Product Description: The Cambridge World History is an authoritative new overview of the dynamic field of world history. It covers the whole of human history, not simply history since the development of written records, in an expanded time frame that represents the latest thinking in world and global history...read more

Product Description: Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. This book discusses successes and failures of past land use and settlement in drylands, and contributes to wider debates about desertification and the sustainability of dryland settlement...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. This book discusses successes and failures of past land use and settlement in drylands, and contributes to wider debates about desertification and the sustainability of dryland settlement...read more

The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory addresses one of the most debated and least understood revolutions in the history of our species, the change from hunting and gathering to farming. Graeme Barker takes a global view, and integrates a massive array of information from archaeology and many other disciplines, including anthropology, botany, climatology, genetics, linguistics, and zoology. Against current orthodoxy, Barker develops a strong case for the development of agricultural systems in many areas as transformations in the life-ways of the indigenous forager societies, and argues that these were as much changes in social norms and ideologies as in ways of obtaining food. With a large number of helpful line drawings and photographs as well as a comprehensive bibliography, this authoritative study will appeal to a wide general readership as well as to specialists in a variety of fields.

Product Description: The Wadi Faynan is a harshly beautiful and desertic landscape in southern Jordan, situated between the hyper-arid deserts of the Wadi 'Arabah and the rugged and wetter Mountains of Edom. Archaeology and Desertification presents the results of the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, an inter-disciplinary study of landscape change undertaken in the Wadi Faynan by a team of archaeologists and geographers with the goal of contributing to present-day desertification debates by providing a long-term perspective on the relationship between environmental change and human history...read more

Through 26 essays, this text explores the origins, aims, methods and problems of archaeology. The thematic strategy ensures that the book has relevance across the field as well as allowing for in-depth approach to specific issues and topics.

Product Description: Assessments of the Past, Strategies for the Future ( S. Alcock ). Methodology: Methods of Collection, Recording and Quantification ( D. Mattingly ); Cultural Depositional Processes andPost-depossitional Problems ( J. Taylor ); Ceramics and the Site ( Vincent Gaffney ); What Are we Counting For? ( Elizabeth Fentress ); Dating, Quantifying and Utilizing Pottery from Surface Survey ( Martin Millett ); Towards an Analysis of Incomplete Distributions ( Nicola Terrenato ); Quando i Campi Hanno Pochi Significati da Estarre ( Franco Cambi ); Prospection et Chronologie: de la quantification du temps au modèle de peuplement ( Frédéric Trément ); Discussion ( Martin Millett )...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The desert margins of North Africa are extremely rich in archaeological ruins of the Roman period, evidence of dense settlement 2,000 years ago in what are now arid and hostile environments. Historians, geographers and archaeologists have long debated the significance of these sites, explaining the 'Greening of the Desert' variously in terms of environmental change, colonization, external market forces or combinations of factors...read more

Product Description: This extensive study documents the long-term human settlement history of the Biferno Valley in central-southern Italy, from its earliest occupation in the Stone Age right up to the present day. Integrating the techniques of archaeology, history and geography, Barker shows how settlement in the Valley is inextricably linked to the parallel story of landscape development, his themes and subjects including: Approaches to Mediterranean landscape history; The modern landscape; Methodologies of the Biferno Valley Survey; The natural landscape and its evolution; Early prehsitoric settlement; The first agricultural communities; Iron Age chiefdoms (c...read more

Drawing upon his own extensive knowledge of European archaeology, Graeme Barker has impressively integrated the full range of archaeological data to produce in this book a masterly account of prehistoric farming in Europe on a unique scale. He makes use of modern archaeological techniques to reconstruct the lives of prehistoric farmers in remarkable detail. Not only do we now have a vivid picture of the prehistoric farmyard, but we know what animals were kept, how they were fed and why they were bred. Evidence for crops grown and techniques of cultivation and husbandry helps recreate the prehistoric landscape. Even the social organisation that determined the use of resources, and provided the crucial stimulus for agricultural change, can be relived. Graeme Barker develops his argument through analogies with the agricultural history of classical and medieval Europe and concludes that today's industrial farmers can learn much from the successes and failures of early European farming.