Making Prehistory

Making Prehistory
Author: Derek Turner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2007-07-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1139465058

Scientists often make surprising claims about things that no one can observe. In physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, scientists can at least experiment on those unobservable entities, but what about researchers in fields such as paleobiology and geology who study prehistory, where no such experimentation is possible? Do scientists discover facts about the distant past or do they, in some sense, make prehistory? In this book Derek Turner argues that this problem has surprising and important consequences for the scientific realism debate. His discussion covers some of the main positions in philosophy of science - realism, social constructivism, empiricism, and the natural ontological attitude - and shows how they relate to issues in paleobiology and geology. His original and thought-provoking book will be of wide interest to philosophers and scientists alike.

Prehistory

Prehistory
Author: Colin Renfrew
Publisher: Modern Library
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-08-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1588368084

In Prehistory, the award-winning archaeologist and renowned scholar Colin Renfrew covers human existence before the advent of written records–which is to say, the overwhelming majority of our time here on earth. But Renfrew also opens up to discussion, and even debate, the term “prehistory” itself, giving an incisive, concise, and lively survey of the past, and how scholars and scientists labor to bring it to light. Renfrew begins by looking at prehistory as a discipline, particularly how developments of the past century and a half–advances in archaeology and geology; Darwin’s ideas of evolution; discoveries of artifacts and fossil evidence of our human ancestors; and even more enlightened museum and collection curatorship–have fueled continuous growth in our knowledge of prehistory. He details how breakthroughs such as radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have helped us to define humankind’s past–how things have changed–much more clearly than was possible just a half century ago. Answers for why things have changed, however, continue to elude us, so Renfrew discusses some of the issues and challenges past and present that confront the study of prehistory and its investigators. In the book’s second part, Renfrew shifts the narrative focus, offering a summary of human prehistory from early hominids to the rise of literate civilization that is refreshingly free from conventional wisdom and grand “unified” theories. The author’s own case studies encompass a vast geographical and chronological range–the Orkney Islands, the Balkans, the Indus Valley, Peru, Ireland, and China–and help to explain the formation and development of agriculture and centralized societies. He concludes with a fascinating chapter on early writing systems, “From Prehistory to History.” In this invaluable, brief account of human development prior to the last four millennia, Colin Renfrew delivers a meticulously researched and passionately argued chronicle about our life on earth, and our ongoing quest to understand it.

Creating Prehistory

Creating Prehistory
Author: Adam Stout
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-04-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1444302922

Creating Prehistory deals even-handedly and sympatheticallywith the creation of several different sorts of prehistory duringthe volatile period between the two World Wars. Investigates the origins of professional archaeology in Britainduring the inter-war period Brings to life many fascinating and controversial personalitiesand their creeds, including the archaeologists O. G. S. Crawford,Mortimer Wheeler and Gordon Childe; Grafton Elliot Smith and W. H.R. Rivers (of ‘Regeneration’ fame); Alfred Watkins andThe Old Straight Track; and the thunderous George Watson MacgregorReid, who brought the Druids back to Stonehenge Examines the production of archaeological knowledge as a socialprocess, and the relationship between personalities, institutions,ideology, and power Addresses the ongoing debates of the significance of sites suchas Stonehenge, Avebury, and Maiden Castle

Prehistory

Prehistory
Author: Chris Gosden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2018
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 0198803516

Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.

Making Places In The Prehistoric World

Making Places In The Prehistoric World
Author: Joanna Bruck
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100094574X

First published in 1999. This groundbreaking volume addresses issues central to the study of prehistoric settlement including group memory, the transmission of ideology and the impact of mobility and seasonality on the construction of social identity. Building on these themes, the contributors point to new ways of understanding the relationship between settlement and landscape by replacing Capitalist models of spatial relations with more intimate histories of place.

The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making

The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making
Author: Karina Grömer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 546
Release:
Genre: Textile fabrics
ISBN:

Textiles, textile production and clothing were essentials of living in prehistory, locked into the system of society at every level "social, economic and even religious. Textile crafts not only produced essential goods for everyday use, most notably clothing, but also utilitarian objects as well as representative and luxury items. Prehistoric clothing and their role in identity creation for the individual and for the group are also addressed by means of archaeological finds from Stone the Iron Age in Central Europe.

Making Places in the Prehistoric World

Making Places in the Prehistoric World
Author: Joanna Bruck
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2012-10-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135361010

This groundbreaking volume addresses issues central to the study of prehistoric settlement including group memory, the transmission of ideology and the impact of mobility and seasonality on the construction of social identity. Building on these themes, the contributors point to new ways of understanding the relationship between settlement and landscape by replacing Capitalist models of spatial relations with more intimate histories of place.

Making Civilizations

Making Civilizations
Author: Hans-Joachim Gehrke
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 1120
Release: 2020-05-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9780674047174

From the History of the World series, Making Civilizations traces the origins of large-scale organized human societies. Led by archaeologist Hans-Joachim Gehrke, a distinguished group of scholars lays out latest findings about Neanderthals, the Agrarian Revolution, the founding of imperial China, the world of Western classical antiquity, and more.

Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory

Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory
Author: Ian Gilligan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2019
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1108470084

The first book on the origin of clothes shows why climate change was crucial - for the origin of agriculture too.