This volume contains 13 papers on hunting and fishing techniques, weapons and prey in the area from Anatolia to the Gibraltar region. Papers include specific case studies as well as syntheses of wider data sets and provide the latest methodological and theoretical perspectives on the role of hunting and fishing in early agricultural societies.

Hunting and fishing in the Neolithic and Eneolithic explores the extent of hunting and fishing activities, their role and importance in subsistence and also their place in social relations. The book contains 13 papers on hunting and fishing techniques, weapons and prey in the area from Anatolia to the Gibraltar region. The range of topics includes technological, typological and functional analyses of weapons used, analyses of hunting and fishing strategies and techniques, and zooarchaeological analyses of the role of hunted fauna in the economy and other aspects of lives of the past communities. Papers include specific case studies as well as syntheses of wider data sets and provide the latest methodological and theoretical perspectives on the role of hunting and fishing in early agricultural societies.

The largest and brightest megalithic complex in Russia’s Ural Mountains is located on Vera Island, represented by three chambered megaliths and sanctuaries of the Eneolithic period (mid-4th - 3rd millennium BC). The oldest samples of stone sculpture in the Urals have been revealed within this complex.

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.

Eastern Europe, in this book, embraces the area formally referred to as the ‘Marchlands of Europe’, sometimes as Eastern Central Europe, and which included, when this book was originally published in 1971, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland. This book presented for the first time the archaeological material related to the prehistory of Central and West Europe, describing the evidence for the earlier prehistory – settlement patterns, means of subsistence and material culture – in the various natural environments of this area. It looks at the Baltic coast, the north and east European plains, the Carpathian mountain ring, the Danube basin and the Adriatic and Black Sea coasts. The evidence for late Mesolithic hunting-fishing groups is examined, their techniques and their reaction to the introduction and spread of agriculturalists, as well as the development and activities of both food-gatherers and food-producers until the early use and manufacture of metal objects. 3000 years of prehistory are covered in a way which is designed to be intelligible and useful to all those who are interested in prehistory and in eastern Europe.

In Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia, archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert. This project has demonstrated unequivocally that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into Europe. By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia, between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture.

This volume covers the Prehistory of Ukraine from the Lower Palaeolithic through to the end of the Neolithic periods. This is the first comprehensive synthesis of Ukrainian Prehistory from earliest times through until the Neolithic Period undertaken by researchers who are currently investigating the Prehistory of Ukraine. At present there are no other English language books on this subject that provide a current synthesis for these periods. The chapters in this volume provide up-to-date overviews of all aspects of prehistoric culture development in Ukraine and present details of the key sites and finds for the periods studied. The book includes the most recent research from all areas of prehistory up to the Neolithic period, and, in addition, areas such as recent radiocarbon dating and its implications for culture chronology are considered; as is a consideration of aDNA and the new insights into culture history this area of research affords; alongside recent macrofossil studies of plant use, and anthropological and stable isotope studies of diet, which all combine to allow greater insights into the nature of human subsistence and cultural developments across the Palaeolithic to Neolithic periods in Ukraine. It is anticipated that this book will be an invaluable resource for students of prehistory throughout Europe in providing an English-language text that is written by researchers who are active in their respective fields and who possess an intimate knowledge of Ukrainian prehistory.