the emergence of Neolithic populations, using both environmental and theoretical contexts, and incorporates specific case studies based on his own exca...
Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life
This volume explores the role of religion and ritual in the origin of settled life in the Middle East, focusing on the repetitive construction of houses or cult buildings in the same place. Prominent archaeologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion working at several of the region’s most important sites—such as Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe, and Aşıklı Höyük—contend that religious factors significantly affected the timing and stability of settled economic structures. Contributors argue that the long-term social relationships characteristic of delayed-return agricultural systems must be based on historical ties to place and to ancestors. They define different ...
Pathways to Power
There are few questions more central to understanding the prehistory of our species than those regarding the institutionalization of social inequality. Social inequality is manifested in unequal access to goods, information, decision-making, and power. This structure is essential to higher orders of social organization and basic to the operation of more complex societies. An understanding of the transformation from relatively egalitarian societies to a hierarchical organization and socioeconomic stratification is fundamental to our knowledge about the human condition. In a follow-up to their 1995 book Foundations of Social Inequality, the Editors of this volume have compiled a new and comprehensive group of studies concerning these central questions. When and where does hierarchy appear in human society, and how does it operate? With numerous case studies from the Old and New World, spanning foraging societies to agricultural groups, and complex states, Pathways to Power provides key historical insights into current social and cultural questions.
Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective
In Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective, contributors illustrate the virtues of various ecological, experimental, statistical, typological, technological, and cognitive/social approaches for understanding the origins, formation histories, and inferential potential of a wide range of archaeological phenomena. As archaeologists worldwide create theoretically inspired and methodologically robust narratives of the cultural past, their research pivots on the principle that determining the origins and histories of archaeological phenomena is essential in understanding their relevance for a variety of anthropological problems. The chapters explore how the analysis of ...
Jericho
It is a place both mythic and all too real, a place thought to be the site of one of our oldest human settlements and known to be a center of ancient cultures and annihilating conflicts. It sits at the bottom of a malarial valley, the lowest place on the surfact of the earth--"the overheated, earthen basement of the world," as Robert Ruby describes it. And yet, long before the world's modern religions began scrapping over its bones, Jericho was home to waves of colonization and floods of destruction. Fought over by the succeeding epochs of ancestors, the place we call Jericho is as old as the first remnants dated at 9,000 B.C.--and as current as the daily headlines. In this unorthodox biogra...
Archaeologies of the Middle East
Archaeologies of the Middle East provides an innovative introduction to the archaeology of this fascinating region and a window on both its past and present. Written by some of the top archaeologists of the Middle East: scholars from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of interests and intellectual approaches Coverage spans 100,000 years: from the Paleolithic to Hellenistic times Explores the connections between modern-day politics and the social context of archaeological practice and various underutilized approaches to archaeological interpretation Designed for student use
