The dawn of art is sometimes equated with the birth of the human spirit. But when and how did figuration - sculpture, painting, drawing - actually begin? And did these first figurative creations coincide with the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens ? Is figuration a general and fundamental feature of the human condition? In this challenging volume leading experts review the evidence now available from the worldwide practice of prehistoric archaeology, and go on to formulate some important conclusions. The scope of this work is global. It sets out to explore the first stirrings of artistic endeavour and of figurative imagery on each continent, and to consider the social context in which they arose. It will be a fundamental resource for all those seeking to understand the origins of art and the beginnings of human spirituality.

The crucial earliest phases of palatial Knossos are not well known, in part due to over-building by neopalatial structures and floors. This volume represents the first complete publication of substantial deposits dating to this period, specifically the Middle Minoan IB and IIA phases. This is a first not only for Knossos but for Crete as a whole, and will act as a crucial point of reference for future work on these key phases in the islands prehistory. The five Protopalatial deposits in question, excavated in 1973, 1987 and 199293, are fully published with their contexts, the stratified pottery and small finds including the earliest inscribed clay document from Crete, clay sealings, horn-cores and chipped stone; radiocarbon dates are also presented. The deposits come from the south-west of the palace area, and provide evidence for a range of activities such as ceremonial feasting, workshop production and administration, as well as showing the early development of individual town dwellings on terraces just a few metres from the palace. The volume concludes with a full discussion of the form and function of the Old Palace, stressing that the plans laid down in the first 150 years were far more closely followed over the next 400 years than has hitherto been suspected.

This collection of thirteen papers focuses on what it meant to be 'on the move' at different times in prehistory. Ideas of journeys and travel are integral to many traditions of interpreting the prehistoric archaeological record. Travel was after all the driving force behind the formation and trans formation of identity. How ironic it is that this feature of prehistory has been so overlooked when the ancient world's 'discovery' in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries occurred primarily as the result of travel. The contributors to this volume see journeys as an integral part of prehistoric life - socially meaningful - which must be understood within their (pre)historic contexts.

The current conception of the absolute chronology of the Italian Copper Age to the end of the Early Iron Age is set out in this new title from the British Museum. Some 850 objects have been arranged chronologically from the Copper Age, through the Bronze Age, to the Early Iron Age. Within these headings, the objects are organised typologically e. g. axes, swords etc. A major result of this study has been the reassembly of several groups of bronzes probably originally from hoards. Each entry includes a description, bibliogrpahy and comparanda and line drawing or photgraph.

This book examines social change in Cyprus during the 6th to 4th millennia BC; a period that is traditionally viewed as one of prolonged cultural continuity and isolation from the mainland. Through the documentation and integration of technological practice and up-to-date climatic, ecological and environmental data, it is proposed that many of the observable differences between mainland southwest Asia and Cyprus during this period are the result of divergent adaptive strategies in response to different environmental conditions, low population density and low resource stress. The book draws upon theories in ecological and evolutionary biology and adapts it to cultural change in general. By employing a holistic approach with a focus on technological practice the book seeks to show that cultural change on Cyprus is concomitant with broadly similar cultural trajectories taken in other regions on the margins of southwest Asia. The conclusion reached is that if all of the pressures that drove cultural change on the mainland were relaxed the result would be a stable hunter-gatherer economy with a bit of farming and herding: exactly what appears to be the case on Cyprus.

The archaeological investigation of shell middens has a long and rich history. By the mid 1830s, the presence of artefacts found with large accumulations of shell along the Danish coast had successfully demonstrated that these sites were the result of human activity rather than natural processes. At about the same time in other parts of Europe, shell middens were also being discovered and written about - a process which continued throughout Europe as time went on. Until recently, European Atlantic shell middens attracted only sporadic interest from archaeologists and scientists. However, there has been a notable resurgence in the excavations of shell middens over the last few decades which has been accompanied by the development of a range of new scientific methods applicable to shells and other midden components. There now exists a sizeable amount of information on shell middens, their variability and insights that they have revealed through scientific investigation. A workshop was organised in September 2005 in the Department of Archaeology, University of York, which brought together colleagues working on shell middens along the Atlantic façade of Europe. The aims were to discuss the current work that was being carried out in each country, to consider the use of coastal resources through prehistory and to present new scientific techniques which were being developed. This volume presents the papers from that conference, and is organised geographically, starting with Scandinavia, moving down to Britain, Ireland and France and then to Iberia. For each of these areas there are some papers which provide reviews of the overall state of shell midden research of coastal archaeology. There are also some case studies which provide more in-depth information on sites which are less well known. In addition, several of the papers provide information on scientific techniques which have recently been developed and which are being applied to shell midden sites along the Atlantic façade. Finally, there is a discussion chapter, which suggests ways forward for shell midden research in Atlantic Europe from a Pacific perspective.

This volume of thirteen essays came out of a conference in December 2004 at Bristol University, to celebrate the career of Mick Aston on the occasion of his retirement. They reflect his enthusiam for landscape and monastic archaeology in particular, and range in time from prehistory to the nineteenth century. Mick's ability to communicate archaeology to the masses has rightly seen him earn the title of 'The Ambassador of British Archaeology'.

This volume is concerned with the investigation of three complexes of prehistoric ceremonial monuments in the immediate environs of Dumfries in the south-west of Scotland, conducted between 1994 and 1998. These were the Pict's Knowe henge, the Holywood cursus complex, and the post alignments/cursus at Holm. The field research was designed in such a way as to recognise that prehistoric monuments often have complex and individual sequences of construction and use, while also acknowledging that detailed studies of particular sites and local contexts will ultimately advance our understanding of monumentality in prehistoric Europe. The three sites of the Pict's Knowe, Holywood and Holm have proved especially helpful in addressing questions of how particular places maintained their importance over long periods of time. In each instance the location was characterised by features which possess a high degree of archaeological visibility. In the former case it was the upstanding earthwork of the bank and ditch that identified the site as a henge monument, while Holywood and Holm were discovered through aerial photography. Each of the sites investigated had complex sequences of development, in which the structural elements that were recognised prior to fieldwork were not necessarily the most important or the most long-lived. This book considers the details of the excavated features, environmental and artefactual evidence, as well as more general concerns. The first part of the volume concentrates on the Pict's Knowe, while the second looks at the more spatially and typologically related sites of Holywood and Holm.

This book deals with the interrelationship between society and war seen through the analytical eyes of anthropologists and archaeologists. War is a ghastly thing, which unfortunately thrives almost everywhere in the world today. We need, therefore, to have a better understanding of what war does to people and their societies. War produces change, and archaeologists and anthropologists are analytically equipped to pinpoint its direction, patterning, scale and content. The perspective -- and filter -- of time provides one important tool, while context and comparison provide other tools. Looking at the history of war studies, war is quite often perceived of and treated as something set aside from other practices; almost personified. However, the results published in this book allow us to say that it is never autonomous and self-regulating. War always forms part of something else. Numerous questions arise, and at least some answers -- often tentative and multifaceted -- are provided in the twenty-eight studies included in the book. They certainly add to an ongoing debate, hopefully qualifying it as well.

Evolutionary ('phylogenetic') trees were first used to infer lost histories nearly two centuries ago by manuscript scholars reconstructing original texts. Today, computer methods are enabling phylogenetic trees to transform genetics, historical linguistics and even the archaeological study of artefact shapes and styles. But which phylogenetic methods are best suited to retracing the evolution of languages? And which types of language data are most informative about deep prehistory? In this book, leading specialists engage with these key questions. Essential reading for linguists, geneticists and archaeologists, these studies demonstrate how phylogenetic tools are illuminating previously intractable questions about language prehistory. This innovative volume arose from a conference of linguists, geneticists and archaeologists held at Cambridge in 2004.

Le Yaudet (in Brittany, France) is a promontory of granite commanding the estuary of the river Léguer down-river from the modern town of Lannion (Côtes d'Armor). It has long been known as the 'Old Town' ( Civitas vetus in Latin documents and Coz Yaudet in Breton) and Iron Age, Roman and medieval finds have been made from time to time over the last two centuries. A programme of research excavations began in 1991 and continued annually until 2002. The results of the work show the site to have been in use almost continuously from the early prehistoric period. This is the second volume and deals with the Prehistoric period, continuing up until the end of the Gallic Empire.

In 1999 a collection of documents were found in the archives of the Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology belonging to Luigi Cardini, one of the founders of the Institute. These documents included site notebooks, photographs, drawings and maps relating to work carried out in Albania from 1930-39 where he was sent on a governmental mission to `reinforce Italian supremacy in Albania through archaeological research'. This monograph publishes extracts from these notebooks within a historical, political and archaeological context. The work he carried out is synthesised and a report is included on survey work carried out in 2000 and 2001 to attempt to relocate many of Cardini's cave sites described in his notebooks.

A truly multi-disciplinary book allowing the reader to gain insights into an exceptionally diverse set of topics such as hunting, burial, sword-production and rock art, from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages.

Most of these 28 papers were originally presented at the conference Lithic Studies in the Year 2000 , hosted by the Lithic Studies Society in Cardiff, 2000. The original purpose of the conference was to celebrate the coming of age of the Lithic Studies Society in its twenty-first year, and to consider the state of research and potential new developments in lithic analysis at the beginning of the twenty-first century AD. The papers have been divided into three thematic sections. In the first section, "Behaviour and cognition in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic", the contributors look at ways to reconstruct past human behaviours and cognitive capabilites from periods when lithic evidence is the primary, and sometimes the only source of evidence. Most focus on undisturbed lithic sites and use the analysis of refitted lithic artefacts to approach questions of technology, taphonomy, and the human use of space. In the second section, "Rocks, residues and use-wear", the contributors are concerned with the study of the original characteristics of rocks from different areas of the earth's surface, the selection of specific raw materials for manufacture into tools, the uses to which these tools were put, and how they were used. In the final section, "After hunter-gatherers", the contributors consider the role of lithics in increasingly complex societies and exchange networks, where lithics form just one strand of evidence among many.

Le Yaudet is a promontory of granite commanding the estuary of the river Léguer down-river from the modern town of Lannion (Côtes d'Armor). It has long been known as the 'Old Town' (Civitas vetus in Latin documents and Coz Yaudet in Breton) and Iron Age, Roman and medieval finds have been made from time to time over the last two centuries. A programme of research excavations began in 1991 and continued annually until 2002. The results of the work show the site to have been in use almost continuously from the early prehistoric period. This publication is the first of four volumes documenting the fascinating discoveries made at this important site. Written entirely in French, it provides an overview of the site, giving insight into the physical geography, the town's history prior to excavation, and the archaeological research programme. It is lavishly illustrated with many photographs and line drawings.

Linguistic diversity is one of the most puzzling and challenging features of humankind. Why are there some six thousand different languages spoken in the world today? Why are some, like Chinese or English, spoken by millions over vast territories, while others are restricted to just a few thousand speakers in a limited area? The farming/language dispersal hypothesis makes the radical and controversial proposal that the present-day distributions of many of the world's languages and language families can be traced back to the early developments and dispersals of farming from the several nuclear areas where animal and plant domestication emerged. For instance, the Indo-European and Austronesian language families may owe their current vast distributions to the spread of food plants and of farmers (speaking the relevant proto-language) following the Neolithic revolutions which took place in the Near East and in Eastern Asia respectively, thousands of years ago. In this challenging book, international experts in historical linguistics, prehistoric archaeology, molecular genetics and human ecology bring their specialisms to bear upon this intractable problem, using a range of interdisciplinary approaches. There are signs that a new synthesis between these fields may now be emerging. This path-breaking volume opens new perspectives and indicates some of the directions which future research is likely to follow.